DOCSLIB.ORG

Changing Views on 'Estuary English'

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Changing Views on 'Estuary English' Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Mgr. Alena Středová Changing Views on ‘Estuary English’ B.A. Major Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. 2007 Declaration I declare that I have workedonthis thesis independently, usingonly the sources listed inthe bibliography. 20April2007inBrno ............................................... 1 Acknowledgement Iwishtoexpressmanythankstomysupervisor,Mgr.JanChovanec,Ph.D.,forhiskind andvaluableadvice,helpandsupport. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................4 1. THE ORIGINS OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ .......................................................6 1.1 DEFINITION OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’........................................................................ 7 2. NATURE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ .................................................................8 2.1 ROSEWARNE ’S CONCEPTION .................................................................................... 8 2.2 OTHER LINGUISTS ’ REACTIONS ............................................................................. 10 2.3 BOUNDARIES OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ ................................................................... 11 3. PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ .....................................................................................................................14 3.1 SALIENT FEATURES ACCORDING TO ROSEWARNE .................................................. 15 3.2 OTHER LINGUISTS ’ REACTIONS ............................................................................. 16 3.3 DISTINCTIVENESS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ PHONEMES .......................................... 17 4. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE EMERGENCE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ 18 4.1 THE PUTATIVE NEWNESS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’................................................. 18 4.2 HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE ORIGINS AND SPREAD OF THE VARIETY ......................... 19 4.3 THE ROLE OF CITIES IN THE RISE AND GROWTH OF ‘N EW ’ VARIETIES .................. 21 5. SOCIAL PRESTIGE OF ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...........................................22 5.1 POLITENESS , SOLIDARITY AND PRESTIGE ............................................................... 23 5.2 TYPICAL ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ SPEAKERS .............................................................. 24 5.3 FUNCTIONS OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’ ...................................................................... 25 6. CHANGING VIEWS ON ‘ESTUARY ENGLISH’ ...........................................27 6.1 THE 1980 S AND THE 1990 S – THE IMPRESSIONISTIC STAGE ................................... 27 6.2 CURRENT EMPIRICAL SURVEYS ............................................................................. 28 6.3 ATTEMPT AT CREATING A NEW DEFINITION .......................................................... 29 6.4 FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF ‘E STUARY ENGLISH ’.................................................... 30 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................32 BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................34 3 Introduction It has been said that “the British are well known for being extremely sensitive about how they and others speak the English language. Accent differences seem to receive moreattentionherethanisgeneralanywhereintheworld”(Rosewarne,1984).Theyare alsowell-knownfor judgingothers accordingto their accents.Neil Ascherson(1994) expressed the same idea recalling Shaw’s Pygmalion: “the moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him”. The learners and teachers of Englishshouldtherefore be well aware of the best ways how to“opentheir mouths” in ordernot tobedespisedtoomuch. It has been said that Standard English spoken with the RP accent is the best choice, i.e. the most desirable variety that generally arises least prejudice. On that account, this representative variety has been taught to children and to foreigners. Nevertheless, language develops and so do the attitudes of its speakers towards it. Recently,theabove mentionedclaimhas beenchallenged.ManyarguethatRPhas been losingits privilegedpositionandthe pronunciationhas beenchanging.Allegedly,RP is no longer perceived as arising least prejudice as it is often associated with the ‘Establishment’ and with snobbishness. Thus, used ininappropriate situations,it may exciteresentment. It has beensaidthat a new variety likelytotake over the role of a neutral but prestigious varietythat disguises speakers’ sociolinguistic origins has beenemergingin the southeast of Englandrecently; this varietywas named‘Estuary English’ (EE). Not everybody,however,agrees withthis andregards this development with favour.Since the term ‘EstuaryEnglish’ was coinedinthe middle of the 1980s,the variety“has been discussed withincreasingfrequency andunreducedcontroversy” Altendorf (2003: 1). Manyquestionswereaskedbutonlyafewanswerswere provided. A livelydebate has beenheatednot onlyinthe Britishnewspapers but alsoin the professional linguistic circles. A number of strikingproclamations about ‘Estuary English’hasappeared.JohnWells(1997)commentedonitasfollows: “There is a new buzzword going the rounds in England --- Estuary English (EE). It’s supposed to be a new kind of English that’s due to take over as the new standardEnglish.We’re toldit’s going