Language and accent/dialect theorists.
Howard Giles
Peter Trudgill
William Labov
Paul Kerswill
Accommodation theory: The idea that people will have different levels of formality of language at their disposal, and will use different ones at different times, depending on the situation they are in.
This can result in language convergence, where people in a conversation can make their language more alike.
Or it can result in language divergence, where people aim to make their language as different as possible.
This can result in upwards convergence, where an accent becomes more formal, or similar to RP.
Or this can result in downwards convergence, where the accent becomes more informal or slang based.
Investigated British dialects and accents, focusing on key research taken in Norfolk in the 1970s.
Looked at the social stigma around certain accents, as well as overt and covert prestige.
Discovered that some speakers adopt or retain their dialect for reasons of covert prestige.
Found working class identities= a desire to use more non-standard forms in order to fit in with their friends.
Found that men tended to use more dialect features as they associated it with sounding "tough"
However, women tended to use more standard, English forms.
However, he noticed that class had a larger overall impact on accent and a person's language, not gender.
Men over-reported their non-standard language use, implying that men wished to sound more non-standard, assuming they used more of the covert language forms.
Women over-reported their standard language use- implying that they used more of the overt language forms.
Performed studies on the ground in isolated communities, where he identified several factors affecting the formality of language used.
Conducted the Martha's Vineyard study: Island community off the East Coast of the USA, where locals kept hold of their dialect differences, in order to differentiate between themselves and the seasonal tourists.
Rather than dialect levelling, the Martha's Vineyard study determined that a feeling of belonging can actually lead to dialect extension, with language becoming more different, whilst resisting change.
Labov also noted that young men were more likely to use this kind of divergence from mainland English, regardless of where they were educated.
His findings show that dialect levelling can be avoided for a number of reasons- and that exposure to different patterns of speech/dialects/accents can also drive difference in speech, due to peoples need to feel identity.
David Crystal
Descriptivist: considers change to the language to be natural and progressive.
Believes that the future of any language as a 'Lingua Franca' is uncertain.
Crystal considers that English will one day be a 'countable noun' because it will develop into a series of distinct and separate dialects in different countries of the world.