Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature
Ondrejˇ Vágner
Perception of Accents Aesthetic Appreciation of Unfamiliar Accents Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: PhDr. Katerinaˇ Tomková, Ph. D.
2010 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. . .
Ing. Jarmila Škampová for her help during the preparation and conduction of the survey portion of this thesis during her English lessons TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
English Accent Appreciation Survey . Survey Details...... Source Text ...... The Questionnaire ...... English Proficiency of Students Participating in the Survey ...... . Results of the Survey...... Tables ...... Previous Encounters with the Accents ...... Appreciation of Aspects ...... Pronunciation Appeals ......
The Choice of the Oxford Accent as a Baseline for Comparison
Description of the Pronunciation Shifts of the Accents Studied in This Thesis . Accent, not Dialect...... . History of the Irish Accent and Notes Thereon...... History of the Accent ...... Hiberno-English Specifics ...... . History and Pronunciation Shifts of the Scottish Accent and Scots... History of the Accent ......
Regional Differences ......
Findings
Conclusion
Abstract
Anotace
A Aesthetic Appreciation of Unfamiliar Accents
Works Cited
INTRODUCTION
English is, without doubt, the primary choice for most students of foreign languages—in the European Union alone, approximately % of secondary education students in the were reported as studying English as a foreign language, compared to ~% study- ing French and ~% studying German. On the primary education level, pupils in a clear majority of EU countries study English (Eurostat); in the Czech Republic, it is suggested as one of the two foreign languages to be taught in primary schools since (Nekula ). During the th century, it has supplanted French and German as the lingua franca of modern diplomacy, science, business, and technology (Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch )—it is the primary language on the Internet, where in international communication settings such as bulletin boards or internet forums its use is often enforced by “flaming1” (Korpela). of international organisation use English as their main language both oral and written, together with using French and using Spanish (Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch ). It is also a language with profound differences in pronunciation between dialects and accents both geographical and social. This linguistic variability is not, however, reflected in the classrooms, where the stu- dents are most likely to learn an idiosyncratic form of Received Pronunciation. How, then, do these students cope with the wide variety of accents when exposed to live, spoken En- glish? How do they perceive the subjective value, the “beauty” of an accent they are not intimately familiar with from their studies? In this thesis I intend to focus on the aesthetic appreciation of such accents and their intelligibility to students of English as a foreign language—that is, the way people, whose
1“Hostile and aggressive interactions via text-based computer mediated communication (CMC) chan- nels” (O’Sullivan and Flanagin)
native tongue is not English (within the constraints of this thesis, only Czech-speakers are included), view the differences of these accents from the accent they know—is it interest- ing or boring, melodious or monotonous (and if so, is it more melodious or monotonous than the accent they’re familiar with), and do they like it? Because the number of phonetic and phonological combinations making up all the individual accents of English is far beyond the scope of this thesis, I decided to focus on two accents, originating in the British Isles: Irish accent and Scottish accent. Because the nature of this thesis is based on subjective opinions, I have also conducted a short survey among the sophomore students of the Gymnázium Jana Keplera (Johannes Kepler Grammar School) in Prague who were, according to their teacher Mrs. Jarmila Škampová, on the Lower Intermediate level of proficiency in English. During the survey, the students listened to the same paragraph read by a speaker of Oxford English to provide an approximation of baseline Standard English dialect, a speaker of Dublin accent, and a speaker of Edinburgh accent, and were then asked to fill out a simple questionnaire about their opinions on each of these three accents. The speakers of the two accents focused on in this thesis were selected from the language continuum to give the students an example of the accent, based on the social position of the two cities in their respective regions and, therefore, a certain centrality of the accents. It is not intended to conflate the phonetic variability of either of these two regions. It is my belief that the “exotic” nature of the accents, their unfamiliar sounds, and their melody, to which the students of English as a foreign language aren’t used, will prove sufficiently interesting and appealing to them. At the same time, the general lack of familiarity with these accents, as compared to the relatively well-known Oxford accent, will likely prove the accents’ relative unitelligibility to the students. Furthermore, it seems to me reasonable to expect a rather general attitude in the stu- dents’ answers to the questionnaire, as any familiarity with the subject—accents of En- glish and their phonetic aspects—cannot be expected at the grammar school level, nor
can any individual student be assumed to have sufficient interest to give proper attention to the answers during the survey (however, with the sum of students participating in the survey, a modicum of representability could be assumed to have been achieved); the answers, compounded with the lack of reliable source material on the accents, will then most likely not touch on most (or any, even) of the points raised in part :D ESCRIPTION
OFTHE PRONUNCIATION SHIFTSOFTHE ACCENTS STUDIEDIN THIS THESIS. This thesis is for easier orientation divided into several parts, with short descriptions of their contents in the following text.
Part ,E NGLISH ACCENT APPRECIATION SURVEY, describes the English Accent Appreciation Survey and its results, as well as the general proficiency levels of the stu- dents participating in this survey. As the intention of this thesis is to look at the opinions of students of English as a foreign language, the Lower Intermediate proficiency level of students in Mrs. Škampová’s class were optimal, as they had a good basic grasp of English, but were unlikely to have yet been biased towards any specific non-“standard” accent. This part is further divided into two sections: section . Survey Details de- scribes the technical details of the survey while section . Results of the Survey details the finding from the survey. The students’ answers to the quantifiable parts of the survey are summarised in tables on pages and .
Following this, the relatively short part ,T HE CHOICEOFTHE OXFORD ACCENT
ASA BASELINEFOR COMPARISON, provides a rationale for choosing the Oxford accent as a baseline accent for comparison. As the notion of a “standard” English is rather improper (as well as largely academic), I have instead decided to focus on the students’ good familiarity with the accent, rather than any actual standard.
Part ,D ESCRIPTIONOFTHE PRONUNCIATION SHIFTSOFTHE ACCENTS STUD-
IEDIN THIS THESIS, describes in detail the phonetic and phonological aspects of the two accents I decided to study. In this part I take a look at the two accents, Irish and Scottish, their history in short, and their specific differences to the general British standard. Un-
fortunately, the sources I have had available to me are rather poor on the subject of Irish (or Hiberno) English, and thus the majority of this part is made up of studies of Scots and various Scottish English dialects. This part is divided into three sections: section . Ac- cent, not Dialect refers in brief about the distinction between a dialect and an accent. Sections . History of the Irish Accent and Notes Thereon and . History and Pro- nunciation Shifts of the Scottish Accent and Scots then provide a brief introduction into the background of the two accents studied.
Part ,F INDINGS, summarises the results of the English Accent Appreciation Survey and compares them with the information from part . As mentioned above, due to a lack of sources on the specifics of both accents, this part does not generalise about the accents as complete and unified wholes, instead only looking at the specific realisation in the example recordings used in the English Accent Appreciation Survey.
Finally, part ,C ONCLUSION, then provides a summary of the results and findings of this thesis.
