Cover not available

In:Pragmatics of Accents
Edited by Gaëlle Planchenault and Livia Poljak
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 327] 2021
► pp. 141–162

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

A lack of phonological inherentness

Perceptions of accents in UK education

 | The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Published online: 11 October 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.327.06bar
Abstract
This paper addresses accent preference in the context of UK teaching. From this, there are instances of trainee teachers being told to reduce their accents. The views of 32 teachers were collected and the paper focuses on two specific points. First, it is not the sounds per se that characterise accents in terms of positive or negative evaluations; rather, it is the societal connotations. Second, it is not merely regional accents as such that are targeted for reduction but instead, more broad realisations of such accents. Thus, in the context of teaching, notions of professionalism are sometimes understood differently between teachers and mentors when viewed from a linguistic perspective, with broad accents often the target for change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Contextualisation of the study: Sociocultural attitudes to accents and a suggested trichotomy of UK accents
    • A lack of inherentness in accents
    • A trichotomy of UK accents
  • 3.Previous studies on accent reduction
    • Study one participants
    • Study two participants
    • Interviews
    • Study three participants
  • 4.Discussion of the results: Three cases of teachers’ accent reduction
    • The case of T1: A desire to retain one’s working-class roots through accent
    • The case of T7: Agreement on what constitutes a ‘professional’ accent in teaching
    • The case of T20: Linguistic pride
  • 5.Implications of the study for UK teaching
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
References
Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ahearn, Laura. 2001. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (1): 109–137. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Archangeli, Diana, Barss, Andy, Bever, Thomas, Carnie, Andrew, Chan, Erwin, Fong, Sandiway, Fountain, Amy, Hammond, Michael, Harley, Heidi, Karimi, Simin, McKee, Cecile, Nicol, Janet, Ohala, Diane, Piatelli-Palmarini, Massimo, Ussishkin, Adam, Warner, Natasha, Wedel, Andy, Willie, Mary Ann, and Ofelia Zepeda. 2010. Teachers’ English Fluency Initiative in Arizona. Retrieved from [URL] Accessed on 4 February 2021.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baranowski, Maciej, and Danielle Turton. 2015. “Manchester English”. In Researching Northern English, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 293–316. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Accent and Linguistic Prejudice in British Teacher Training.” Journal of Language, Identity and Education 16 (6): 416–423. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Accent and Teacher Identity in Britain. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baratta, Alex, and Nicola Halenko. 2021. "Perceptions of Regional British Accents in EFL Teaching." Linguistics and Education. Under consideration.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barras, William. 2015. Lancashire. In Researching Northern English, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 271–292. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Becker, Kara. 2009. “/r/ and the construction of place identity on New York City’s Lower East Side.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (5): 634–658. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Belchem, John. 2000. Merseyside: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boegershausen, Johannes, Karl Aquino, and Americus Reed. 2015. “Moral Identity.” Current Opinion in Psychology 6: 162–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. “Habitus”. In Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. by Emma Rooksby, 27–34. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brady, June. 2015. “Dialect, Power and Politics: Standard English and Adolescent Identities.” Literacy 49 (3): 149–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, and Paul Hopper. 2001. “Introduction to frequency and emergence of linguistic structure”. In Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, ed. by Joan Bybee and Paul Hopper, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardoso, Amanda, Levon, Erez, Sharma, Devyani, Watt, Dominic, and Yang Ye. 2019. Inter-speaker variation and the evaluation of British English accents in employment contexts. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain, and Paul Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019 (pp. 1615–1619). Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2010. Handbook of Language and Globalisation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas, and Hywel Bishop. 2007. “Ideologised Values for British Accents.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (1): 74–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dehghani, Morteza, Peter Khooshabeh, Angela Nazarian, and Jonathan Gratch. 2014. “The Subtlety of Sound: Accent as a Marker for Culture.