toreplace fuddyduddy old Received Pronunciation as the standard accent. Not 4 only are all sorts of politicians, sportsmen, and media personalities claimedas typical speakers of it,but evenpeople as eminent as Queen Elizabeth’s youngestson,PrinceEdward.” Nowonder that suchproclamations about the “erosion of standards” (Bex,1994) and about “an ogre which threatens the imagined static, pure condition of the English language” (Maidment, 1994) made the British startle. Although mere 3% of all the Britishpeople actuallyspeakRP (Trudgill,2001) andalthoughsome of RP’s functions have already been taken over by other varieties, it is still a prestigious variety that shouldbeguarded. Most of the articles and other publications that triggered the whole discussion were based on loose evidence; generalizations were made with respect to a few randomly observed features that were attributed as the salient features of the ‘new’ variety. Later on, several empirical surveys concerning ‘Estuary English’ were conducted. It showed that it is very likely that there is no such variety as ‘Estuary English’, i.e. no unique, easy identifiable and definable variety sweeping Britain. Undoubtedly,some changes have beenspreadingfrom Londonandthe southeast and undeniably,RPhas beenchangingbutthishas beenhappeningforcenturies. The present thesis focuses on the issue of ‘Estuary English’; it provides anoutline of findings concerning‘EstuaryEnglish’ andopinions onit that have been published since the term was introduced. Information about the origins and appropriateness of the term and about the emergence of the variety itself will be provided (chapter 1and 4),the nature of the varietyand its relationtoother varieties of English will be discussed (chapter 2 and 6), and purported characteristic features of ‘Estuary English’ will be mentioned (chapter 3). ‘Estuary English’ will also be commentedonfrom the sociolinguistic point of view; its speakers,prestige andfuture perspectiveswill be regarded(chapter5and6). 5 1. The Origins of ‘Estuary English’ The term ‘Estuary English’ (EE) was coined by British linguist David Rosewarne in agroundbreaking article published in The Times Educational Supplement in October 1984 (Rosewarne,1984). Most of the information included reappeared together with other important points in his article ‘Estuary English: tomorrow’s RP 1?’ in English Today ten years later (Rosewarne,1994). Paul Coggle’s publication called Do you speak Estuary? (Coggle, 1993) which Altendorf (2003: 9) labelled as an “amusing folklinguistic account” popularizedthe phenomenongreatly andit can alsobe counted amongthe piecesofwritingthatactually“starteditall”. Rosewarne stated an assumption that ‘Estuary English’ was a newly-observed accent varietyof Englishwitha verystrong influence onRP andthat it was likelyto become the future pronunciation standard: “The heartland of this variety lies by the banks of the Thames andits estuary, but it seems tobe the most influential accent inthe southeast of England... [It] is in a strong position to exert influence on the pronunciationofthefuture”(Rosewarne,1984). As stated above, this aroused a vivid discussion. Since Rosewarne’s findings were promoted, linguists as well as journalists and lay people in general have been publishing articles and experiment based monographs dealing with ‘Estuary English’, discussingits nature,structure,function,alleged newness andspread,prestige,future, appropriatenessofthetermitselfand,aboveall,challengingitsactualexistence. The reasonwhyRosewarne decided tointroduce a new term (or a new varietyof English) is justified in his 1994 article: “While doingpost-graduate studies in Applied Linguistics inLondonin1983,I felt that existing descriptions of pronunciationvarieties made no real mention of accents intermediate between R.P. and localisable British forms.” The gap in the descriptions of accents used in London and the southeast of England attracted his attention. Having conducted an initial research, he invented the term ‘Estuary English’ to describe an accent that was “most in evidence in suburban
Load more

Recommended publications
  • LINGUISTIC CONTEXT of H-DROPPING Heinrich RAMISCH University of Bamberg Heinrich
    Dialectologia. Special issue, I (2010), 175-184. ISSN: 2013-22477 ANALYSING LINGUISTIC ATLAS DATA: THE (SOCIO-) LINGUISTIC CONTEXT OF H-DROPPING Heinrich R AMISCH University of Bamberg [email protected] Abstract This presentation will seek to illustrate how linguistic atlas data can be employed to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change. For this purpose, I will take a closer look at ‘H-dropping’ – a feature commonly found in various European languages and also widely used in varieties of British English. H-dropping refers to the non-realization of /h/ in initial position in stressed syllables before vowels, as for example, in hand on heart [ 'ænd ɒn 'ɑː t] or my head [m ɪ 'ɛd]. It is one of the best-known nonstandard features in British English, extremely widespread, but also heavily stigmatised and commonly regarded as ‘uneducated’, ‘sloppy’, ‘lazy’, etc. It prominently appears in descriptions of urban accents in Britain (cf. Foulkes/Docherty 1999) and according to Wells (1982: 254), it is “the single most powerful pronunciation shibboleth in England”. H-dropping has frequently been analysed in sociolinguistic studies of British English and it can indeed be regarded as a typical feature of working-class speech. Moreover, H-dropping is often cited as one of the features that differentiate ‘Estuary English’ from Cockney, with speakers of the former variety avoiding ‘to drop their aitches’. The term ‘Estuary English’ is used as a label for an intermediate variety between the most localised form of London speech (Cockney) and a standard form of pronunciation in the Greater London area.