AppendixA,A ESTHETIC APPRECIATION OF UNFAMILIAR ACCENTS, provides a copy of the questionnaire distributed to the students in the English Accent Appreciation Survey. Literature and other works used in the process of writing and during the preparation and execution of the English Accent Appreciation Survey are listed inW ORKS CITED on page .
PART
ENGLISH ACCENT APPRECIATION SURVEY
. Survey Details
The English Accent Appreciation Survey was carried out on February , during two separate lessons of English language at the Gymnázium Jana Keplera (Johannes Kepler Grammar School) in Prague. Students participating in this survey were in their second year (or the equivalent thereof as applies to the -year form of grammar school study) of study and, according to their teacher Mrs. Jarmila Škampová, were on the Lower Inter- mediate level of proficiency in English. In total, students participated in the survey. During both lessons, the students were first handed the questionnaires and asked to read through to ensure their optimal understanding of the task which was required of them. After answering any questions the students had, recordings of the accents were then played in the following order: Oxford English to provide baseline example of familiar English accent, Dublin English, and Edinburgh English. Each recording was repeated once. Following the recordings, the students were given time to fill out the questionnaires. During this time, the recordings were replayed at request of the students—in both lessons, both the Dublin and the Edinburgh accent were each replayed once.
Source Text
Each recording used the same paragraph of text, which is here printed verbatim:
Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for
the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.
Transcription into the International Phonetic Alphabet of the examples of the two accents studied (as well as the baseline Oxford Accent) is provided below.
Phonetic Transcription: Irish Accent (Dublin)
This example was taken from the Speech Accent Archive Internet site as a representative of an Irish accent:
[phli:z kh6:l stEl@ a:sk @~ th@ bôiN Di:z TINz wIT h@~ fôom T@ sto@ sik spu:nz @f > fôES snoU pi:s f6Iv thIk slabz @v blu: tSi:z 3n meIbi @ snak f@~ h@~ bô7D@~ bOb wI Als8 ni:d @ smO:l pla:stIk snEIk @n @ bIg thoI fôog f@~ T@ khIds Si: k@n sku:p Di:z TINz Int@ Tôi: ôEd bagz @n wi: wIl goU mi:t h@~ wEnzdEI Et D@ tôEIn stEIS@n]
Phonetic Transcription: Scottish Accent (Edinburgh)
This example was taken from the Speech Accent Archive Internet site as a representative of a Scottish accent:
[phli:s khOU stEëA ask h@r t@ brIN Di:s TINz wIT h@r fr7m D@ sto:r sIks spWnz @v > frES snoU pi:s faIf TIk slabz @v blu tSi:z En mEIbi @ snæk f@r h@r br5T@r bob wI AësO nit @ smOU pëAstIk snEk @n A bEP thAI fro:g f@~ T@ khEds SI kEn skWp Di:s TINz Int@ Tri: rEd b5gz wi wIë gO th@ mi:t @r wEnzdEI Et T@ thôEIn stEIS@n]
Phonetic Transcription: Oxford Accent
This example was taken from the Speech Accent Archive Internet site as a baseline for establishing standard English Oxford accent:
[phli:s kh6: stEl@ a:sk @~ t@ bôiN Di:s TINz wIT h@ô fôom T@ stoô sik spu:nz @f fôES > snoU pi:s faIv TIk slæbz @v blu: tSi:z 3n meIbi @ snæk f@~ h@~ bô2D@ô b6b wI
Also ni:d @ smo:ë pla:stIk snEIk @n @ bIg thoI fô6g f@~ T@ khIds Si: khen sku:p Di:s TINz Int@ Tôi: ôEd bægz @n wi: w@ goU mi:t h@~ wEnzdEI æt D@ tôEIn stEIS@n]
The Questionnaire
The questionnaire was divided into four sections:
1) Source Text (see above),
2) Irish Accent (Dublin),
3) Scottish Accent (Edinburgh),
4) and Oxford Accent (Oxford).
Sections – shared a question in which the students were asked to rate the melody, intelligibility, and beauty of the accent of the scale of to . In sections and the stu- dents were further required to compare the accents with the other two examples, confirm whether or not the survey was their first encounter with the accent, and describe one par- ticularly enjoyable aspect of the accent in their own words. While the questionnaire was written in English, the last questions in sections and allowed for an answer in Czech, so as not to impede the students’ freedom of expression, and all the students chose to use this opportunity. Any examples from the students’ answers to these two questions were translated into English by myself. The numbers in the tables – do not add up completely to , as several students chose not to answer some of the questions— answers in total are missing from the com- parison of the accents. Similarly, students rated both the Irish and the Scottish accent as less intelligible than the other one. Because of the time constraints of the survey and the lack of any previous preparation on the part of the participating students, I have decided to include these two students in the study and weigh their answers based on their answers in the independent appraisal of the accent. Numbers in tables and reflect these changes in parentheses.
Scale used in tables , , and resembles the traditional Czech grading system, in which the mark “” signifies the best and the mark “” the worst grade possible. This system was used because of its familiarity to the participating students. To prevent any abuse of private information and allow a more free range of expression in the students’ answers, the questionnaire was anonymous. It is therefore not possible to attribute any examples of the answers throughout this thesis.
English Proficiency of Students Participating in the Survey
According to an e-mail conversation I held with Mrs. Škampová, most of the students participating in the survey were on the Lower Intermediate level of proficiency. The students in the four-year track began their first year of study with test results slightly over points in the Oxford Placement Test and were therefore between the A and A levels according to the Common European Framework—Breakthrough and Waystage levels of the Basic User group. At the time of the survey, most of the students were on the B level—Independent User: Threshold—with several on the B—Independent User: Vantage—level (Council of Europe ). Three students moved into the class up from a lower proficiency group during the period of one and a half year. The students in the eight-year track were on the similar proficiency level with smaller growth—in their fifth year of study (the same age as the first year in the four-year track) most of the students tested slightly above points in the Oxford Placement Test and were therefore in the B proficiency group. At the time of the study, several students were on the B level, while the rest remained at the B level. During the same time period as the previous class, three students moved down from a higher proficiency group (Škampová). During the introduction part of both lessons, as well as an impromptu “Questions & Answers” at the end of the second lesson, the students showed a good general grasp of English on a level which might be expected from their proficiency level.
. Results of the Survey
Tables
For the matter of convenience, the findings from the survey are here summarised in short tables.
Easier than Harder than Similar to Oxford 0 12 9 Edinburgh 8 (10) 9 (7) 2 Table : The Intelligibility of the Dublin Accent Compared to the Oxford and Edinburgh Accents
Rating Melody Intelligibility Beauty 1 3 0 6 10 6 7 5 7 4 2 7 3 1 1 Table : Aspects of the Dublin Accent, Rated on a Scale of to
Easier than Harder than Similar to Oxford 0 14 6 Edinburgh 7 (5) 10 (12) 2 Table : The Intelligibility of the Edinburgh Accent Compared to the Oxford and Dublin Accents
Oxford Accent
Table is printed here to provide an idea of the students’ basic acceptance of the Oxford accent.
