Perceptions of Different Accents of English

53 Pages·2013·0.38 MB·English

Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Hana Richterová

Perceptions of Different Accents of English
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

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Supervisor: PhDr. Kate ina Tomková, Ph.D.

2013
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
I would like to thank all of my American respondents who took the time and effort to
take part in my research, and all of those who helped me contact them via Facebook,
especially Karolina Schmid. My greatest thanks go to Mrs. Kateřina Tomková for her
continuous support, willingness and inspirational remarks, which were at the very root
of this thesis outline.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1
2. Theory ........................................................................................................................... 5
2.1 The definition of accent .......................................................................................... 5
2.2 Development of accents of English......................................................................... 6
2.3 Differences between British and American accents ................................................ 8
2.3.1 The separation of the accents ........................................................................... 8
2.3.2 Pronunciation differences ............................................................................... 10
2.3.3 Other linguistic differences ............................................................................ 13
2.3.4 Sociolinguistic patterns of British and American English pronunciation ...... 15
2.4 The Yorkshire accent ............................................................................................ 16
2.4.1 Distinctive features in pronunciation .............................................................. 16
2.4.2 Distinctive features in other linguistic categories........................................... 17
2.4.3 Sociolinguistic and cultural patterns of Yorkshire accent .............................. 18
2.5 The Cockney accent .............................................................................................. 19
2.5.1 Distinctive features in pronunciation .............................................................. 19
2.5.2 Distinctive features in other linguistic categories........................................... 20
2.5.3 Sociolinguistic and cultural patterns of Cockney accent ................................ 21
3. Research ...................................................................................................................... 22
3.1 Recordings............................................................................................................. 23
3.1.1 Phonetic aspects of Yorkshire accent recording ............................................. 23
3.1.2 Phonetic aspects of Cockney accent recording .............................................. 25
3.2 Questions ............................................................................................................... 27
3.3 Respondents .......................................................................................................... 29
3.4 Evaluations of accents ........................................................................................... 32
4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 40
Works Cited and Consulted ............................................................................................ 43
List of Tables .................................................................................................................. 45
Appendix I ...................................................................................................................... 46
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 47
Resumé ............................................................................................................................ 48
1. Introduction
In interpersonal communication everyone inevitably makes judgements about
the people they speak with and simultaneously makes an impression on the same
people. These impressions consist of a vast amount of factors such as physical
appearance, non-verbal communication strategies and of course the content of the
utterance (communiqué), but one of the most prominent factors that reveals itself
immediately is the speaker’s manner of pronunciation, intonation and prosodic features:
the accent. An accent is something that every speaker has and that cannot be avoided;
although there are “general” or “standard” varieties of languages connected with
appropriate accents that are used in media or on official occasions, even the standard
forms will always be marked with the idiolect of individual speakers. Whether we are
aware of it or not, in every spoken communication we “construct impressions of people
from whatever information is available” (Giles and Powesland 1975: 1).
Speaking an accent defines how an individual’s personality will be perceived by
others, and that is the reason why the field of phonetics has always been of great interest
and attractiveness to the author: by intentionally changing our accent we are actually
acting, playing a role. Even though the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language
determinism has most likely been overcome in the field of linguistics, I find in it a valid
point that speaking a language shapes our view of the world to some extent, and
I believe that speaking a different accent helps to immerse oneself in the foreign
language speaking world and in the minds of its speakers.
The present study deals with how accents influence the perceptions of their
speakers by other speakers of the same language, i.e. English. The thesis focuses on
native speakers of English, which applies both to the judging listeners and the speakers
who are being judged, and it draws a comparison between the two most prevalent forms
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of English: British English and American English. The aim is to monitor the linguistic
differences between these two forms from the theoretical point of view, and to assess
how native speakers of American English evaluate British English accents and what
values they ascribe to their speakers in the research carried out by the author.
The hypothesis that the British and the Americans believe there are differences
between them is based on socio-historical background the two countries have had. Ever
since the founding of pilgrim colonies in North America through defining events such
as the War of Independence, two world wars and an alliance in the Cold War, Great
Britain and United States of America have been in a “special relationship” (BBC News
Magazine, 2012). The thesis claims that a part of this mental image of mutual feeling
of difference is reflected in the evaluation of speakers of British English done by
speakers of American English. A third person’s point of view, in this case a non-native
speaker of English, can bring in an unbiased reflection of these impressions.
The theory defines accent contrasting it with dialect and describes the factors
that have an influence on accent perception. The thesis then takes a diachronic view on
the history of British and American accents, the separation of the American accent and
describes the differences between British and Americans accents in terms of
pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and sociolinguistic features. Then it focuses on two
British accents that were used as recordings in the research for this thesis, Yorkshire and
Cockney, and their linguistic patterns.
The research is based on a survey among native speakers of American English
that was carried out online by the author of the study. The participants were instructed
to listen to two audio recordings of British accents, the first in Yorkshire accent and the
second in Cockney accent, and then they evaluated the speakers in a set of prepared
questions. The questions monitored the intelligibility of the accents and the impression
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the two recorded speakers made on the American participants. The questions regarded
supposed personal qualities and lifestyle choices of the two speakers.
The aim of the survey was to find out what preconceived opinions or prejudices
the Americans have towards their across the Atlantic neighbours, the British. Two
different accents were used in order to draw a comparison between them and to obtain
more interesting results: the rural Yorkshire accent typical for Northern England and the
urban Cockney accent associated with London. Any accent resembling Received
Pronunciation (RP) has not been chosen purposefully as there already has been
substantial research in the area of perceptions of the B.B.C English (Giles 1970). What
has not been studied much so far, however, is the preconceived image of the citizens of
the United Kingdom in the eyes of the U.S. nationals, and it is the motivation of this
thesis to map this particular topic that borders on several linguistics sub-disciplines:
phonetics, phonology and sociolinguistics.
The hypothesis of the research is that the speaker of the Yorkshire accent will be
perceived as more good-natured than the speaker of the Cockney accent because of the
notions popularly connected to rural Northern England areas – family traditions, close
and lasting relationships or solidarity, and that the Cockney speaker will be perceived as
more competent because his accent is closer to RP, and RP is associated with
competence and socio-economic prestige (Giles and Powesland 1975: 67). The
Yorkshire accent is expected to be more popular overall, which is based on the recent
popularity with U.S. viewers of two British television series that feature many
characters speaking Northern England accents: Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones.
However, the Cockney accent is also embedded in popular culture, G. B. Shaw’s
Pygmalion to name the most famous, and so Cockney is expected to gain some level of
popularity too. This personal hypothesis is admittedly reflected in the selection of
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accents I chose to feature in the survey. In the search for recordings, many Yorkshire
accent speakers’ recordings that talked about personal stories and many Cockney accent
recordings of commercial spirit were encountered, therefore I decided to feature these
recordings accordingly; after all, Shaw’s Cockney-speaking Eliza Doolittle was too
a saleswoman. The content of the recordings inevitably plays a role in the perception,
which cannot be avoided; the choice of the two particular recordings has been
a compromise I believe to be the best for the research’s purposes.

