Social Attitudes to Regional and Non-Regional Accents
Ever since Daniel Jones's pioneering study on the social reaction to variations in British accents, interest in the topic has led linguistic researchers to conduct a number of interesting studies which have shown that social attitudes to regional and non-regional accents have somewhat shifted over time. Indeed, it is worthwhile to investigate some of the conclusions Jones drew in order to evaluate whether they might still hold up in today's moral climate. Jones was a proponent of what may be considered to be the liberal interpretation of variation in speech. First published in Great Britain in the 1930s, Jones's intention was to elucidate variations in British pronunciation in order to understand why certain accents were considered to be "vulgar" or "ugly" by others. Jones determined that southern British accents were preferable by the majority of society to northern accents. But there was also a class-based issue at stake, as the more privileged members of society generally speak without a regional accent. Of course, the issue on accents in Britain was not so clear-cut then, as Jones was at pains to point out: One discovery which the observer of phonetic phenomena makes at quite an early stage of his studies is tha
Crystal also delineates "everyday speech" from "professional speech," showing how pronunciation separates the two. Birminghamian accents, were more often perceived to be guilty than those with "proper" Received Pronunciation accents - particularly if those with the Brummie accents happened to be people of color. In Great Britain alone, one can argue that Scots, rather than speaking with an accent, are in many ways speaking a completely different language, as Philp argues: Yet the situation in Scotland is different from other regions of the United Kingdom: the 'nonstandard English' of Scottish speakers is distinctive from that of other regions, in respect of the extent of its difference from Standard English and its historical connection with a firmly institutionalized national culture, supported by ancient literary and folk traditions. Philp goes on to recommend that, rather than teaching "correctness" when it comes to instructing children on ways of speaking, teachers should instead focus their energies on emphasizing appropriateness. Thus, people are more likely to revert to the idiosyncratic pronunciations of their native dialects in every day conversation, while suppressing those idiosyncrasies when they are called upon to use their voice in a professional manner. Such an accent is frequently accused of being overly "posh" by today's class-conscious social standards. Indeed, this distinctive Scottish situation has been heightened by the growing status and prevalence in recent years of the Scottish language (Scots): the status of Scots as a separate historically-based language, underpinning and uniting the various Scottish dialects, has been widely accepted by Scottish writers, linguists and educationalists. "If the teacher," writes Jones, takes up a more tolerant attitude and explains that they have a language which serves its purpose well for home use, but that there exist many other ways of talking; that some of these ways are only understood well in restricted areas, say London, or South Lancashire, or the neighborhood of Dundee, while others are readily understood over much wider areas - some, in fact, over the whole of the English speaking world; that it often comes in very usefully if a man can talk a kind of English which is easily understood everywhere, and this is why a special kind of English is taught in school; then the teacher can get the boys on his side, and they become willing to learn the school pronunciation instead of thinking it silly and affected (Jones 1930, 29). Received Pronunciation refers to that accent that is developed by people who are taught English as a second language. This has to do with the fact that only about two to three percent of native British English speakers use Received Pronunciation - as an accent, it is dying out, which gives considerable fuel to the argument that there is no longer any such thing as "Standard English" (see below for more on this issue. More people from more nations than ever before, each of whom has their own accent that has some influence on the continual evolution of the way the English language is spoken and understood, now speak English. It is probably true that we will never know a world in which the way people speak has no bearing whatsoever on social attitudes. ) In general, researchers in the field of sociolinguistics have found that "southern" accents still hold the highest regard in the ears of most British listeners.
Common topics in this essay:
Standard English,
Daniel Jones's,
Shah Persia,
Received Pronunciation,
South Lancashire,
Mahoney Cocks,
London Norwich,
Laura Norder,
English Britain,
David Crystal,
received pronunciation,
standard english,
social attitudes,
intrusive /r/,
english language,
jones 1930 29,
britain 1930s,
proper english,
voices professional,
professional manner,
day conversation,
west london norwich,
social attitudes regional,
speakers received pronunciation,
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Acceptance Essays
