Accent vs Dialect
Accent refers to the way in which words are pronounced, often influenced by regional or cultural factors. Dialect, on the other hand, encompasses not only pronunciation but also vocabulary, grammar, and syntax specific to a particular region or social group. While accent focuses on speech sounds, dialect encompasses broader linguistic features.
7 Key excerpts on "Accent vs Dialect"
eBook - ePub- Peter Hawkins(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...8 Dialect, accent In this and the following two chapters we shall be considering some of the major areas which provide data for the study of phonology: variation (i.e. dialects and style); historical change; and language acquisition. This chapter is concerned with dialects – varieties of speech within a single language; and to some extent with style : varieties of speech within a single speaker. In the main part of the chapter, we shall discuss methods for comparing differences of pronunciation. Social dialects The OED defines dialect as ‘one of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and idiom’.Traditionally, dialects were considered to be mainly regional, as implied by the term ‘local’ in this definition. More recently, however, it has been recognized that social variation, i.e. differences between speakers which can be attributed to factors such as social status and education, is as extensive as, and perhaps even more significant for its speakers than, any purely regional variation. The differences are greatest in those societies with the greatest social stratification, particularly in highly-urbanized communities in which education, technology and literacy rank high in importance. In these societies, one variety usually establishes itself as the standard (see below, p. 227) – and this is often based on the speech of the most educated, or otherwise most prestigious, group within the community. The other varieties then enjoy greater or lesser prestige, depending on a number of factors. Wilkinson (1977:51), for example, distinguishes for British English what he calls ‘first-class’ accents (RP, and certain Scottish and Irish pronunciations), ‘second-class’ accents (the British regional accents) and ‘third-class’ accents (those of the large industrial cities, such as Leeds and Birmingham)...
- David Waugh, Kate Allott, Eve English, Rosemary Waugh, Elizabeth Bulmer(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Learning Matters(Publisher)
...Received pronunciation also changes over time, as radio and television broadcasts of the 1940s and 1950s demonstrate. Key knowledge summary Different dialects use different vocabulary and grammatical forms. They are usually associated with geographical areas. Accent refers to how words are pronounced, and again these are associated with different areas. Both dialects and accents change over time. In the classroom Dialects in the classroom The most important influence on a child’s language, after the early years, is the peer group. Children usually want to fit in, and that means sounding like their friends. Attempts in the past to get children who do not habitually use Standard English to do so have often been unsuccessful, whether the approach was encouragement or criticism. However, if children’s own dialect is treated with respect and interest by teachers, it is more likely that they will be interested in learning to switch to Standard English in situations where it is appropriate. For example, children may use dialect words that their teachers do not know, so they are then in the role of the expert, explaining how they use the word and whether there is a Standard English synonym. Listen to David Crystal explaining the history of the word ‘mardy’, which, unlike many dialect words, has spread geographically and is much more widely used now, thanks to its appearance in television soap operas: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1453_uptodate3/page13.shtml An interest in vocabulary is important both for reading comprehension, where the association between a wide vocabulary and good understanding is very strong, and for writing, where word choice is important in non-fiction, fiction and poetry writing. Are children who speak regional dialect disadvantaged in the classroom? It has to be recognised that children who speak Standard English at home are at an educational advantage in many ways...
eBook - ePub- Gerard Van Herk(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...Although dialects usually include distinct accent features, dialect and accent boundaries don’t have to match. For example, many people speak Standard English (in terms of grammar and lexicon), but with an accent reflecting their social or regional background – think of Martin Luther King, Jr., BBC regional newsreaders, or CBC editorialist Rex Murphy. The reverse situation (standard accent, non-standard grammatical features) is much less common, and often sounds strange to us. This was used to comedic effect a few years back in a popular online video, which featured a Standard English-accented Gilbert and Sullivan version of “Baby Got Back.” Many sociolinguists avoid the naming problem by using the value-neutral term variety for any subset of a language. They’ll talk about the standard variety, as well as regional, class, or ethnic varieties. Others reclaim the term dialect, and speak of the standard dialect, as well as regional dialects, sociolects, or ethnolects. They’ll often say, “Everybody has a dialect.” Another way that sociolinguists differ from linguists (and many normal people) is that we think of language as existing at the level of the group. Sure, we understand that each human learns language individually and stores it in an individual brain, but we stress that our language gets its meaning through interaction with others, as we negotiate understanding, decide how to present ourselves to others, and express belonging (or not-belonging!). In its strongest form, some sociolinguists lay out our theoretical viewpoint by saying that, linguistically, there’s no such thing as the individual – the way we talk comes from our membership in a group or groups...