Rating Melody Intelligibility Beauty 5 1 1 7 6 9 7 6 5 0 8 6 2 0 0 Table : Aspects of the Edinburgh Accent, Rated on a Scale of to
Rating Melody Intelligibility Beauty 4 14 5 9 5 9 3 0 6 4 1 0 1 1 1 Table : Aspects of the Oxford Accent, Rated on a Scale of to
Previous Encounters with the Accents
Out of the students participating in the study, had no previous experience with any Irish accent (the questionnaire mentioned films and songs as two possible examples of such encounters), and had no experience with any Scottish accent, with students belonging in both groups and thus having had no previous encounter with either accent. From the remaining , had previously heard examples of both accents. students rated positively their previous encounter of an example of an Irish accent, with stating that they “did not like it”, and a similar ratio ( students “liked it” and students “did not like it”) can be observed for the example of Scottish accents.
Appreciation of Aspects
Irish Accent
As seen in table , more than half of the students found the Dublin Irish accent more difficult to understand than the standard Oxford English accent, while the rest had ap-
proximately similar difficulties with both accents. It can be deduced from table that standing on its own, this aspect was considered quite easy to understand, evidenced by the students who rated its intelligibility aspect as or better. Table also shows an even split in the students’ opinions on the accent’s melody— students rated this aspect as or better, rated it as or worse, and the remaining students rated it with the average mark of . However, if the students’ answers to the last question are taken into consideration, it becomes clear that the accent’s melody had more negative than positive impact on the students—several students described the accent as “monotonous”—although the lack of any pronounced melody was considered appealing by one of the students and implied in several other responses as contributing to the accent’s intelligibility. The last aspect, beauty, was an overall measure of the students’ appreciation of the accent, and as table shows, it was mostly rated or worse (with the total of responses in this group), and the written responses mostly confirming this trend—several students clearly stated their dislike for the accent:
“I didn’t like it as all, it’s the least understandable, it doesn’t have any melody.”
“The speaker was mumbling and was hard to understand overall I didn’t like it”
“[H]ard, unmelodious it sounds like a report (battle commands)”
Scottish Accent
On the whole, the Edinburgh Scottish accent was considered more difficult to understand than the Irish one, proven by table . The difference between the number of students who were able to understand this accent with similar ease as the Oxford accent and those who found it more difficult is more pronounced, with the ratio of to compared to the
more balanced ratio of to for the Irish accent. Table then further confirms that any participating students had more difficulties with understanding this accent, as the spread of ratings of the intelligibility shows students rating it as or worse and only rating this aspect as or better. Even though this accent was more difficult to understand than the other two, it was considered more melodious, as the table shows much greater number of students rat- ing the melody aspect positively— students rated this aspect as or better, a marked difference from the students rating the melody of the Irish accent in the same category, and only students considered the melody of this accent negative enough to rate it as or worse. The students’ opinions of the accent’s melody also reflect in their views of its overall beauty— students rated it as or better with only students rating it as or worse, and no student giving it the absolute worst mark. The written responses to the last question in this part confirm the trend gleaned from the first two questions—several students appreciated the accent’s melody while a similar number considered its lack of clear intelligibility as its weakest point:
“I like the overall melody of this accent, it is not commonly pretty, but cer- tainly appealing. [. . . ]”
“Scottish accent is the least understandable for me, the words are more tied together [. . . ]”
“Scottish accent is probably the most interesting[;] it is at the same time less understandable than the other two. [. . . ]”
“I don’t completely understand some words, but the language has a nice sound, kind of nice to listen to, but the problem is I don’t understand much.”
Pronunciation Appeals
Apart from generic comments on the accents’ melody and intelligibility, some students also provided remarks on specific pronunciation peculiarities in their responses. Any examples from the students’ answers are left with their spelling intact.
Irish Accent
Among the students expressing their opinions on an aspect of this accent’s pronunciation, all but three considered as appealing the shift from the Standard English /æ/ to the Dublin accent /a/ in words bags, slabs, or snack:
“[. . . ] ‘E’ is pronounced particularly nicely.”
“[B]ags – pronunciation [bags][sic] – different, usually pronunciation [begs] [sic]”
“[C]heese, bikes1 – I liked the pronunciation. [. . . ]”
“[snak], [bag], [slabs] – I like that instead of [e] they read [sic][a] [. . . ]”
One student expressed their interest in the vowel /o/ in words like for or frog and considered it as “very emphatic” and “sound[ing] better [to them] than clear Oxfordese.” Neither of the two remaining students who enjoyed a different aspect of the pronun- ciation of this accent specified more closely the reasoning behind their answer and are therefore printed here only as an addendum:
“I was interested in the words train station”
“I like the pronunciation of Bob. [. . . ]”
1The writer presumably mistook [Ag] in bags for [aik], therefore it is included in this part.
Scottish Accent
Unlike the Irish accent, there was no particular pronunciation aspect of the Scottish accent that would appeal universally to the majority of the students. At the same time, most stu- dents who did comment on the pronunciation in their responses listed several phenomena which share certain common traits. Two students agreed on the strong pronunciation of /r/ being particularly interesting:
“[. . . ] [H]e pronounces r very strongly [. . . ]”
“[. . . ] And the pronunciation of [r] is very strange, kind of sharp (resound- ing), but I like it.”
The other phenomenon with two students considering it appealing is a shift from /I/ to /e/ in the word kids:
“[. . . ] [K]ids - sounds like the pronunciation of cats [. . . ]“
“[. . . ] I found interesting that instead of ‘kids’ they say ‘keds’.”
One student noticed a shift from the Standard English /u:/ to a shorter Scottish English /W/:
“‘[S]poons’ has a great pronunciation [. . . ]”
Finally, one student also noticed a phenomenon similar to the one observed in the Irish accent on page , a shift from [æ] in the Oxford English accent to [a] in the Scottish accent. The second part of their answer, as well as an answer of another student, seems to suggest a final-word devoicing in the words peas and cheese; this, however, does not seem to be true in the recordings.
“[B]ags - I liked the pronunciation peas, cheese, train station2” 2The appeal of the phrase train station seems to be based more on the speaker’s melody and stress than any accent phenomena.
