Lecture 10. Dialect or Accent. Phonostylistics.
What is a language?
Any discussion of the relationship between language and society should begin with some attempt to define each of these terms. Let us say that a «society» is any group of people who are drawn together for a certain purpose or purposes. A «language» is what the members of a particular society speak. However speech in almost any society can take many different forms. Sometimes many speakers may use more than one language.
The language we use in everyday living is remarkably varied. There is considerable variation in the speech of any individual, but there are also definite limits (bounds) to that variation: no individual is free to do just exactly what he or she pleases so far as language is concerned. You cannot pronounce words any way you please or make alterations in word order. The variation has limits. These limits apparently apply to groups of speakers, not just individuals. That is, there are group norms so far as variation is concerned.
So all languages exhibit (show) a great deal of internal variation or each language exists in a number of varieties and is in one sense the sum of those varieties.
Every language that has spread geographically has produced varieties called dialects. Linguists recognize that at certain periods in the history of a language one dialect may gain considerable influence over others as a language becomes standardized (through commerce, writing, literature, education, and other forces), they also believe that all languages and varieties of languages have equal status in grammatical and phonological complexity, beauty and aesthetic potential, and relation to the culture that supports them for general and complex communication purposes.
Standardization refers to the process by which a language has been codified in some way. That usually involves the development of such things as grammars and dictionaries, and possibly a literature. We can often associate specific items or events with standardization, e. g., Wycliffe's and Luther's translations of the Bible into English and German, respectively, Caxton's establishment of printing in England, and Dr Johnson's dictionary of English published in 1755. Once a language is standardised it becomes possible to teach it in a deliberate manner.
The standardization process itself performs a variety of functions (Mathiot and Garvin, 1975). It unifies individuals and groups within a larger community. A standardized variety can also be used to give prestige to speakers.
It still may not be at all easy for us to define Standard English, because of a failure to agree about the norm or norms that should apply. For example, Trudgill (1983, p. 17) defines Standard English as follows:
Standard English is that variety of English which is usually used in print, and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety which is normally spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The difference between standard and non- standard, it should be noted, has nothing in principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial language, or with concepts such as “bad language'. Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants and standard English speakers swear as much as others.
Historically, the standard variety of English is based on the London dialect of English that developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the removal of the Court from Winchester to London. This dialect became the one preferred by the educated, and it was developed and promoted as a model, or norm, for wider and wider segments of society. It was also the norm that was carried overseas. Today, Standard English is codified to the extent that the grammar and vocabulary of English are much the same everywhere in the world English is used.
Dialect or accent?
The term dialect, particularly when it is used in reference to regional variation, should not be confused with the term accent. The technical meanings of both these terms differ from their everyday meanings.
The technical meaning of the term accent is simply manner of pronunciation. In this sense, everyone speaks with an accent. Technically, it is not possible to speak aloud without speaking with an accent. The notion of accent is a phonological and phonetic concept, with some implications for the lexical level of analysis as well.
The technical meaning of the term dialect covers the types and meanings of words available and the range of grammatical patterns into which they can be combined. Dialects are discernibly different to the extent that they involve different morphological, syntactic, lexical and semantic inventories and patterns. A dialect can be expressed in either spoken or written form. In spoken form, a given dialect can often be associated with more than one accent.
A language is the entity made up of a group of related dialects and their associated accents. From a technical point of view, it is not only impossible to speak a given language without exhibiting some particular accent, it is also impossible to speak (or write) without exemplifying a choice of dialect, in terms of the vocabulary used and the sequences in which the words are combined.
Standard English, for example, is spoken in a variety of accents, often with clear regional and social associations: there are accents associated with North America, Singapore, India, Liverpool (Scouse), Tyneside (Geordie), Boston, New York, and so on, but many people who live in such places show a remarkable uniformity to one another in their grammar and vocabulary because they speak Standard English.
Accents always mark the geographical origin of the speaker. Some accents mark regional origin very locally, and some mark only the fact that the speaker is an American, or is Australian, Canadian, English, Irish, Scots, Welsh etc.
Accent may be regional and local, depending upon the extent they mark a speaker as having a very specific regional origin.
Non-regional accents.
Non-regional accents mark the speaker’s origin within national boundaries only.
