Accent as a Social Symbol

ACCENT AS A SOCIAL SYMBOL

Lynda Mugglestone

Introduction

·         Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, a cockney flower-girl (Eliza Doolitle) was transformed into a society lady after having series of elocution lessons.

·         It is related to accent – the way we pronounce and intone the words we speak – and the extremely strong feelings that different accents can arouse in listeners. These strong feeling may vary, like the accent themselves, from region to region wherever English is spoken. An Australian may react quite neutrally to British accent, in which the US listener making wrong judgements about speaker’s intelligence, sophistication, political views, etc.

·         Reaction to a particular accent is generally culture specific. The accent will only be shared and understood by those who are able to place the accent within its social and regional context. It is the badge for a range of qualities attributable to the social context. Therefore, the accent becomes a social symbol.

·         This chapter examines the rise of language attitudes of this kind by looking at a case study of a specific prestigious accent of English within a UK context. It will be illustrated about the mechanisms by which some accents come to be regarded as more or less prestigious than others and associated with particular qualities.

The consciousness of correctness

·         Thomas sheridan’s A Course of Lectures on Elocution was intended to announce a contemporary attitudes to accent. The unregulated of English pronunciation was inspired him and others to establish a standard speech.

·         In the eighteen century, Samuel Johnson declared his A Dictionary of the English Language of 1755. At that time, dictionaries and grammar had increasingly been a reference for the proper use of syntax and lexis for English, while pronounciation had largerly remained as a correctness. Indeed, use of a local and regionally market accent was common for all speakers in society, even for those higher in the social spectrum.

·         However, Sheridan disagree with Johnson. He said that regionalities of spelling or grammars were not regarded as acceptable. He assumed that there must be prescriptive rhetoric on other domains of language use. He desired to change the prevailing mind-set, to sensitise speakers to notions of correct pronunciation and to constrain change in a clear and regulated norm (Prescriptivism). His dictionary title; A Complete Dictionary of the English Language, both with regard Sound and Meaning. One main Object of which is, to Establish a Plain and permanent Standard of Pronunciation.

Want of method

Sheridan proposed three “wants” which intentionally remove regional enunciation;

·         The want of knowing exactly where the fault lies

Readers were informed that imperfect pronunciation was inconvenient to the ear and indicated that the speaker belongs to a class which is careless of the rights of the letters.

·         Want of method in removing it and of due application
Sheridan shared his concern and prompted two major developments; First, the rise of elocution as a new and newly profitable, white-collar profession. Second, the rise of the pronouncing dictionary.

·         Want of consciousness of their defects in this point

Consciousness can be awoken only by information. Readers were often encouraged to work systematically through the guidance provided; rather than passive reference books. Pronouncing dictionaries were actively assimilated into an everyday form of self-improvement.

In this case, there are only few who are succeed in the attempt through ‘want of method’, because their old habit cannot easily be removed.

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Contesting Voices

·         The 6 O’clock News which appeared in 1984 in a series called Unrelated Incidents by the Scottish poet, Tom Leonard was broadcast by BBC. Leonard uses “eye-dialect” where the spelling is intended to suggest a Scottish pronunciation.  Leonard who was supported by many writers and speakers in 1960s and 1970s emphasis on the idea that ‘talking right is not only vested on one mode of speech.

·         A series of experiments conducted from the 1960s to evaluate accent across UK showed that stereotyped impressions of an individual personality may be formulated by the listeners related to speakers’ voice. RP suggested as the top representatives of communicative effectiveness and high social status, followed by educated Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. Those three accents regarded as adoptive rather than native RP.

·         In responding the quality of individual accent, there is a belief that one form of speech is intrinsically better than the others, which is called as  inherent value hypothesis.

The Changing Situation of Modern British

·         Language attitude is changing. There are many new variations of RP such as the use of intrusive r and /t/ glottalisation which is examined by Fabricious (2002). The experiment suggested three significant factors as the cause of the variation;  speech style, phonetic environment and speakers’ origin. The last factor led Fabricious to posit two different types of RP; native-RP and construct-RP.

·         Popular attitudes to accent also shift over time. There was a negatives reaction to RP which lessen the prejudice against certain regional accent.

·         There is an increasing shift from RP on to Estuary English, a variety of modified regional speech first identified by David Rosewarne in 1984. It is a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. Trudgill (2002) proposed a  number of reasons fro the advance of Estuary English. First, lower middle class accents are heard prominently in public situation and those are south-east England because the area has the largest population. Second, there is an increase on the social mobility which projected many people from lower middle-class into prominent position.

  

Accent Evaluation Revisited

·         The association of accent with stereotype continued again which cause people adjusted their accent easily due to power representation

·         The rich variety of British Accents and Dialects is one of great culture assets which should be preserved and enhanced.

Conclusion

·         This chapter showed the shifting language attitudes to accent and pronunciation over the past two centuries. The constituent features of language is in the process of changing which take place within a social context which may be more mobile today than in the past. The postmodern societies today have fewer class markers, more tolerant of heterogeneity, accept many variations and have multidimensional identities.   

Milton Keynes and Dialect Leveling in the South-Eastern British English

By Paul Kerswill

The role of dialect contact in language change

The social changes affect the speakers of language. From the point of view language change, it is possible the geographical effect of mobility that has more far reaching effect, as the people move from the new areas, they may from social ethnic group with distinct way of speaking. Migration with single language area, such Britain, leads to prolonged contact between speakers of different dialects of the same language. In south-eastern England, has been long geographical and social mobility, leading to dialect contact.  It caused the reduction of difference dialect “Dialect Leveling”. This study is aimed to see if there is evidence for the rise of “new dialect” in Milton Keynes, distinct from those of other places and from those of the people who moved to the town.

Milton Keynes Study

ü The role of children in the formation of dialect

Children’s speech is less fixed, more malleable than adult, most of who will only change their speech in minor ways when they moved to another area.

ü Choice of location

Milton Keynes is in the country of Buckinghamshire in England. The population, over quarter was from south-east and nearly part of them from London. Obviously, this fact will have repercussion for any “new dialect”

Methodology

ü  Sociolinguistic Variable, five sociolinguistic variables were included: consonant (t) and (th), and vowel (ou,u:, au).  

ü  Speakers, the speakers consisted of children from three age groups: four-year-old, eight-year-old, and twelve-year-old.

ü  The recordings, it was divided into two sections: Elicitation tasks and spontaneous speech

Interpreting the result

ü  Is there a distinctive Milton Keynes dialect?

Yes, indeed, see table 3, Graddol  p 183

ü  Who leads in development of dialect?

  The oldest girls have far greatest degree of fronting.

ü  New dialect formation and sociolinguistic maturation

Older children do most of sociolinguistics work in new dialect formation, sociolinguistic maturation, see figure 3.

Implication

ü Dialect leveling in the south-east of English

The vowel (au), as in house, round, now, etc. In south-east of England, this vowel shows a large number of regional variants. Percentage use different pronunciations of the vowel in house, round, etc. (interviews), see table 4.

ü Milton Keynes, Estuary English and changes in spoken English

Milton Keynes is a form of Estuary English. Since people have been long shifting to Standard English while retaining part of their local pronunciation. It is possibly a sign of futures changes in English: new towns are perhaps in the vanguard of dialect leveling found in English a whole.

Presented by:

Sitti Fatimah Saleng           (120221521886)

Rika Diana                           (120221521895)

Tatik                                      (120221521897)