“[P]ease [sic], cheese - the end of the word is lengthened = [píss] [sic] -> strong pronunciation of s. [. . . ]”
PART
THE CHOICE OF THE OXFORD ACCENT AS A BASELINE FOR COMPARISON
Because of the enormous number of speakers of English, and the number of separate countries in which it is either an official speaking tongue or a native tongue of at least some inhabitants, it is quite difficult to reach any consensus on its international standard—there are several accents of which each is considered as a standard in a certain geographical location—Standard British on the British Isles, Standard American and Canadian in the Northern America, South-African Standard, and Australian and New Zealand standards in Australia (Menhard ). As the majority of textbooks available in the Czech Repub- lic were printed by either the Oxford or the Cambridge University Press (Stredoˇ ceskᡠvedeckᡠknihovna v Kladneˇ), it seems a reasonable assumption that the British standard is promoted through these channels. As such, it follows that students of English should be reasonably acquainted with the Oxford accent through their studies and that this accent should therefore be easier to understand than even other standards, not to mention accents not considered standard. As most students start learning English in primary school, their long-term knowledge of this accent should allow them to more easily note differences between this and the other accents and make a clearer opinion on them than if they only heard the “unfamiliar” accents. Please note that I do not assume the Oxford accent to be equivalent to the British standard accent (called Received Pronunciation—usually shortened to RP—or the BBC English (Menhard )). Instead, I decided to use an accent which can be reasonably expected to show in any recordings the students of English as a foreign language might
have heard in their general studies. Understandably, there is a large variation in the actual accents that students of English hear from their teachers, as well as accents from other sources, such as films or songs, and not every textbook (and accompanying material) available in the Czech Republic was published in the Oxford-Cambridge area—and does not, therefore, promote the British standard English accent—the students at the Gymnázium Jana Keplera and, more specif- ically, students in Mrs. Škampová’s classes learn from British-published textbooks and therefore the above-mentioned reasoning is reasonably applicable to them in the survey. I had, during my preparations for the survey, considered briefly the use of actual Czech speaker for the baseline comparison (as opposed to the Oxford speaker recording I eventu- ally used). However, as the proficiency levels of the Czech speakers of English (as well as their actual pronunciation idiosyncrasies, which are impossible to account for fully) can be varied even among the teachers of English (as this category encompasses teachers in schools from primary to university level, as well as private tutors and lecturers specialised in a particular field, often lexical), I decided to abandon this idea and use a recording of a native speaker (with the aforementioned rationale for choosing a speaker from Oxford).
PART
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRONUNCIATION SHIFTS OF THE ACCENTS STUDIED IN THIS THESIS
As this study is built on two accents of the British Isles—Irish English and Scottish English—it is important to first define each of these in terms of their phonetic differences to the Oxford English/Received Pronunciation accent.
. Accent, not Dialect
As this thesis is concerned with the phonetic aspect of a language, its topic is accents, not dialects. Dialects are mainly “regionally or socially distinctive variet[ies] of a language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures” (Crystal ), and are usually not clearly delineated, being instead based on series of lexical, morphological, semantic, and phonological isoglosses (isolexes, isomorphs, isosemes, and isophones re- spectively ()), whether social or geographical (also sometimes called regional or lo- cal). They are, from a certain point of view, rather similar to their next supercategory, languages, and “[i]t is usually said that people speak different languages when they do not understand each other” (), raising the question of the status of Scots, as seen further in this part of the thesis. Accents are, on the other hand, “cumulative auditory effect[s] if those features of a person’s pronunciation which identify where he is from, regionally or socially” (). Be- cause of the broad spectrum of social accents (i.e. accents which “relate to the cultural and educational background of the speaker” ()) in both areas of interest (there are un- avoidable differences in the speech of adult men with low education and children of upper class parents in, e.g. Dublin, to name just one of the uncountable range of examples), the
following sections in this chapter will be concerned with merely general or generalized description of the two accents studied, Irish accent and Scottish accent.
. History of the Irish Accent and Notes Thereon
History of the Accent
First longterm contact between English and Irish (i.e. Gaelic) happened in the second half of the th century during the Norman invasion to Ireland (at about —this invasion also brought minor influences from Norman-French into Irish, mainly lexical); English was however only a minority language in Ireland until the th and th century, when the English started massive settlement of Ireland, called the Plantations, in order to counteract the hibernisation of the former English settlers (Dolan). This eventually culminated in the Penal Laws in , which forbade the use of Irish in official and administrative situations and led to a widespread acceptance of English as a native tongue. After the creation of a sovereign Irish state, Irish language was established as an of- ficial language, the Gaeltacht Areas were created to preserve and promote Irish among native speakers, and Irish was introduced into the compulsory primary school language education. However, because of the long-term suppression of Irish by the English, no na- tive speaker of Irish is monolingual. There is also a significant majority of Irish (% in a survey) who consider learning English more important than learning Irish (Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch –).
Hiberno-English Specifics
As I have already mentioned in the introduction, sources available to me are very poor on the subject of the Irish accent, both general notions (broad differences from the Standard English dialects) and specific differences in individual areas. The only text available (albeit with very little actual information on phonetic and phonological aspects of the accent) was Veronika Kniezsa’s essay on Jonathan Swift’s opinions about the accent and
other studies thereof (and even there, the information is very narrow and focused only on several isolated phenomena, illustrated on a few example words).
TASTE—/ei ~ a/ In Swift’s poetry, several words, which are marked with spelling un- usual to the Standard English pronunciation or are paired with other unusual words in rhymes, refer to a possible change in pronunciation at the other side of the Irish Sea. In the rhyme “His way of writing now is past / The Town hath got a better Taste”, the pair past–Taste seems to refer to a shortened vowel, which was likely an import from England, influencing local dialect (Kniezsa ).
BEARE (‘beer’)—/E:/ The rhyming pair beares—yeares might suggest either a lower- ing of Middle English /e:/ into /E:/, or conversely raising a Middle English /E:/ (in “year”) into /e:/ (in “beer”). However, as there is very little outside information about this phe- nomenon, it can be simply a question of orthography rather than phonology or phonetics ().
COZEN (‘cousin’)—/o ~ 2/ This example might refer to a change in the vowel qual- ity, as in the rhyme “But when her breakfast gives her courage / Then, think of Stella’s chicken porridge”, where the pair courage–porridge might suggest a similar or identical pronunciation of the first vowel (–).
West Country Dialect Pronunciation Several rhyming pairs in Swift’s poems might “represent a west country dialect pronunciation, even if most of the rhyme pairs belonged to the contemporary poetic tradition”, such as the pair say–sea, pronounced with /ei/ and /i:/ respectively in the rest of the country, but with unified /e/ in Ireland and West Britain. This could show a “regular merger” between Middle English /ai/ and Middle English /E:/ and later shift from Middle English /E:/ to /i:/ and its subsequent merger with Middle English /e:/().
The rhyme “A stop to Literature be put / And the Museums’s Gates be shut” shows a lack of distinction between the Standard English vowels /u/ and /2/, as “in this dialect M[iddle] E[nglish] (u) [sic] remained a rounded high back vowel in every position” ().