    [Show full text]
  • “Cockney and the Queen”
    “Cockney and the Queen” The importance and development of the accent known as Estuary English Maren Kristine Haugom MA Thesis UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Faculty of Humanities Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages Spring 2012 Abstract For this MA thesis I have chosen to investigate the accent known as Estuary English (EE). Even though it is having a massive impact on the development of the English language (especially in Britain) there are few extensive sources regarding this accent, and even though studies have been conducted they are few and hard to come across. Even linguists agree that there are few sources regarding EE, which makes it an interesting research topic. Due to the structure and (lack of) status of EE it is being discussed by linguists and commoners alike, and the media has acted as a linguistic “battlefield” of sorts where linguists and members of the general public have presented their arguments, suggested definitions, and frustrations regarding the new accent. The fact that the general opinions differ greatly and that definitions are changing continually makes it a very interesting base for research. It is a dynamic topic, a linguistic phenomenon which is happening in our time. As my thesis is being written over the course of only one semester I have chosen not to do field work or conduct a survey, although I will attempt to refer to studies conducted by other researchers where this is feasible. Because of the time limit I have chosen to focus mainly on theoretical aspects, such as the problems regarding a proper definition of EE and the discussion around which phonemic traits are part of the accent.
    [Show full text]
  • From "RP" to "Estuary English"
    From "RP" to "Estuary English": The concept 'received' and the debate about British pronunciation standards Hamburg 1998 Author: Gudrun Parsons Beckstrasse 8 D-20357 Hamburg e-mail: [email protected] Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................................i List of Abbreviations............................................................................... ii 0. Introduction ....................................................................................1 1. Received Pronunciation .................................................................5 1.1. The History of 'RP' ..................................................................5 1.2. The History of RP....................................................................9 1.3. Descriptions of RP ...............................................................14 1.4. Summary...............................................................................17 2. Change and Variation in RP.............................................................18 2.1. The Vowel System ................................................................18 2.1.1. Diphthongisation of Long Vowels ..................................18 2.1.2. Fronting of /!/ and Lowering of /"/................................21 2.2. The Consonant System ........................................................23 2.2.1. The Glottal Stop.............................................................23 2.2.2. Vocalisation of [#]...........................................................26
    [Show full text]
  • Ba Chelor Thesis
    English (61-90), 30 credits BACHELOR BACHELOR Received Pronunciation, Estuary English and Cockney English: A Phonologic and Sociolinguistic Comparison of Three British English Accents THESIS Caroline Johansson English linguistics, 15 credits Lewes, UK 2016-06-27 Abstract The aim of this study is to phonologically and sociolinguistically compare three British English accents: Cockney English (CE), Estuary English (EE) and Received Pronunciation (RP), including investigating the status these accents have in Britain today. Estuary English, which is spoken in London and the Home Counties, is said to be located on a continuum between Cockney English, which is a London working class accent, and Received Pronunciation, spoken by the higher classes in Britain. Four authentic Youtube lectures by an author who considers herself to be an EE speaker were compared with previous research in the area. The findings regarding phonetic differences between the accents displayed many opposing opinions between the Youtube material and the previous research. This is likely to be partly because of regional and social differences, and partly because of the fact that accents change and also depend on the formality of the situation in which they are spoken. Furthermore, accents are not clearly defined units and Estuary English has been shown to be many different accents that also figure on a broad spectrum between Received Pronunciation and Cockney English (and any other regional accents that are spoken in the area). When it comes to attitudes to the three different accents, the Youtube material and previous research seem to agree on most levels: RP can be perceived as cold and reserved and is not the only accepted accent today for people who wish to acquire a high status job, at the same time as it is still associated with the highest prestige.
