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valley_girl
Joined: 22 Sep 2004
Posts: 272
Location: Somewhere in Canada
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 Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 11:51 pm Post subject: A Question for the Linguists |
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Here's a query that was posted on another site I frequent: How do regional dialects form?
It's an interesting question. Consider how different English is in all of the various parts of the English-speaking world. Consider again how much it varies in parts of a single English-speaking country. How did this happen? |
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Scribble
Joined: 01 May 2006
Posts: 14
Location: Blighty
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:26 am Post subject: |
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My philology days are long gone, but the basic answer to your question is that regional dialects will always form unless there's a strong feedback system to the base form. For instance several hundred years ago, before the onset of mass transportation, dialect was so pronounced in England that travelling a distance of a few hundred miles often rendered men unintelligible. Whereas since the onset of mass media and migration English is almost homogeneous throughout the developed world.
You can draw direct parallels with evolution: where a population becomes isolated, speciation will follow.
Wikipeadia is as always your friend:  |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 1:49 am Post subject: |
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| dialect was so pronounced in England that travelling a distance of a few hundred miles often rendered men unintelligible. |
You mean that the English are inteligible now?!
But seriously, I've read interesting speculation that with the arrival of mass communication, new dialects are slower forming, and forming in less areas. Also that the differences between existing dialects are decreasing.
A fun read, that goes into the formation of dialects, accents, creoles, and pidgins, in a pretty accesible way is Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue."
Best,
Justin[/quote] |
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valley_girl
Joined: 22 Sep 2004
Posts: 272
Location: Somewhere in Canada
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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Wikepedia is indeed already my friend! LOL
Thanks for the book recommendation, Justin. Unfortunately, I don't have much free time for reading these days. None that isn't work-related anyway! |
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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| n England that travelling a distance of a few hundred miles often rendered men unintelligible |
Rather a few dozen miles or less.
And as for accents seventy years ago in Lancashire you could identify villages a couple of miles apart by the accent. This is probably not true now, but despite my cloth ear as a kid I could still distinguish half-a-dozen Lancashire accents, and Lancashire isn't much bigger than Rhode Island. |
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dajiang
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 663
Location: Guilin!
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| Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 10:06 am Post subject: |
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This is something I wrote a year ago:
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Regional Accents
Trying to make value statements about different accents can be easy. Or so it seems. Almost anyone would laugh at any stereotypical demonstration of an accent in their language. It�s what stand-up comedians thrive on. So we know the queen talks differently from a factory worker. But how exactly does that work?
The thing is that most people don�t make value judgments by first thinking about it at length and then give a well-balanced opinion. Instead it�s more a matter of intuition, and our culturally determined situations that influence our outlook on language.
Most of the time people connect accents with places; a certain twang indicates the speaker is from there and there, a nasal drawl means somewhere else. But in fact accents have a cultural origin, not necessarily a geographical one. Of course, members of the same social layer often conglomerate together and live in the same places; coal miners live where coal is found. Young urban professionals obviously lurk in city centers. And that�s why it would seem that accents correspond with places. But how come then that labourers talk differently from socialites, even though they live in the same city?
Well, for example, an accent in Rotterdam does not so much refer to �the place Rotterdam�, but more to the culture of it. And more than that it refers to to the subculture the speaker belongs to. Especially in culturally diverse places like cities it�s definitely more a question of who you�re talking to, than where you�re talking at all.
People reassert themselves by language. You can make clear what side you�re on just by the tone of your voice. Accent plays along nicely. To narrate an extreme case, in recent years youth in the suburbs of Amsterdam have naturally developed a separate unique language that basically allows them to determine what social environment they belong to, and by doing that saying who they are. Other less obvious examples are easily found.
Look at the weatherman on TV. More often than not he will speak with his own familiar accent. This is to show he�s just a regular guy from the neighbourhood. The kind you talk about the weather with, and the kind you can trust with intrinsically harmless information such as weather. Newsreaders, by contrast, adopt an authoritative and standard accent, to ensure credibility. This, by the way, also often leads to the fallacy that language as spoken on television is the �correct� one. Well, of course there isn�t one correct way of speaking. A newsreader in a fish factory, even wearing the proper clothes, would rather stand out if he were to open his mouth. There he would have to adapt his speech and accent if he wanted to be socially accepted.
When applying for a job too, one had better make sure to speak in the standard accent instead of something too strongly flavoured. But this is often done subconsciously. Those among us who have a strong sense of language can change accents as easily as they change their wardrobes. For the lesser linguistically talented it�s much more difficult, and will take more time. But all of us have, and regularly use this ability. Even if we�re not always aware of it.
In all, you could say that by simply speaking we are in fact saying: �This is where I come from.� Which actually means: �this is the sociocultural environment I come from�, or more to the point: �this is the sociocultural environment I want you to think I come from�. You see, we are really constantly identifying ourselves, using accent as one of many tools to reaffirm our position in that vastly complicated system called human society. And so there is much more information in your speech than merely your words. Something you, as a teacher, might want to remember, or forget, when you�re looking at a class of 30 students, their ears primed, and waiting only for your voice to tell them exactly about� you. |
An important function of language is identification.
You agree?
Dajiang |
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keepwalking
Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 194
Location: Peru, at last
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| Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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| The various accents and dialects of the UK emerged in part because of the various invading forces over the centuries, who settled in particular places in the country and so influenced the language spoken there. Local/family loyalty, lack of transport and or/interchange between groups living relatively closely in today's terms meant that the accents and dialects remained in place and survive today. Now with the media and greater populaton movement the accents survive but the dialect map is changing - for example, estuary english, a London-like accent is now found amongst young people as far north and Liverpool and Newcastle, and these are people with no substantial contact with the south or with other speakers of estuary english, other than through the media. |
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Johanna
Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 19
Location: Adelaide, Australia
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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Dajiang,
Awesome avatar.
I have a slight problem with the end of your discussion of accent as a sociocultural signpost.
How can we be telling our students about ourselves through our accent if they don't have enough knowledge of our context to decode the signals?
Other than that, like it a lot.
Cheers
Johanna |
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