British Accents
British accents refer to the diverse range of regional and social accents found in the United Kingdom. These accents vary in pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary, reflecting the rich linguistic diversity across different parts of the country. From the Received Pronunciation associated with the upper class to the distinctive accents of regions like Liverpool and Newcastle, British accents play a significant role in shaping the country's linguistic landscape.
5 Key excerpts on "British Accents"
eBook - ePubEnglish Accents and Dialects
An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, Fifth Edition
- Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In many cases, of course, native speakers will simply not be aware of such difficulties. Even when they are, a common strategy is to repeat what has just been said, only louder, or to revert to ‘foreigner talk’ (‘me come, you go – OK?’), usually making understanding even more difficult. It seems to us, then, that exposure to a number of varieties of English, and help in understanding them, can play an important and practically useful part in the study of English as a foreign language. Even when learners with comprehension problems recognise that English, like their own language – indeed, like every living natural language – is subject to variation, that variation can be so complex and at times so subtle that it is usually a long time before they begin to see much order in it. And native speakers, even those who teach the language, are often hard put to explain the things that puzzle learners. For this reason, we will attempt now to give some idea of the principal ways in which British and Irish English speech varies and, just as importantly, the non-linguistic (social, geographical) factors which condition that variation. It is hoped by doing this to provide a framework within which to set the features of social and regional variation, which will be our main concern in the remainder of the book. Variation in Pronunciation Received Pronunciation We should first make clear the way we are going to use two important terms, dialect and accent. A dialect, in the strict sense of the word, is a language variety distinguished from other varieties by differences of grammar and vocabulary. Standard (British) English is therefore a dialect of English, just as the other standard dialects of the language (Standard Scottish English, American English, etc.) are, and all the non-standard dialects of the language too. Accent, on the other hand, refers just to variations in pronunciation...
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)...
eBook - ePubEnglish Phonetics and Phonology
An Introduction
- Philip Carr(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...12 Variation in English Accents 12.1 Introduction In this chapter, we will consider some general aspects of accent variation. In Chapter 13, a brief overview is given of several accents of English: London English, Tyneside English, Standard Scottish English (SSE), New York City English, Texan English, Australian English and Indian English, followed by an outline of the sorts of phenomena which give rise to divergence of accents over time. Three of the accents we have referred to in this book (GA, RP and SSE) are viewed socially as ‘standard’ accents. The notion ‘standard’ is a social one: no linguist would claim that there is any coherent notion of inherent phonetic or phonological superiority, since such a notion simply does not make any phonetic or phonological sense. There can be no doubt that many people judge some accents to be superior to others, or take some accents to be standard accents and others to be non‐standard accents. But those judgements are founded on non‐linguistic factors, to do with social attitudes in the societies in question. From a strictly linguistic point of view, such judgements are, quite clearly, entirely arbitrary. For example, RP, the standard accent in England, is non‐rhotic, and the non‐rhoticity of RP is therefore judged by some (perhaps many) English people to be more prestigious than the rhotic accents found in many of the Western parts of England. But the standard accents SSE and GA are rhotic, and in the United States, it is the rhotic accents which are often judged to be more prestigious than the non‐rhotic American accents (the judgement cannot arise in Scotland, where all native accents are rhotic). Clearly, it is social attitudes which determine such judgements about accents, rather than the phonetic and phonological properties of the accents themselves. It is common to find social judgements to the effect that some accents are ‘uglier’ or ‘harsher’ than others...
eBook - ePub- Janet Holmes, Nick Wilson(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Sociolinguistics: key words and concepts Accent Definition: Regional or social variation in pronunciation. Example: In British English: Sam (north of England): ’ave you seen ’enry’s new ’ouse? Jim (south of England): Henry has a new house? Accommodation See Communication Accommodation Theory Acquiescence bias Definition: The tendency for respondents to agree with statements, regardless of their content. This means people may contradict themselves in a long survey. Example: Acquiescence bias might result in people agreeing with both these statements at different points in a survey: New Zealanders speak with an attractive accent. The New Zealand accent is not at all attractive. Acrolect, mesolect and basilect Definition: A continuum of varieties that may exist between the standard language and the creole (sometimes described as a post-creole continuum). The variety closest to the standard is the acrolect (where acro means high), whereas the variety closest to the creole is labeled the basilect or “deep” creole. These two varieties are often mutually unintelligible. Varieties in between these two extremes are described as mesolects or intermediate varieties. Example: Varieties in Jamaica and Guyana. In Guyanese Creole, the acrolectal form I told him, used by educated middle-class people, has a mesolectal form I tell im, used by lower middle-class people, and a basilectal form mi tell am used by old and illiterate rural labourers. Act sequence Definition: The order in which turns are taken in a conversation. Example: In an interview: the interviewer asks a question, and then the interviewee answers, and the interviewer then responds. Adjacency pairs Definition: Sequences of utterances from different speakers made up of a first part and a second part that typically occur together...
eBook - ePub- Urszula Clark(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The BBC today, then, celebrates linguistic diversity, particularly of accents rather than promoting any single one. The research involved researchers visiting their interviewees a few days before the interview, giving them a spider diagram and inviting them to say whether or not regional variations of the word were still in use. The data collected as part of the BBC Voices project has since been transcribed and analysed by a project based at the British Library called Voices of the UK, which also with its own website: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/socsci/research/voicesuk/voices.html. The project was based upon a national survey, and was the first attempt since the SED to present significant amounts of data from across the UK. Its aim was to explore and to describe the linguistic content of its recordings to meet current and future sociolinguistic research, rather than as a contribution to linguistic theory. Its data thus contributes to further understanding of contemporary spoken varieties of Englishes in the UK (Upton and Davies 2013). The Linguistic Variable as a Marker of Social Identity In the USA, and also in the 1960s, the American linguist William Labov (1966) undertook research into phonological variation, that is, with the sounds of spoken English. The methods of data collection and sampling he used were more or less the same as for the lexical variation data undertaken by the SED, but the focus of analysis was upon sound rather than word. The basic conceptual tool here is that of the linguistic variable, a term used to mean a linguistic item that has identifiable variants. There are at least two basically different kinds of variation. The first is in clearly distinct variation. For example, the linguistic variable (ng) has two variants: one where the /g/ is pronounced, and one where it is not: /laughin/ as opposed to /laughing/. This phenomena is also called /g/ dropping...
