Paper 2

Accent and Dialect


Giles' matched guise technique;

explored the feelings and judgements people had towards 
others based on accent and discovered that the most respected accent in the UK was Received Pronunciation as it was viewed as the accent of an intellectual individual.


M.A.K. Halliday, A. McIntosh and P. Strevens;

discovered that more rural accents are viewed as more friendly and approachable than urban accents which are viewed in a more negative light. They also concluded that no dialect is linguistically 'better' than another and that judgements on both accents and dialects are decided upon socially.


Martha's Vineyard study by Labov; 

explaining the Convergence and Divergence theory describes how a group of locals thickened their accents to seem different to the tourists who would visit to seem more distant from them


Dialect leveling;

The amount a person travels in their life is a key part in how they pronounce phrases, If someone travels a lot to places with strong accents they may pick up that accent and incorporate it into their own this is known as dialect leveling. This has been enhanced in recent years due to the ability to travel farther and much more easily around the world.


New York department store rhotic R research;

Labov studied people in department stores in New York it showed that speech patterns were something of a highly systematic structure of social/stylistic stratification. Labov studied how the letter 'r' is pronounced with a word and where it was placed in the word.The letter 'r' had only been reintroduced into the new york accent in 1960. He studied the language of employees in 3 different stores which were all different class. This was because he found that the pronunciation of 'r' occurred and its "frequent of use depended on the speakers’ membership to particular socioeconomic status" Findings: New York was found to be stratified in class, pronounciaion of the 'r' depended on their social status within the employees. People pronounced their 'r's more frequently if they were higher within their social class. 

Gender & Power

http://neveslanguageblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/gender-research-in-hallas-absence.html


Language Change

http://neveslanguageblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/world-englishes-language-change.html

CLA Paper 1

Stages of development 

prelinguistic 0-4months - crying

cooing 4-7 months - small noises

babbling 6-12 months -repeating patterns of consonant and vowel sounds

one word/ holophrastic 12-18 months - one word utterances

two word 18-24 months - two word utterances

telegraphic 24-36 months - incomplete utterances of two or more words

post telegraphic 36months+ - more complex spoken sentences

Skinner

Operant conditioning- where the strength of a behavior is modified by the behavior's consequences, such as reward or punishment

Positive reinforcement- Receiving a reward for behaviour ,often praise is given to encourage the child to repeat their behaviour

Negative reinforcement- Negative reinforcement occurs when a certain stimulus (usually an aversive stimulus) is removed after a particular behavior is exhibited. The likelihood of the particular behavior occurring again in the future is increased because of removing/avoiding the negative consequence.

Punishment- Punishment is a process by which a consequence immediately follows a behavior which decreases the future frequency of that behavior

Chomsky

Nativist theory- Language is innate

LAD- language acquisition device

Universal gramar- a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans not learnt

key points:
Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them. They deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that they have never heard before.

Vygotski 

ZPD- Zone of proximal development and CDS

CDS features;
- local topics
- child-led discourse
- turn taking
- higher pitch
- clearer pronunciation
- interrogatives
- reforming/echoing/recasting

Scaffolding-

More Knowledgeable Other- usually a teacher/ carer /adult who will offer help and support during scaffolding

Lenneburg

Critical period hypothesis- the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age.

the case of Gene and other wild children support this theory

Bruner

Goes against skinner and says if negative reinforcement works then why do children still use over generalisation

LASS (language aquisition support system) - child directed speech

Believes children's cognitive function advances and improves with age and that children are naturally inquisitive and thirsty to learn.

World Englishes & Language Change . . .

Terminology

How coinages are formed- The word formation process where a new word is created either deliberately or accidentally without using the other word formation processes and often from seemingly nothing. As neologism or coinage, we identify the word formation process of inventing entirely new words

Back formation- A word that is formed from an existing word which looks as though it is a derivative, typically by removal of a suffix

Affixations- Grammar. the process of inflection or derivation that consists of adding an affix

Compounding- A word that consists of more than one stem, compounding occurs when two or more words are joined to make one longer word.

Conversion-  A kind of word formation involving the creation of a word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a different word class) without any change in form

Norm dependant- Population which fully depend on the norms originally produced by the native speakers of the inner circle. They generally do not develop or reproduce 'Englishes'.

Aboriginal- The name given to the various kinds of English spoken by Aboriginal people throughout Australia. Technically, the language varieties are dialects of English.

Blending- Joining the beginning of one word and the end of another to make a new word.

Acronym- First letters are taken from a series of words to create a new word.

Eponym- Names of a person or company are used to define particular objects.

Initialism- The first letters from a series of words to form a new word but each letter is pronounced.

Clipping- Words are shortened and the shortened from becomes the norm.

EL1- English language first, meaning the primary language spoken

ESL-  English Second Language

EFL- English Foreign Language

Theories for world Englishes

Kachru's Circle of English 1992-

The inner circle
The inner circle is made up of countries who are considered the 'traditional bases' of English, such as the U.K., U.S.A, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and anglophone Canada. English in these countries are classed as a 'first' language.

 Kachru labels the inner circle countries as 'norm-providing' - the norms of the English language are produced there.


 The outer circle
The outer circle is comprised of countries where English is not spoken natively but is still maintained as an important language for communication. These countries include: India, Nigeria, the Phillippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-anglophone South Africa and Canada.