Notions Observed from the Study of the Example Recording Used in the English Accent Appreciation Survey
As the literature on the Irish English accent available is lacking both in number and breadth (evidenced by the paucity of information above), I have decided to quickly com- pare the two example recordings used in the English Accent Appreciation Survey, namely the recording of the Dublin Irish accent and the recording of the Oxford English accent. However, even with these recordings available, the Dublin speaker’s accent is largely sim- ilar to the Oxford accent, and I was therefore able to compile only a limited amount of information based on these two examples. With the small length of the recorded material available, it was also nearly impossible to distinguish between genuine general aspects and attributes of the accent and mere idiosyncrasies of the speakers—the following para- graphs may therefore not be considered in any way authoritative for the Irish accent as a whole, instead only applying to one specific recording.
[a ~ æ] Probably the most obvious difference between the two accents is the pronuncia- tion of the lower [a] in the Dublin accent in place of the Oxford [æ] in words slabs, bags, and snack. Its uniqueness was also commented on by the large majority of the students in the questionnaire (see also section Pronunciation Appeals, subsection Irish Accent on page 18).
[O/o ~ 6] The next main difference between the two examples is the change from the Oxford accent [6] in words Bob ([b6b] in Standard English, [bOb] in the Dublin accent) and frog ([fô6g] in Standard English, [fôog] in the Dublin accent).
[th ~ T] Another, more minor difference (which might even be ascribed to the Dublin accent speaker’s idiosyncratic speech patterns, and may not even be in any reproducible way permanent to the speaker) is the change from the dental [T] to a more alveolar [th] in the word thick ([TIk] in Standard English, [thIk] in the Dublin accent).
[6 ~ a] The last difference—which, similar to the previous one, may not reflect a general tendency of the accent or the speaker, as it appears only once in the text—is the change from the Standard English [a] to the [6] of the Dublin speaker in the word five ([faIv] in Standard English, [f6Iv] in the Dublin accent example recording).
. History and Pronunciation Shifts of the Scottish Accent and Scots
History of the Accent
Unlike Ireland, Scotland had not been unified linguistically before the arrival of English— the northern islands were connected to Scandinavia through their language called norn until the th century, the possibly pre-Celtic Picts speaking, according to the Linguist List, a language of uncertain origin, and the Scots bringing Gaelic from Ireland. Scottish quickly became a dominant language on the mainland when the Scots merged with the indigenous Picts and maintained this position until the end of the th century, when English first appeared as an official language of the royal court of Malcolm III. By th and th century Scotland was loosely divided into the Gaelic-speaking High- lands and English-speaking Lowlands, with the dividing line (called the Celtic Border or the Highland Line) arching from the Firth of Clyde in the south-west to the Moray Firth in the north-east. However, repercussions against the Gaelic-speaking population and the socio-economic pull of the southern cities of the early-industrialisation period led to a virtual extinction of Gaelic in Scotland—today, a majority of its speakers are over the age of (Viereck, Viereck, and Ramisch –).
Regional Differences
Scottish dialects and accents are divided by the Highland Line into the Highland En- glish dialects and the Scottish English/Scots dialects. The inhabitants of the Hebrides archipelago speak a so-called Island English which is the most similar to Gaelic thanks to the large number of Gaelic speakers on the islands. Unlike the Highland Line, there is no clear delineation between the Highland English and the Island English dialects. The Scottish English south-east from the Highland Line are divided between Standard Scottish English (also called Educated Scots) and Lowland/Insular Scots. Lowland Scots, similar in status to that of Gaelic Irish in Ireland, was used during the literary renais- sance of Scotland in the th and th century and formed a literary dialect called Lallans (the term was based on a pronunciation variation of the word Lowlands). Similarly to the Highland Line, Scots is separated from northern English dialects by a Lowland Line which approximately corresponds to the Scotland–England border (–,).
Highland English Pronunciation
The Scottish Highlands variation of English is directly and significantly influenced by Scottish Gaelic and carries over several features from this Celtic language. The labial, alveolar and velar plosives /b/, /d/, and /g/ are often pronounced without voice, i.e. as /p/, /t/, and /k/ respectively, and the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is thus lost in words such as pox–box. Similar to the devoiced plosives above, the alveolar and postalveolar fricatives /z/, > > /Z/, and the affricate /dZ/ are pronounced as /s/, /S/, and /tS/ respectively, losing thus the same voice distinction as mentioned for the plosives. The dental fricatives /T/, /D/, and the > approximant /w/ are pronounced as /s/, /ts/, and /u/. The consonant cluster /rs/ is combined into a single retroflex fricative /ù/().
Scots
Depending on the speaker, Scots is considered a dialect of English or a separate language, and the issue today is more socio-political than linguistic, as people with experience with other varieties of English in Scotland might be more inclined to consider Scots another di- alect (finding it more familiar and intelligible), whereas a speaker of e.g. Estuary English from South-East England would find it largely unintelligible (see also sectionA CCENT,
NOT DIALECT above for the generally accepted definition of the distinction between a dialect and a language). Its status as a language can also depend on the speaker’s Scottish national sentiments or opinions. Scots is also sometimes called a “semilanguage” (). In this thesis, I have decided to consider Scots a specific form of Scottish English dialects, rather than as a separate language. One peculiarity that distinguishes Scots from Standard English is the typical Scottish velar plosive [x], represented in the words such as loch “lake” or nicht “night” by the digraph ch (). There is also a somewhat less clear distinction between Northern and Southern and Central Scots, as the Northern dialects tend to pronounce closer to the spelling of the word—e.g. the word knee can be pronounced as [kni:] as opposed to the English (and Southern Scots) [ni:](). The following pronunciation shifts from Old English into Scots have been largely taken from Caroline Macafee’s Traditional Dialect in the Modern World, pages –.
/wa/ While in Standard English the old English /wa/ has been rounded into /O/ (or /6/ in the case of Scottish English dialect), it remains unchanged in Scots ().
/2 ~ u/ The short Old English u,˘ which turned into /U/ in the northern English accents and some words in the southern English accents (in the remaining words it changed into /2/, e.g. pull /puë/ and cup /k2p/), turned in Scots into /2/—/p2ë/, /k2p/. It also influenced
the Scottish English accent, as this variety replaced this /2/ in Scots to the vowel closest to the northern English /U/—/u/().
/e ~ o/ The Old English a¯ turned into /e/ in Scots, as opposed to /o:/ in Standard English (which is even diphthongised in the Received Pronunciation), with words like nae /ne/ and gae /ge/ and their English pairs no /noU/ and go /goU/ respectively ().
/Er/ The combination /er/ in both Standard English and standard Scottish English ac- cents is realised as /Er/ in Glasgow Scots, and is, in fact, stereotypical of this geographical area. Macafee notes that the use of either /Er/ or /er/ is, in a small way, determined socially based on the speaker’s religious affiliation (the middle-class Catholics seemed to use the /Er/ pronunciation) (–).