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2. Theory
2.1 The definition of accent
When speaking of accents, one must be aware of what exactly the term
encompasses. The discussion in linguistics has led to the popular use of the term
“variety” (Wells 1982: 3). Variety comprises what a lay person would probably call
a “dialect” – a difference in “any or all of the following categories: grammar, syntax,
vocabulary, and pronunciation,” as opposed to the standard or general variety of the
language (Wells 1982: 3). An accent can be a part of a dialect, but a dialect consists of
more linguistic features than pronunciation. This confusion has therefore given rise to
the wide usage of the neutral term “variety”. In this thesis, when the term “accent” is
used, it denotes the manner of pronunciation, intonation, stress, and other
suprasegmental features.
Accents are influenced by many important factors, both inherent and variable
according to one’s will. The most commonly used differentiation is geographical – the
way a person speaks gives the listeners information about the region where the speaker
lives, or where they have spent their childhood, as accent is mostly formed from early
childhood and does not tend to change past puberty (Wells 1982: 24). In today’s age of
globalisation, the geographical factor remains important in tracing one’s roots, but
accents are becoming more and more diffused with increased mobility, which leads to
shaping accents by new places of residence.
Age is another criterion of accent forming because voice is physically affected
by the human body getting older. Another (socio-) physical factor is the speaker’s
(and listener’s) gender. Listeners tend to distinguish between male and female speakers
very precisely, and there are certain notions in speech ascribed to women (tentativeness,
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