accents & dialects theorists

Halliday

'dialects have simply developed in different directions and no one is linguistically better than another'

'to make anyone feel so ashamed is as indefensible as to make feel ashamed of the colour of his skin'

states that rural accents are judged positively that are seen as 'musical' whereas urban accents are seen as negative 'gutteral'

Howard Giles - matched guise test

rp + south welsh + somerset accent, social, rural, rural accents

rp was favoured in terms of competency, educated background & authoritative

less favourable in terms of integriry, no social background was revealed. shows industiousness

18 adjective traits were collected

Howard Giles & Trughill capital punishment

500 17 year olds were given a questionnair about capital punishment

equal mix of sexes, set up prepared lectures (rp, typescript, somerset, birmingham, south welsh)

those who heard RP were more enthusiastic and thought that the presentation was polished and showed authoritativeness

after a week. those who heard the rp accent changed their opinion and switched to the region accent as they felt it was more open and shows honesty

Trudgill and Giles' aesthetic judgements test

used informants from

US, Ireland, England, Canada, Scotland

little correlation between aesthetic preferences for English-speaking informants

therefore judgements on accents are based on social connotations

outsiders did not distinguish Norwich accent variations as they were not exposed to the social connotations

Trudgill good & bad language

multiple negation in Detroit "I don't want none"

3rd person verb inflections in Norwich e.g. 'I goes'

Norwich & Bradford (h-dropping)

Glasgow - glottal stops

New York & reading - post vocalic 'r'