/aN/ The Old English ang˘ /aNg/, which in Standard English turned to /6/ and in standard Scottish English accents into /O/, shifted into /aN/ in Modern Scots (e.g. lang ~ long in Standard English), albeit with the tendency to erode and transfer into /o/ (e.g. stroang ~ strong in Standard English) ().
/I ~ u/ The Old English o¯ /o:/ changed into /ø:/ in some dialects of Scots, while in Central Scots it merged into “/I/ in the ‘short’ environments of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule, /e/ in the ‘long’ environment”1; in Standard English dialects it corresponds to /u/ in most cases, but it can correspond to other vowels as well (e.g. /U/ in foot or /2/ in other)().
/u ~ 2u/ The Old English u,¯ diphthongised in Standard English dialects as [AU] (e.g. in house), remains as /u/ in Scots, while in the standard Scottish English dialects it is realised as /2u/, probably influenced by the Standard English version ().
1“The ‘long’ environments are: a following /r/, voiced fricative or morpheme boundary[, while t]he ‘short’ environments are the remainder” (Macafee )
/O ~ a/ In some dialects of Scots, the original /a/ has turned into /O/, “especially before /n/ and /r/, e.g. stand, car” in West Central Scots, while in other dialects it remained /a/. In Glasgow, according to Macafee, both variants are used, but the /a/ variant (which is also used in Standard English dialects) is considered more correct ().
/o ~ O/ The Old English o˘ /o/, which turned into /6/ in Standard English dialects (specif- ically the Received Pronunciation), remained as /o/ in most Scots dialects but was turned into /O/ in Scottish English dialects, although its phonetic realisation is closer to [6] rather than [O]. There are several other sources of the /o/ vowel in Scots—one, mentioned previously, is the shift from /aN/ to /o/ in words like stroang. The process of transferring /a/ into /o/ seems to be still ongoing, as the contact with Standard English dialects might cause the creation of such phonological pairs as droap ~ drap or oaften ~ aften. Finally, the loss of the historical velar plosive /x/ in words like brocht, thocht, or bocht reinforces the position of the /o/ vowel in contrast to /O/ (/bot/ ~ /bOt/) (–).
/E ~ a/ The Scots vowel /E/ (which in Standard English dialects is realised as /a/) in words like gless can come from a number of original vowels; as seen above in paragraph /Er/, in Glasgow itself it is reinforced by the change from /er/ to /Er/. It can also originate in raising of the vowel /a/ in Older Scots to /e/ during the Modern Scots period in words like glass or Glasgow, or the change from Old English a˘ into /E:/ during the Great Vowel Shift, which was then in turn re-shortened into /e/ for words which can be realised with either /e/ or /E/ (the a˘ vowel was lengthened into a¯ in Older Scots and then, during the Great Vowel Shift, raised into /e/) ().
/i ~ E/ The Older Scots and Middle Englishe¯ ˛ /E:/ turns in West Central Scots into /i/ (this vowel is the result in the Standard English dialects as well in all positions except before
/d/; Standard English shortened the vowel in this position to /E/); this results e.g. in the pair heid (Scots) ~ head (Standard English) ().
/a ~ O/ The Older Scots vowel o˘ unrounded to /a/(drap or aff ); in some words, the influ- ence of Standard English dialects also created the possibility of /o/ (and, as per paragraph /o ~ O/ above, can contrast with the vowel /O/) ().
/e ~ u/ The Older Scots /ø:/ (see paragraph/ I ~ u/ above) unrounded in some words into either /e/ or /u/ based on the environment (see also ibid); in Glasgow, as per paragraph /Er/, words with a following /r/ (e.g. poor or floor) can be pronounced with /Er/ instead of /er/().
/l/ The /l/ was vocalised in Older Scots after the short vowels a,˘ o,˘ and u˘ /a, o, u/—in Modern Scots the results of this vocalisation are: /O/ from the combination al;˘ /u/ from the combination ul˘ (although there still exist unvocalised variants /ul/ of this combination); and /2u/ from the combination ol˘ (e.g. in golf )().
/v/ Similar to the previous change, /v/ was vocalised in Older Scots, creating e.g. hae or siller in Modern Scots ().
/nd/ The Glasgow Scots dialect generally reduces the consonant cluster /nd/ into a single consonant /n/().
General Pronunciation Differences
Following pronunciation differences either apply to both major variants of Scottish accent or the source was unclear about the distinction. Scottish accents, according to the poll of British English pronunciation prefer- ences (abbreviated as BEPP poll in the following text), by the most part seem to retain older pronunciation forms.
Unlike in RP and most English and Welsh accents, Scottish accents still retain a differ- ence between word-frontal wh- and w-, in words like whine and wine, where the former is pronounced [ûaIn] as opposed to the latter’s [waIn], with the opposition /û/–/w/ be- ing mostly admired but not practiced in any other accent (in the poll, % of Scottish respondents chose /û/ for white (Wells )). The same survey also found that about half of the Scottish respondents (%) devoiced a word-final /Dz/ as a plural form of /T/, as in e.g. mouth /maUT/– mouths /maUDz/ > /maUTs/(). Another distinction, largely lost in the modern English accents (i.e. accents of Eng- land, not accents of English as a whole), that is still retained in Scottish accents, is the /U@/ –/O:/ pair in words like yours – yaws. While the overall poll revealed that only % of the respondents considered these two words different (together with the poor – pour and sure – shore pairs), a decisive % of Scottish respondents found them different (–). Scottish accents similarly retain a weak preconsonantal position of the vowel /I/, as opposed to the other respondents, who mostly replace it with a schwa /@/. In the question of whether “the second syllable of careless [rhymes with] callous (i.e. /@/) or [. . . ] Alice (/I/), or whether these words rhyme anyhow (putative /1/), or whether the vowel is as in less (/e/)”, % of the overall respondents chose /@/ and % chose /I/. Although Wells’s paper does not specify the exact percentage split of Scottish respondents, he notes that Scotland was “the only region where /I/ got more votes than /@/” and, as another proof of the existence of the Lowlands Line isogloss, that northern English accents favoured the schwa, in sharp opposition to the Scottish preference (–). Finally, another preservation of an older form shown in the BEPP poll is a pronunci- ation of the vowel /A/ in the word scone as opposed to the diphthong /@U/2. The overall age charts show a clear (though slow) move towards /@U/ – from the –% split in the
2However, Wells doesn’t specify whether this is a solitary phenomenon or whether it refers to a more general shift.
over- age group in favour of /A/ to the more balanced difference of –%3; % of the Scottish respondents, however, chose the single vowel /A/(). Scottish accents are rhotic—syllable-final ‘r’ is pronounced—e.g., short can be tran- scribed as /SOr/—and unlike the traditional English ‘r’, which is a retroflex approximant (Roach ), the Scottish ‘r’ is a flap or a tap. The main vocalic difference between Scottish and Oxford accents lies in the length of the vowels, or more specifically in the lack thereof in the function of basic pair distinction—e.g. the vowels in good and food are identical, as are vowels in Sam and psalm, and caught and cot. The diphthongs /eI/ and /@U/ have merged into simple vowels /e/ and /o/, respectively (–).