    [Show full text]
  • The Interface Between English and the Celtic Languages
    Universität Potsdam Hildegard L. C. Tristram (ed.) The Celtic Englishes IV The Interface between English and the Celtic Languages Potsdam University Press In memoriam Alan R. Thomas Contents Hildegard L.C. Tristram Inroduction .................................................................................................... 1 Alan M. Kent “Bringin’ the Dunkey Down from the Carn:” Cornu-English in Context 1549-2005 – A Provisional Analysis.................. 6 Gary German Anthroponyms as Markers of Celticity in Brittany, Cornwall and Wales................................................................. 34 Liam Mac Mathúna What’s in an Irish Name? A Study of the Personal Naming Systems of Irish and Irish English ......... 64 John M. Kirk and Jeffrey L. Kallen Irish Standard English: How Celticised? How Standardised?.................... 88 Séamus Mac Mathúna Remarks on Standardisation in Irish English, Irish and Welsh ................ 114 Kevin McCafferty Be after V-ing on the Past Grammaticalisation Path: How Far Is It after Coming? ..................................................................... 130 Ailbhe Ó Corráin On the ‘After Perfect’ in Irish and Hiberno-English................................. 152 II Contents Elvira Veselinovi How to put up with cur suas le rud and the Bidirectionality of Contact .................................................................. 173 Erich Poppe Celtic Influence on English Relative Clauses? ......................................... 191 Malcolm Williams Response to Erich Poppe’s Contribution
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Estuary English?
    What is Estuary English? John Wells University College London There’s a new buzzword going the rounds in England — Estuary English (EE). It’s supposed to be a new kind of English that’s due to take over as the new standard English. We’re told it’s going to replace fuddy-duddy old Received Pronunciation as the standard accent. Not only are all sorts of politicians, sportsmen, and media personalities claimed as typical speakers of it, but even people as eminent as Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son, Prince Edward. But at the 1995 Conservative party conference the Minister of Education, Gillian Shephard, launched into a denunciation of EE, condemning it as slovenly, mumbling, bastardized Cockney. She claimed that teachers have a duty to do their utmost to eradicate it. As often happens in language matters, the English have got into a muddle. The term ‘Estuary English’ was coined as long ago as 1984 by David Rosewarne, an EFL teacher. He characterized it as ‘a variety of modified regional speech [...] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, “Estuary English” speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground.’ Rosewarne claims that Estuary English, named after the ‘banks of the Thames and its estuary’, is to be heard in the House of Commons, the City, the Civil Service, local government, the media, advertising, and the medical and teaching professions in the south-east. In 1993 the London Sunday Times reported that Estuary English was ‘sweeping southern Britain’.
    [Show full text]
  • The Case of Estuary English – Supposed Evidence and a Perceptual Approach
    Universität Basel – Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät Englisches Seminar LIZENTIATSARBEIT The Case of Estuary English – Supposed Evidence and a Perceptual Approach Eingereicht am: 13. Juli 1999 Ruedi Haenni e-mail: [email protected] Referent: Prof. Dr. W. Elmer Korreferent: Prof. Dr. D. J. Allerton Acknowledgements Before tackling the allegedly frightening task of writing a licentiate paper, I was warned by fellow students that I was about to embark on a truly lonesome chore… However, these gloomy predictions were to be entirely disproved: I am indebted to a great number of people who in some way or another contributed to this paper, either by providing in- valuable material, by helping me to set up and carry out the survey within a few weeks only, by proof-reading again and again at relatively short notice or, last but not least, by steadily encouraging me throughout the whole writing process: D.J. Allerton, Sylvia Boynton, Merilyn Brason, Peter Burleigh, Paul Coggle, Neil Ed- wards, Willy Elmer, Peter Grace, Samantha Jones, Adrian Käch, Paul Kerswill, Eva Morawietz, John Porter, Dennis Preston, Guy Schiltz, William Skilton, Walter Sodeau, Sheila Stubbs, Catherine Tye, Clive Upton, Michael Woodyatt, and the many anonymous National Trust volunteers, members of the YMCA section in Reading and students of the University of Reading whose conscientious work formed the very basis of this study. R.H. ii Contents List of Abbreviations iv 1. Introduction 1 PART I: WHAT IS ESTUARY ENGLISH? 2. Constructing Estuary English 4 2.1. Attempts at Definitions of EE and Other General Comments 6 2.2. The Salient Features of EE 14 2.2.1.
