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Attitudes to accents - Coggle Diagram
Attitudes to accents
Accent Bias Britain
All social groups develop accent differences over time. Because accents are often linked to specific regions, cultures, ages, genders, and social classes, they tend to trigger social stereotypes.
Creating stereotypes is a universal aspect of human cognition and not itself a problem, but when such associations become evaluative they can have a negative effect.
As accent is not protected by the Equality Act 2010, it can function as a proxy for other forms of discrimination, for example against ethnic, class, or regional groups.
overt prestige
the ‘standard’ forms of English usually have what is know as overt prestige; it is generally socially acknowledged as ‘correct’ and therefore valued highly among all speakers of the language (RP for example)
related to standard and "formal" language features, and expresses power and status.
Speakers seeking overt prestige may take elocution lessons to diverge from their regional forms of speaking
covert prestige
Non-standard varieties of English are often said to have covert prestige. The kind of prestige that derives from linguistic behaviour that goes against the ‘norms’ and ‘conventions’ (Ways of speaking amongst speakers of accents such as MLE and other distinct regional accents and dialects).
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matched guise approach
technique uses recorded voices speaking first in one accent, dialect or language, then in another. Listeners do not know that the speech samples are from the same person, but judge the two guises of the same speaker as two separate speakers.
howard giles
listeners pass judgement on single speaker presenting identical material using different regional accents.
1975 Psychology Lectures: teenagers rated RP over Birmingham accent higher in terms of competence and intelligence
1973 Death Penalty Talks : teenagers rated RP argument more impressive than those in regional accents. However, interestingly, those who listened to the regional accent speech were more likely to have been persuaded to change their minds than listeners to the RP
Dixon, Mahoney and Cox (2002)
Matched-guise’ approach
Correlation between accent and perceived guilt
Participants responded to dialogue between policeman and suspects
Birmingham-accent suspect considered significantly more likely to be guilty than RP accent suspect
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