eBook - ePubLanguage and Situation
Language Varieties and their Social Contexts
- Michael Gregory, Susanne Carroll(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter two Dialect Cornwall: What mean’st by this? Kent: To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. King Lear Those characteristic features of language which we relate to different users of a language are categorized as dialectal. By this term we make no reference to the ‘quality’ of a variety; a dialect is not necessarily less complete, less logical, less ‘language’ than a language. Ranking varieties in terms of aesthetic or psychological traits has not proved to be productive or enlightening, for the notion of linguistic ‘goodness’ has been shown to be nebulous. There seems to be no objective, culturally non-biased way of measuring it (Martinet, 1965). So it is not the custom in linguistics to use the term dialect as a pejorative term for ‘lesser’ types of language (cf. Haugen, 1966); we will be using it to refer to the relationships of language habits with the speaker’s place on dimensions of individuality, time, place, social class and speech community. If the non-specialist public have a tendency to think of dialect as language’s poor country cousin, they also tend to confuse dialect and accent. Accent normally refers to articulator and acoustic features of language while dialect refers to the totality of lexical, grammatical and phonological features. Dialect therefore incorporates accent but remains distinct from it. It can be thought of as the user’s macro-linguistic identity defining him in terms of birthplace, class, education and age. So while a person’s accent may initially be the most striking aspect of his language, that of which we are consciously and immediately aware, it comprises only a part of the variation possible. Temporal dialects The categorization of language into temporal dialects is a traditional, and seemingly natural, part of linguistic study. When we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or a play by G. B...
eBook - ePubEnglish Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World
Accent, Acceptability and Hong Kong English
- Andrew Sewell(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Moyer 2013) include volume. The problem with linguistic definitions of accent based on features, however, is that they neglect the obvious fact that accents are embodied. They can be described in linguistic terms, but they can only be performed in physical terms as part of an overall performance involving posture, articulatory settings, and other non-linguistic components. We have relatively little knowledge of the embodied dimension of accents, and lack the terminology to deal with it adequately. Accents are in fact far more than ‘loose bundles of features’; they are ways of speaking and of being, as already noted in Chapter 1. Although we may have to make simplifying assumptions for analytical or pedagogical purposes, teaching approaches are also handicapped if they lack a performative dimension. The linguistic characterization of accent has significant limitations, but it is one we will have to make do with for the time being. ‘Pronunciation’, on the other hand, is usually defined more narrowly as the way particular sounds or words are pronounced; it is taken by Moyer (2013) to refer to the articulation of segmental features. The problem with a very narrow definition is that, in its pedagogical or descriptive sense, ‘pronunciation’ can also refer to suprasegmentals such as word stress and intonation. This book does not attempt to make a watertight distinction between accent and pronunciation. Accent tends to refer to more ‘global’ patterns, as in the sense of contrastable ‘regional accents’, while pronunciation often refers to particular aspects of these patterns, as in ‘the speaker’s pronunciation of this word was unusual’. This is why the term ‘pronunciation’ is normally used in pedagogical contexts. We might, however, observe that there is an ideological aspect to the accent/pronunciation distinction: the former implies that there is some stability and continuity, while the latter suggests that there are ‘errors’ in need of correction...
eBook - ePub- Carolyn Temple Adger, Walt Wolfram, Donna Christian(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...More research is needed in this area in order to understand the exact role of these factors in dialect differences, but there is no doubt that they are a contributing factor. Grammar Differences Dialects also contrast in aspects of grammatical usage. Grammar in this sense refers to the composition of words and the way words are combined in phrases and sentences. For example, the addition of -s to a verb form to mark agreement with certain types of subjects (it walks compared with they walk) is a grammatical process, as is the contrast in word arrangement that signals the difference between a statement and a question (You are going vs. Are you going ?). Differences between dialects on points of grammar are generally more subject to social evaluation than those in pronunciation. Vernacular grammatical features more often carry social stigma than do pronunciation features because pronunciation differences tend to be more readily tolerated, particularly in regional accents. Many grammatical differences are more strongly associated with social groups than with regional dialects. These language evaluations match the general patterns of social evaluation in which social class differences are less tolerable than are regional differences. Suffixes For the most part, the grammatical systems of all dialects of English are quite similar—there is a large common grammatical core. There are certain areas, however, where divergence is likely to occur. One of them is suffixes—short forms such as plural and past-tense markers that attach to the ends of words. These suffixes indicate certain grammatical meanings on verbs, nouns, and, to a lesser extent, adjectives and adverbs. The language has a much more limited set of suffixes than it had earlier in its history, but there is considerable diversity among dialects in their use of the surviving English suffixes...
eBook - ePubExperimental Psycholinguistics (PLE: Psycholinguistics)
An Introduction
- Sam Glucksberg, Joseph H. Danks(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...6 Dialects and Schooling Individual and Group Differences When we compare people’s speech, we often find differences in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and in “grammar,” as well as differences in style and communicative clarity. Do these differences in linguistic performance reflect differences in linguistic competence? Differences in linguistic competence, that is, a speaker’s “knowledge” of the grammatical rules of a language, could come about in two ways. First, people could differ in terms of how well they had acquired the “correct” rules of their language. Second, people could differ with respect to the particular rules their particular languages have. But, as we noted in Chapter 5, we have not yet been able to specify fully the linguistic competence of young children, let alone that of adults. Our best guess, given what we know about language, is that differences among people in their levels of linguistic competence are either trivial or nonexistent. This conclusion applies to differences among people who speak the same language, as well as to differences among people who speak different languages. Hundreds of languages have been studied, yet no one has found a “primitive” language or a language that could be regarded as less complex or less effective than any other. Languages, of course, do differ from one another. Different languages accomplish the same communicative objectives in quite different ways. For example, Russian has no articles. If we translate the English sentence (1a) The book is on the table. into Russian, it would be, in literal form (1b) Book on table. In French and in German the gender of a noun is always specified. La plûme (feminine) is the pen (gender urspecified); le livre (masculine) is the book (gender unspecified). We cannot refer to any object in French or German without specifying gender. It is an obligatory syntactic marking...