Notions Observed from the Study of the Example Recording Used in the English Accent Appreciation Survey
The following paragraphs are intended to provide a concise summary of the differences between the Edinburgh Scottish accent and the Oxford accent in the example recordings, mirroring a summary provided for the Irish Dublin accent on page 26. This section is not to be understood as authoritative in any way on the general aspects and attributes of any Scottish or Scots accent, as the length of the recording does not allow for any detailed study thereof from the examples only.
[OU ~ o:ë / 6:] One of the several most audible differences between the Scottish speaker and the Oxford speaker (albeit one that did not seem to have been registered by any of the students participating in the English Accent Appreciation Survey) is the shift from the word final /o:l/ in Standard English to the vocalised /OU/ in the Edinburgh Scottish accent (see also paragraph/ l/ on page 32) in the words call ([kh6:] in the Oxford English speaker recording, [khOU] in the recording of the Edinburgh Scottish accent speaker) or
3The remaining two percent voted for /u:/, although it is not clear whether this was not simply in jest.
small ([smo:ë] in the Oxford English speaker recording, [smOU] in the recording of the Edinburgh Scottish accent speaker).
[r ~ ô] The main difference in pronunciation between the Edinburgh Scottish accent speaker and the speaker of the Oxford English accent that was noted by several of the students (see also section . Pronunciation Appeals, subsection Scottish Accent on page 19) was the change from the retroflex approximant /ô/() to the Scottish tap /r/ in all positions in which the speaker of the Oxford accent pronounced [ô] (e.g. in the words fresh or store—[fôES] ~ [frES], [stoô] ~ [sto:r]), as well in positions in which the /ô/ was eliminated in the Oxford English accent (e.g. in the word her—[h@~] ~ [h@r]).
[E ~ I] Another difference—which proved to be rather easy to observe, according to the students’ answers (compare the examples of their answers on page )—between the Edinburgh Scottish accent and the Oxford English accent is the shift from [I] of the Oxford English speaker to [E] of the Scottish English speaker.
[W ~ u:] The vowel in the words spoon and scoop ([spu:n] and [sku:p] in the Standard English speaker’s accent ~ [spWn][skWp] in the Scottish English accent) has an audi- ble and marked difference between the Oxford English accent and the Scottish English accent—one of the students mentioned it in their answer.
Word-final devoicing There is one example in the recording of a word-final devoicing, although unlike in the Highlands Scottish accent (see also page ), the speaker does not devoice /z/ into /s/ (answers of some students, however, seem to suggest—at least a perceived—loss of voice at the end of the words peas and cheese, see also page ); it is the word five in which the word-final dental /v/ is devoiced into /f/ ([faIv] in the Standard English speaker’s accent ~ [faIf] in the Scottish English example recording).
PART
FINDINGS
The survey, albeit performed only with a small pool of students, clearly shows that the students of English are obviously interested in accents they do not normally encounter in their daily studies and/or everyday experiences (e.g. on the Internet or when watching films). At the same time, the lack of familiarity made these accents more difficult to process and comprehend than the baseline Received Pronunciation/Oxford English accent they learn in their English lessons. As the examples used in the survey all used identical text, there were no particular syntactical, morphological, or lexical differences to the baseline accent, and as such, no way to ascertain these influences on the aesthetic appreciation of the accents, full con- sideration of which is beyond the scope and focus of this thesis in any case. Therefore, in this thesis I did not consider the difficulty of listening to and understanding an actual speaker of the accent, as an accent is merely a part of a dialect, which would needlessly preoccupy the students’ attention. There were two main areas of pronunciation differences which interested the students the most—vowel changes in both accents—the shift from [æ] to [a] in the Irish accent and [I] to [e] in the Scottish accent—and [r] in the Scottish accent. The Irish vowel change was clearly dominant among the students’ replies, quite likely because of their teacher, Mrs. Škampová’s, particular insistence on the proper pronunciation of this vowel and its distinction to other open vowels. The other changes are presumably more subtle—e.g., the difference between Standard British [ô] and the Scottish [r] may not be obvious to students unaccustomed to listening for both of these sounds (presumably, they were well acquainted with the English approximant [ô] from their studies, but as only students ad-
mitted previous encounter with any Scottish accent, and the questionnaire did not specify any long-term knowledge thereof, it seems unlikely to expect the same level of familiarity with the Scottish trill [r]). Because of the Irish speaker’s accent’s relative similarity to that of the Oxford speaker (compare the transcriptions in section Phonetic Transcription: Irish Accent (Dublin) with section Phonetic Transcription: Oxford Accent), it was considered by a majority of the students to be fairly easy to understand (rating it and higher in the questionnaire) but still slightly more difficult to understand than the Oxford accent. This seems to correlate with my prediction of the accent’s intelligibility being based on their familiarity; to further sup- port this hypothesis, the relatively large differences between the Oxford speaker’s accent and that of the Edinburgh speaker (compare, again, the transcriptions in section Phonetic Transcription: Scottish Accent (Edinburgh) with section Phonetic Transcription: Oxford Accent) are likely to have been the cause of the students’ difficulties with understanding this accent, both on its own and as compared to the other two accents.
As I already mentioned in part ,D ESCRIPTIONOFTHE PRONUNCIATION SHIFTS
OFTHE ACCENTS STUDIEDIN THIS THESIS, there is a scarcity of information on either of the studied accents, with information on the Irish accent verging on non-existent. As such, it is not entirely possible to compare this information with the findings from the English Accent Appreciation Survey in order to gain any results general enough to apply to either of these accents as a unified whole. The example recordings, as well, can only be applied to their respective areas (Dublin and Edinburgh), as any generalising of their aspects and attributes towards the idea of a unified “Irish” or “Scottish” accent would be tenuous at best. Similarly, the findings from the survey can only be applied to students of English as a foreign language on the Lower Intermediate to Intermediate level, as students on lower proficiency levels might have troubles understanding the accent at all (and would therefore be only capable of considering the aesthetic part of the accent), while students
on higher proficiency levels might have more experience with accents outside the English standard (whether British or American). The results would also most likely be much different in countries with dominant ties to the American standard English (or, possibly, to the Standard Australian, or any other commonly accepted standard of English) in their education of English as a foreign language.