    [Show full text]
  • Estuary English: Hybrid Or Hype? J a Maidment Page 1 of 8
    Estuary English: Hybrid or Hype? J A Maidment Page 1 of 8 Estuary English: Hybrid or Hype? J A Maidment Department of Phonetics & Linguistics, University College London Paper presented at the 4th New Zealand Conference on Language & Society, Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, August 1994. If any of you have read any British newspaper regularly or listened to British radio over the past two or three years, there is a good chance that you have come across the term Estuary English. There have been articles on this topic in The Times Educational Supplement, The Sunday Times, The Guardian to my knowledge. And there has even been a piece on it in The New York Times. There have been items on Estuary English on BBC Radio 4, the BBC World Service and the London Broadcasting Corporation. The term Estuary English was coined in 1983 by David Rosewarne, who at the time was a postgraduate student of Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck College in the University of London, and first appeared in print in an article by Rosewarne which appeared in the Times Educational Supplement in 1984. This article, together with a very similar, but slightly expanded article which appeared the magazine English Today in January 1994, forms the total (as far as I know) of what Rosewarne has made public in print about his ideas. The other source of information about EE in print is a book by Paul Coggle, called Do you speak Estuary?, published by Bloomsbury in 1993. I shall base my talk on these sources, together with some ideas and concerns outlined in an as yet unpublished discussion document entiltled "Transcribing Estuary English" by John Wells, who is professor of Phonetics in the University of London.
    [Show full text]
  • The Estuary English Effect
    The Estuary English Effect Audience Design and Act of Identity on British Television Masterproef aangeboden tot het verkrijgen van het diploma Master in de Meertalige Communicatie Door: Els De Wit Academiejaar: 2010-2011 Promotor: Dr. Nadine Van den Eynden Morpeth Acknowledgements I would like to thank everybody who has supported me during this year of hard work. My promotor, Dr. Van den Eynden for being an inspiration to me, for her great enthusiasm and continuous guidance during the whole year. My boyfriend for being such a good critic, patient listener and supporter of everything extra-ordinary, and my parents for bringing out the best in me. Abstract Dit onderzoek combineert audience design, Estuary English en haar invloed op taalvariatie en taalverandering en televisiestudies. Door middel van 7 uitspraakkenmerken werd in 12 Britse televisieprogramma’s (6 van de private televisie en 6 van de BBC) onderzocht in welke mate Estuary English wordt gebruikt als een act of identity en als een audience design techniek. Volgens de audience design theorie past een spreker zijn stijl aan opdat die (meestal) meer op de stijl van de toehoorder zou lijken. Deze techniek kan ondermeer teruggevonden worden in conversaties en in de media. Estuary English is een veelbesproken variëteit in Engeland die balanceert tussen de (afbrokkelende) prestige van RP en het stigma van het inferieure Londense dialect Cockney. Altendorf gebruikt Estuary English als voorbeeld van hoe sprekers niet langer een taalvariëteit gebruiken om de mate van formaliteit te bepalen, maar om een bepaalde identiteit uit te drukken. Audience design en act of identity worden op televisie onderzocht omdat programmamakers een bepaald doelpubliek moeten aantrekken en omdat televisie – ook op taalgebied - sociale normen kan sanctioneren en opleggen.