A given speaker may be able to speak with two or more accents, with one accent often being broader than the other or others. Furthermore, a given speaker may well be able to use more than one dialect. A speaker native to Scotland will normally speak either the Standard English dialect with a regional Scottish accent, or a Scottish dialect of English with either the same or a broader Scottish accent, as the social occasion requires. Equally, a speaker native to Kentucky might speak Standard English with a regional Kentucky accent while working as, say, a receptionist for a multinational corporation, but speak a Kentucky dialect with a broader Kentucky accent when visiting relatives in his or her home town.
One English accent has achieved a certain eminence, the accent known as Received Pronunciation (or RP). In the United Kingdom at least, this accent is “usually associated with a higher social or educational background, with the BBC and the professions, and [is] most commonly taught to students learning English as foreign language' (Wakelin, 1977, p. 5).
However, there is no unanimous agreement that the Queen does in fact use RP, a wide variety of accents can be found among the staff and students at Oxford University, and regional accents are now widely used in the various BBC services.
Trudgill (1983b, p. 19)) has pointed out what he considers to be the most interesting characteristics of RP: “the relatively very small numbers of speakers who use it do not identify themselves as coming from any particular geographical region'; “RP is largely confined to England', and 'it is… not necessary to speak RP to speak standard English' because 'standard English can be spoken with any regional accent'. RP is a 'class' accent: in England, the higher the social class of speaker, the less the regional accent (and also the use of local words and grammatical forms). Other languages often have no equivalent to RP: for example, German is spoken in a variety of accents, none of which is better than any other.
Received Pronunciation (RP) has been described in detail by very many authors, amongst whom Jones (1962) and Gimson (1962, 1989) are outstanding.
The pronouncing dictionary specifying the details of RP that has been regarded for very many years as the most authoritative source is the one first published by Daniel Jones in 1917. This has been updated in many successive editions. Gimson, as one of Jones' senior colleagues, and the holder of the Chair of Phonetics at University College London immediately after Jones, was responsible for the 13th and 14th editions (Gimson 1967, 1977) This 14th edition was in turn the basis for a further revision by Ramsaran (1988). Another excellent and up-to-date pronouncing dictionary, which describes RP (as well as number of other accents of English), is Wells (1990). Wells maintains a historical continuity with Daniel Jones, being Gimson's successor in the Chair of Phonetics at University College London.
The term 'Received', in its Victorian sense of being 'received in polite society', gives a historical clue to the origins of the RP accent. According to Abercrombie (1965), RP developed as an accent of the English public schools, and is maintained, and transmitted from generation to generation, mainly by people educated at [these] public schools' (Abercrombie 1965: 12). Wells (1982, vol. I: 10) summarizes these characteristics of RP by stating that:
In England… there are some speakers who do not have a local accent. One can tell from their speech that they are British (and very probably English) but nothing else. It is characteristic of the upper class and (to an extent) of the upper-middle class.
Although the function of this accent as a marker of socioeconomic status is now a good deal weaker than previously, RP is still perhaps better regarded as marking social rather than regional aspects of identity (Ramsaran 1990).
Petyt (1980) suggests a descriptive link between the regional nature of accents and dialects and the socioeconomic status of the speakers, the less regional variation is involved, the higher the status of the speaker.
Crystal (1988: 63) comments that RP, like other accents, is subject to change with time.
Early BBC recordings show the remarkable extent to which RP has altered over just a few decades, and they make the point that no accent is immune to change, not even the 'best'. In addition, RP is no longer as widely used as it was even 50 years ago. Only about 3 per cent of British people speak it in a pure form now. Most other educated people have developed an accent which is a mixture of RP and various regional characteristics — 'modified' RP, some call it.
Another example of a non-regional accent is the one that is often called General American. This name, according to Van Ripper (1973: 232), was first promoted by Krapp (1925) and Kenyon (1930). Krapp characterized General American in the following terms: 'One may say that in America three main types of speech have come to be recognized, a New England local type, a Southern local type, and a general or Western speech covering the rest of the country, and all speakers in the South and New England at the moments when their speech is not local in character' (Krapp 1925, vol. I: 35, cited in Van Riper 1973).
Wells (1982, vol. I: 10) characterizes General American in the following terms: In the United States, it is true not just of a small minority, but of the majority, that their accent reveals little or nothing of their geographical origins. They are the speakers of General American… This is a convenient name for the range of United States accents that have neither an eastern nor a southern coloring; dialectologically, though, it is of questionable status.