PART
CONCLUSION
In this thesis I have looked at the opinions that students of English as a foreign language have about accents they might not have encountered ever before, and which are not part of the standard language course curriculum. For this thesis, I chose an Irish accent, rep- resented by the area of Dublin, and a Scottish accent, which was represented by the area of Edinburgh. Part of this thesis is based on a survey I conducted in a group of 21 students of Gym- názium Jana Keplera in Prague in the class taught by Mrs. Jarmila Škampová. During the survey, the students listened to an example of each accent and answered a short question- naire about their attitudes towards each accent and any specific phenomena they noted and considered aesthetically appealing. After processing the students’ answers, I found out that my expectations were mostly confirmed—both the Irish and the Scottish accents were considered less intelligible than the Oxford accent, as the students’ unfamiliarity with these accents made it harder to focus on the content. At the same time, the aesthetic parts of both accents were appreciated by most of the students; the Edinburgh Scottish accent proved to be more interesting to the students, most likely because of its greater pronunciation differences to the Oxford accent over the Dublin Irish accent, which in the example recording is superficially similar to the more familiar Oxford accent.
PART
ABSTRACT
In this thesis I have decided to focus on the way in which students of English as a foreign language perceive the aesthetic and intelligibility aspects of accents they don’t encounter in everyday situation—that is, accents that are not taught in the course of a normal English lesson. For this thesis, I have chosen the Irish and Scottish accents because of their relative close distance to the Standard British English accent which the Czech Republic students encounter the most often. Part of this thesis is a study, undertaken in February in the second grade of the Jo- hannes Kepler Grammar School in Prague, where I did a survey—with help of the school’s English teacher Mrs. Jarmila Škampová—with students on the Intermediate profi- ciency level in English participated during two lessons. For the survey, recordings of a Dublin speaker (who represented Irish accent), Edinburgh speaker (representing Scottish accent), and Oxford speaker (representing Standard British accent) were used. My main hypothesis in this thesis was that accents the students are not familiar with will be more interesting—and therefore more appealing—to them than accents they en- counter in common settings (whether directly in their English classes or when speaking to a native speaker). At the same time, I expected these accents to be more difficult tot understand, as the students are not used to them. The study showed that students indeed do view aspects of accents differing more from the Standard British accent more positively—the Scottish accent which in the examples was quite different from the Oxford accent was rated higher on the melody and beauty aspects than the Irish accent which was not very different from the Oxford one—and that, at the same time, they are less likely to understand accents which differ from English
familiar to them—on this aspect, the Scottish accent was rated lower than the Irish one.
PART
ANOTACE
V této práci jsem se rozhodl zameˇritˇ se na to, jakým zp˚usobemse studenti anglictinyˇ jakožto cizího jazyka z hlediska estetiky a srozumitelnosti dívají na prízvuky,ˇ se kterými se v bežnémˇ prostredíˇ nesetkají, tedy takové, které nejsou bežnˇ eˇ vyucoványˇ v hodinách anglictiny.ˇ Pro potrebyˇ této práce jsem zvolil prízvukyˇ irský a skotský, vzhledem k jejich relativní blízkosti k prízvukuˇ obecné britské anglictiny,ˇ se kterým se studenti v Ceskéˇ republice setkávají nejcastˇ eji.ˇ Soucástíˇ této práce byla i studie v druhém rocníkuˇ Gymnázia Jana Keplera v Praze, kde jsem v únoru s pomocí tamní profesorky anglictinyˇ Jarmily Škampové provedl pr˚uzkum,jehož se v pr˚ubehuˇ dvou vyucovacíchˇ hodin zúcastniloˇ celkem student˚u s pr˚umernouˇ znalostí anglictinyˇ na pokrociléˇ úrovni. Ve studii byly použity nahrávky prízvukuˇ Dublinského mluvcíhoˇ (který zastupoval prízvukˇ irský), mluvcíhoˇ z Edinburghu (zastupujícího skotský prízvuk)ˇ a mluvcíhoˇ z Oxfordu (pro potrebyˇ obecného britského prízvuku).ˇ Mou hlavní hypotézou pro tuto práci bylo, že prízvuky,ˇ které student˚umnejsou pove-ˇ domé, budou pro neˇ zajímavejšíˇ – a tedy pritažlivˇ ejšíˇ – než prízvuky,ˇ se kterými se setkávají v bežnémˇ prostredíˇ (a to at’ už prímoˇ v hodinách anglictiny,ˇ nebo priˇ kontak- tech s rodilými mluvcími).ˇ Zárovenˇ jsem predpokládal,ˇ že tyto prízvukyˇ budou naopak obtížnejšíˇ k porozumení,ˇ nebot’ jim studenti nejsou navyklí. Prokázalo se, že studenti opravdu vnímají pozitivnejiˇ aspekty prízvuk˚u,kteréˇ jsou vzdálenejšíˇ obecnému britskému prízvukuˇ – skotský prízvuk,ˇ který byl v ukázce odlišnejšíˇ od prízvukuˇ oxfordského, byl obecneˇ hodnocen lépe z hlediska melodie i obecné krásy než prízvukˇ irský, který se od oxfordského prízvukuˇ prílišˇ nelišil – a že zárovenˇ méneˇ
rozumejíˇ prízvuk˚um,kteréˇ se odlišují od jim známé anglictinyˇ – z tohoto hlediska byl skotský prízvukˇ naopak hodnocen negativnejiˇ než prízvukˇ irský.
APPENDIXA
AESTHETIC APPRECIATION OF UNFAMILIAR ACCENTS
Source Text:
Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.
Irish Accent (Dublin)
1. Did you find the accent harder/easier/roughly the same to understand as the Oxford accent?
2. Did you find the accent harder/easier/roughly the same to understand as the Edin- burgh accent?
3. Rate the following aspects of the accent on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = best, 5 = worst):
Melody 1 2 3 4 5 Intelligibility 1 2 3 4 5 Beauty 1 2 3 4 5 4. Have you ever heard any examples of an Irish accent before (e.g. in films, songs, . . . )?
yes/no
5. If so, did you like it?
yes/no
6. In your own words, describe the most enjoyable aspect of this accent:
Scottish Accent (Edinburgh)
1. Did you find the accent harder/easier/roughly the same to understand as the Oxford accent?
2. Did you find the accent harder/easier/roughly the same to understand as the Dublin accent?
3. Rate the following aspects of the accent on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = best, 5 = worst):
Melody 1 2 3 4 5 Intelligibility 1 2 3 4 5 Beauty 1 2 3 4 5
4. Have you ever heard any examples of a Scottish accent before (e.g. in films, songs, . . . )?
yes/no
5. If so, did you like it?
yes/no
6. In your own words, describe the most enjoyable aspect of this accent:
Oxford Accent (Oxford)
1. Rate the following aspects of the accent on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = best, 5 = worst):
Melody 1 2 3 4 5 Intelligibility 1 2 3 4 5 Beauty 1 2 3 4 5
WORKS CITED
Council of Europe. “Common European Framework” (2004). A Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Mar. 23, 2010
O’Sullivan, Patrick B. and Andrew J. Flanagin. “An Interactional Reconceptualization of ‘Flaming’ and Other Problematic Messages” (Mar. 30, 2000) Apr. 6, 2010