    [Show full text]
  • Seger Van Der Borght
    'HSDUWHPHQW9HUWDDONXQGH (63(5$172$1',765,9$/5<:,7+(1*/,6+ )257+(7,7/(2),17(51$7,21$//$1*8$*( Seger Van der Borght $IVWXGHHUVFULSWLHLQGH9HUWDDONXQGH 6FULSWLHEHJHOHLGHU3URI'U-RRVW%X\VVFKDHUW Academiejaar 2005-2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS )LUVWRIDOO,ZRXOGOLNHWRWKDQNP\VXSHUYLVRU3URI'U-RRVW%X\VVFKDHUWIRUKLVJXLGDQFH KLVYDOXDEOHVXJJHVWLRQVGXULQJWKHSUHSDUDWLRQRIP\GLVVHUWDWLRQDQGIRUDOORZLQJPHWR ORRNLQWRWKLVVXEMHFW ,ZRXOGDOVROLNHWRWKDQN6DQQHIRUKHUFRQWLQXRXVVXSSRUWDQGPRWLYDWLRQWKURXJKRXWP\ VWXGLHVDQGWKHPDNLQJRIWKLVGLVVHUWDWLRQ 0\VLQFHUHJUDWLWXGHJRHVRXWWR+XJR5DXRIWKH(VSHUDQWRIRQGVLQ.RUWULMNZLWKRXWZKRP, FRXOGKDYHQHYHUILQLVKHGP\ZRUN+LVHQWKXVLDVPLQVSLUHGPHWRSURFHHG+HVKRZHGPHWKH GLIIHUHQWDVSHFWVRI(VSHUDQWRDQGKHOSHGPHILQGP\ZD\0RVWRIDOO,ZRXOGOLNHWRWKDQN KLPDQGKLVFROOHDJXH-RRVW9DQGHU%DXZKHGHIRUWKHLUWLPHXQFRQGLWLRQDOKHOSDQGIRU UHQGHULQJP\UHVHDUFKPXFKPRUHHIILFLHQW )LQDOO\,ZRXOGDOVROLNHWRWKDQNP\SDUHQWVIRUWKHLUPRUDOVXSSRUWWKURXJKRXWP\VWXGLHV DQGIRUJLYLQJPHWKLVRSSRUWXQLW\ 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................5 PREFACE...................................................................................................................................6 Motivation ..............................................................................................................................6 Aim and Method.....................................................................................................................7 1 A GENERAL INTRODUCTION
    [Show full text]
  • Ingrid Wotschke* Estuary English: a Case of Sociophonetic Convergence
    173 Ingrid Wotschke* Estuary English: a case of sociophonetic convergence Abstract Coined by David Rosewarne in 1984, the term “Estuary English” describes the trendy usage of the younger generations in the South-East of England, socially ranging from the upwardly mobile to the traditionally educated and linguistically situated in the “middle ground”, between Cockney and RP. Sociophonetic convergence not only characterizes the variant’s South-of-London origin and its geographical spread to the North but also determines its social functions and accounts for different judgements on its current role and future prospects. 1. Origins and conceptions Coining the term together with his article in The Times Educational Supplement of 19 October 1984, David Rosewarne described the banks of the Thames and its Estuary as the heartland of the new variant which, beyond its original borders, seemed to be “the most infl uential accent in the south-east of England” (p. 29). The source of origin of what was labelled “Estuary English” may be seen in the post-War uprooting and transplanting of large numbers of Cockney speakers to municipal hous- ing sites in the Home Counties, following the blitz 1, and in the move of considerable numbers of London elderly to the coasts of Sussex, Kent and East Anglia between the fi fties and the seventies (cf. Coggle 1993: 24; Rosewarne 1994: 4). By the mid-nineties, however, the results of an extraordinary geographical spread had made the term Estuary English “something of a misnomer” (Crystal 1995: 327; cf. Maidment 1994: 6) 1 Once widespread for German airrades on British cities in World War II (cf.
    [Show full text]
  • Stereotypes of British Accents in Movies Stereotypes of British Accents Types in Movies a Speech Analysis of Character with British Accents English 61-90
    English 61-90 BACHELOR BACHELOR Stereotypes of British Accents in Movies A Speech Analysis of Character Types in Movies with British Accents THESIS Hanna Berglund Phonetics Halmstad 2017-06-06 Stereotypes of British Accents in Movies A Speech Analysis of Character Types in Movies with British Accents Hanna Berglund Professor: Veronica Brock Halmstad University Spring 2017 Stereotypes of British Accents in Movies A Speech Analysis of Character Types in Movies with British Accents Abstract This essay deals with the use of linguistic stereotypes in three different movies with British accents, namely Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with a main focus on phonology. It investigates whether attitudes towards British accents found in studies about ideological beliefs about accent variation are reflected in the selected movies and discusses the notion of linguistic identity. The essay analyses how studies of perceived prestige and attractiveness of accents correlates to the character types males, females, main heroes, villains, comic relief and mentors in the selected movies. The essay finds a correlation between Received Pronunciation and every character type. It also finds that accents rated high on the discussed lists most often correlate to the character types mentor, villain and hero, while accents lower down on the list correlates with the character types comic relief and villains. The use of accents in these movies is probably intentional and not coincidental. Keywords Linguistic stereotypes, attitudes towards British accents, linguistic identity, accents in movies, accents of character types in movies Table of Contents 1.
    [Show full text]