Essay Plan - Accents and Dialect

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 1973, he got 2 groups of teens to listen to a persuasive speech on the death penalty, one with a Birmingham accent and one with an RP accent.
- they were more likely to favour and value the argument of RP accent than the Birmingham accent.
-shows that less prominent accents are more favoured and valued and are associated with intelligence.

Conclusion:

-summarise why some accents are more favoured than others
-give evidence from paragraphs e.g. convergence and divergence, Howard Giles 'Accommodation Theory'


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