Language and dialect (including regional area and
ethnicity):
Ed Miliband - Changed his speech style closer to Russell Brand's - phenomenon known as convergence:
"Gotta" - elliptical construction.
"National 'ealth Service" - elision of consonant /h/.
Made for an amusing encounter. However, we all converge to some extent depending on context -
usually unconsciously as a way of affiliating.
Dialect - Language style associated with a particular geographical region.
Standard English - Socioeconomic dialect not associated with any particular regional area.
Standard American English - Dialect of Americans.
General American - Accent of Americans.
Regional words - Some regional words include petal (southern), sweetie (northern) - terms of
endearment and butty (Liverpool).
Dialect levelling - Process whereby individual words and phrases are dropping out of usage (e.g. ‘thee’
and ‘thou’, as well as the noun 'kine' for cow are seen to be dropping out of usage in Yorkshire).
Makes language more homogenous.
Experts like David Rosewarne point to a number of factors which may cause this.
Factors:
Travel.
The media.
Effects:
Remove class barriers (positive).
Loss of identity (negative).
Accent - Regional variety of speech that differs from other regional varieties in terms of pronunciation.
Accent levelling - Process whereby people's accents are smoothing out and becoming more similar.
Estuary English - Name given to the form of English widely spoken in and around London and the South
East of England (along the River Thames and its estuary).
Features:
The glottal stop - missing out the 't' from the middle of words (e.g. bottle).
L vocalisation - pronouncing words such as 'milk' as 'mlk'. There is emphasis on the 'L'.
TH fronting - /θ/ becomes /f/ (e.g. 'thing' becomes 'fing').
Scouse - The accent and dialect of Liverpool.
Features of accent:
Fast and highly accented (lots of rising and falling tones).
Flat vowels (saying 'bath' not 'barth') .
Emphasising consonant clusters (chicken).
Features of dialect:
Elision (e.g. 'hanging' becomes 'hangin'')
Nonstandard use of pronouns (e.g. ‘give us me book’).
Nonstandard use of adverbs (e.g. 'dead quick' instead of 'really quickly').
ethnicity):
Ed Miliband - Changed his speech style closer to Russell Brand's - phenomenon known as convergence:
"Gotta" - elliptical construction.
"National 'ealth Service" - elision of consonant /h/.
Made for an amusing encounter. However, we all converge to some extent depending on context -
usually unconsciously as a way of affiliating.
Dialect - Language style associated with a particular geographical region.
Standard English - Socioeconomic dialect not associated with any particular regional area.
Standard American English - Dialect of Americans.
General American - Accent of Americans.
Regional words - Some regional words include petal (southern), sweetie (northern) - terms of
endearment and butty (Liverpool).
Dialect levelling - Process whereby individual words and phrases are dropping out of usage (e.g. ‘thee’
and ‘thou’, as well as the noun 'kine' for cow are seen to be dropping out of usage in Yorkshire).
Makes language more homogenous.
Experts like David Rosewarne point to a number of factors which may cause this.
Factors:
Travel.
The media.
Effects:
Remove class barriers (positive).
Loss of identity (negative).
Accent - Regional variety of speech that differs from other regional varieties in terms of pronunciation.
Accent levelling - Process whereby people's accents are smoothing out and becoming more similar.
Estuary English - Name given to the form of English widely spoken in and around London and the South
East of England (along the River Thames and its estuary).
Features:
The glottal stop - missing out the 't' from the middle of words (e.g. bottle).
L vocalisation - pronouncing words such as 'milk' as 'mlk'. There is emphasis on the 'L'.
TH fronting - /θ/ becomes /f/ (e.g. 'thing' becomes 'fing').
Scouse - The accent and dialect of Liverpool.
Features of accent:
Fast and highly accented (lots of rising and falling tones).
Flat vowels (saying 'bath' not 'barth') .
Emphasising consonant clusters (chicken).
Features of dialect:
Elision (e.g. 'hanging' becomes 'hangin'')
Nonstandard use of pronouns (e.g. ‘give us me book’).
Nonstandard use of adverbs (e.g. 'dead quick' instead of 'really quickly').