 Kachru labels these countries as 'norm-developing' - the norms produced by the inner circle are further developed and reproduced in the outer circle.


 The expanding circle

The expanding circle includes much of the rest of the world's population - countries that do not hold historical or governmental importance towards English, but class it as a foreign language or lingua franca. Main examples of such countries include: most of Europe, China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Egypt and Indonesia. 

These countries are 'norm-dependent' - they fully depend on the norms originally produced by the native speakers of the inner circle. They generally do not develop or reproduce 'Englishes'.

Edgar Schneider's developmental stages for new varieties of English 2007-

Five underlying principals underscore the Dynamic Model

1) The closer the contact (language contact) higher the degree of billingualism, multilingualism in a community, the stronger the effects of contact

2) The structural effects of language contact depend on social conditions. Therefore, history will play an important part.

3) Contact-induced changes can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, from code switching (occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation) to code alternation to acquisition strategies (language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages).

4) Language evolution and the emergence of contact induced varieties can be regarded as speakers making selections from a pool of linguistic variants made available to them

5) Which features will be ultimately adopted depends on the complete 'ecology' of the contact situation, including factors such as demography, social relationships and surface similarities between languages

The Dynamic model outlines 5 major stages of the evolution of world englishes these stages will take perspectives from the two major parties of agents - settlers (STL) and indigenous residents (IDG)

Each stage is defined by four parameters:

1) Extra linguistic factors
2) Characteristic identity
3) Sociolinguistic determinants
4) Structural effects

Language change

Development and use of words:

pictures:
the showing of a film in a cinema; always with the and in plural (British usage). First cited 1915.
cinema:
short for cinema hall; a building in which films are shown. First cited 1914.
movies:
the screening of motion pictures in a cinema; always with the and in plural (originally North American usage). First cited 1914.



parlour:
main family living room or room reserved for entertaining guests; sitting room; ‘best’ room. First cited 1448.
drawing room:
room reserved for the reception of company and to which ladies withdraw from the dining room after dinner. First cited 1642.
sitting room:
room used for sitting in. First cited 1771.
living room:
room set aside for ordinary social use. First cited 1825.
lounge:the drawing room of a private house. First cited 1881.
front room:
a room situated at the front of a house, esp. a sitting-room kept as the ‘best’ room in the house. First cited 1922.


court:

to pay amorous attention to, to seek to gain the affections of, to woo (with a view to marriage); now only homely or poetic use. First cited 1580.
go out with:

no entry in OED.
date:

 to make or have an arrangement to meet someone; specifically to do so in the context of romantic attachment (originally colloquial US usage). First cited 1902

Tom Transcript analysis. . .

Both text A and text B show Tom learning with the aid of his care givers.
For example there are several uses of modelling and repetition of the adult pronunciation of utterances, ''''it make noises'' to ''it makes noises'' and ''dad bike'' to ''dad's bike''. We see that this is an effective method of teaching as Tom repeats ''dad's bike'' several times throughout the conversation. This is then reinforced toward the end of text A using positive reinforcement, according to B F Skinner's operant conditioning theory this will enhance the childs learning as they are rewarded with attention when doing something the correct way. In this instance Tom's dad says ''my bike'' as a form of confirmation after Tom repeats dad's bike several times.
Negative reinforcement is also used when tom calls his own bike ''dad's bike'' this appears to be an example of over-extension as he has just learnt this he calls all resembling items ''dad's bike'', Tom's mum uses negative language to correct him as she recognises this ''you're not on dad's bike(.)you're on dad's bike'', The response he gives is an example of a coordinating conjunction, ''I am on dad's bike but I not on dad's bike'' the use of the coordinating conjunction shows that Tom is in the telegraphic stage of speech. Halliday's imaginative function also applies to this utterance as it reveals to us that he is aware that it is not his fathers bike but that in fact he is using his imagination in play pretending he is on his fathers bike.
Text B also uses Skinner's positive reinforcement as Tom's mum vocally reinforces his actions, ''fantastic'' ''well done''. In this transcript Tom shows his development in language as he uses overextension when trying to ask his mother a question ''is these drawing cartoon network cup of tea mum'' this is used as he is trying to ask what is on the cup but does not know how to form the utterance so he overextends the words ''cartoon network'' as it is the most familiar description at this stage of his development.

Methodology . . .

Deborah Tannen 

Analyse male and female language and compare it to the difference model and the points:

Status vs. support Independence vs. intimacy Advice vs. understanding Information vs. feelings Orders vs. proposals Conflict vs. compromise

Also think about  report talk and rapport talk:

Women-

Talk too much
Speak in private contexts
Build relations
Overlap
Speak symmetrically

Men-

Get more air time
Speak in public
Negotiate status/avoid failure
Speak one at a time
Speak asymmetrically

Converse on the same topic with males and females and analyse how they fit the contrast points.
Alternatively analyse a mixed sex conversation and assess under the same criteria.

Ethicality:

To ensure it is an ethical test I will inform participants that I will be recording their language and ask for permission.

Fair test:

To ensure it's a fair test I will think about how not all participants are the same, to make sure it is fair I will also calculate averages. Think about comparability, same age ect

Use: newsnight, a discussion programme, 12-15 mins total, several samples (eg two pairs two groups mixed sex) , (if recording own prepare a stimulous eg photo)