Millie's Language Blog

Essay Plan - Accents and Dialect Question: Evaluate the idea that some accents and dialects are viewed more favourably than others Introduction: - discuss the question, write a summary of what content will be in the essay Paragraph 1: - discuss how people, especially children, will adapt their accents to fit a more 'prestigious' and RP (Received Pronunciation) accent  - Michael Rosen's podcast 'Accents Will Happen' talks about how children with thick Northern accents are likely to want to adapt their accents outside of the family dialect to fit in with more 'normal sounding' dialect. - Children prefer to listen to local dialect rather than family dialect Paragraph 2: - Talk about convergence and divergence - discuss why people with thick accents convergence to match the person they are speaking to - could it be because the RP accent is more favoured? Paragraph 3: - Howard Giles 'matched-guise technique' - in...

Regional Variations: Changing London Dialects Task One: Task Two: Multicultural London English/ Multicultural Urban British Language 1. What does Nikesh Shukla believe has happened to Cockney rhyming slang? Cockneys now span a larger area than they did before, moving to places such as Essex and the home countries. 2. What does he believe has replaced rhyming slang? A multicultural language 3. What reasons does he give for this? The main reason is that people from different races and cultural backgrounds are mixing together to create a wide multicultural language. 4. What are the origins of MLE? People from Asian communities (South, South-East) African communities, Caribbean, Europe and South America Task 3: Paul Kerswill 1. What are the main linguistic elements of MLE? MLE users will replace certain letters in words. The letters 'th' are usually replaced by an 'f' or 'v', as in 'fink' or 'muvver' 2. What has it develop...

- School of psychology in Liverpool - Studies on how children learn to talk - Asking parents to fill in checklist of gestures and words their children use - Fastest children have a couple of hundred words in their vocab - Family dialect, language and words used within the family - Having conversations with their children is the best way to improve their vocabulary - and talk is good talk. - Children prefer to listen to their local dialect, picks up on it well before they can talk - Some accents depend on who you're talking to and what situation you're in - People have a negative view on Liverpool and its accent - The more we like someone, the more out accents will shift towards theirs. - People change their accents because of the city they live in because they want to be apart of that society, but if they don't like where they live they are less likely to change their accent to fit in with that city - Accents are preventing children from learning Standard English...