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 1–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donnelly, Michael, Alex Baratta, and Sol Gamsu. 2019. “A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Accent and Social Mobility in the UK Teaching Profession.” Sociological Research Online 24 (4): 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elsen, Hilke. 2017. “The Two Meanings of Sound Symbolism.” Open Linguistics 3: 491–499. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Linda. 2015. “Reflections: Academic Identity and the Changing European Landscape.” In Academic Identities in Higher Education, ed. by Linda Evans, and Jon Nixon, 257–272. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garner, Richard. 2013. “Teacher ‘Told to Sound Less Northern’ after Southern Ofsted Inspection.” London: The Independent.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, Howard. 1971. Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Accent Usage and Change.” Educational Review 24 (1): 11–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haddican, Bill, Foulkes, Paul, Hughes, Vincent, and Hazel Richards. 2013. “Interaction of Social and Linguistic Constraints on Two Vowel Changes in Northern England.” Language Variation and Change 25, 371–403. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haddix, Marcelle. 2008. “Beyond Sociolinguistics: Toward a Critical Approach to Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Teacher Education.” Language and Education 22 (5): 254–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “No Longer on the Margins: Researching the Hybrid Literate Identities of Black and Latina Preservice Teachers.” Research in the Teaching of English 45 (2): 97–123.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Talkin’ in the Company of my Sistas: The Counterlanguages and Deliberate Silences of Black Female Students in Teacher Education.” Linguistics and Education 23 (2): 160–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickey, Raymond. 2015. “The North of England and Northern English”. In Researching Northern English, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2001. “New Dialect Formation in Nineteenth Century Liverpool: A Brief History of Scouse”. In Liverpool’s Language, People and Places, ed. by Clive Grey, and Anthony Grant, 106–140. Liverpool: Open House Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hughes, Alan, and Peter Atkinson. 2018. “England’s North-South Divide is History – but the Nation’s Rifts are Deepening.” The Conversation, July 1st.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hughes, Arthur, Peter Trudgill, and Dominic Watt. 2012. English Accents and Dialects. Croydon: Hodder.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 2003. Foundations of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jensen, Marie. 2016. “Linking Place and Mind: Localness As a Factor in Socio-Cognitive Salience.” Frontiers in Psychology 7 (1143): 1–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2009. “Language and Social Class.” In English Language: Description, Variation and Context, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, Ruth Wodak, and Tony McEnery, 358–372. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1995. “South African English.” In Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics, ed. by Rajend Meshrie, 89–106. Cape Town: David Philip.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liberman, Mark. 2010. “Removing Teachers with ‘Accented’ Speech? Available at [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindsey, Geoff. 2019. English after RP: Standard British Pronunciation Today. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MacFarlane, Andrew, and Jane Stuart-Smith. 2012. ‘One of Them Sounds Sort of Glasgow Uni-ish’: Social Judgements and Fine Phonetic Variation in Glasgow.” Lingua 122: 764–778. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montgomery, Chris. 2012. “The effect of proximity in perceptual dialectology.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 16 (5): 638–668. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Borders and Boundaries in the North of England.” In Researching Northern English, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 345–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ramsaran, Susan. 2015. “RP: Fact and Fiction.” In Studies in the Pronunciation of English: A Commemorative Volume in Honour of A.C. Gimson, ed. by Susan Ramsaran, 178–190. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein Michael. 2003. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language and Communication 23: 193–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Snell, Julia, and Richard Andrews. 2016. “To What Extent Does a Regional Dialect and Accent Impact on the Development of Reading and Writing Skills? Cambridge Journal of Education 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strycharczuk, Patrycja, López-Ibáñez, Manuel, Brown, Georgina, and Adrian Leemann. 2020. “General Northern English: Exploring Regional Variation in the North of England with Machine Learning.” Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 48 (3): 1–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Teachers’ Standards. [URL]. Accessed on 16 March 2020.
Trudgill, Peter. 2002. Sociolinguistic Variation and Change. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue