National Standard & Dialects

British English

Course Structure
1.

National Standard & Dialects

Nigel Musk
English 3 & Teachers Programme 61
61--90 hp
Department of Culture & Communication
Linkping University

2.

Two National Varieties

3.

Caribbean English

English as a Second Language

Standard National Language(s)

Welsh English & Welsh

Pidgins & Creoles

5
5.

American vs British English

Bilingualism
g
& Language
g g Contact

4.

British English

Indian English

The spread of English in the World

Definition: an idealised language variety, most often accepted as

the official language of a community or country. (Yule 2006: 194)

the emergence
g
of many
y modern European
p
nation states by
y
the end of 19th century accompanied by the spread of
g
one nation, one language
g g
nationalist ideologies:

Codification of vernacular (spoken) languages was

influenced by traditions of unified written standard of
Classical Latin, i.e. grammars prescribed a regulated and
refined language (akin to the language of the gentry)
refined
(Barber 1993: 203-4)

(Crystal 2005: 107)

(Trudgill & Hannah

2002: 5)

Language, Accent & Dialect 1

accent refers more specifically to regional or social variation in
pronunciation. (Yule: 195)

1.
1
2.
3.
4.
5.
6
6.
7.
8.
9
9.
10.
11.

// rather than //
e g EngEng path [p]
e.g.
absence of post-vocalic /r/
e.g. EngEng far [f], course [ks]
close vowels for //, //
e.g. AusEng that [t], bed [bed]
monophthongisation of /i/,
/i/ /u/
like [l
[lk],
k] about [b
[bt]
front [a] for //
e.g. AusEng part [pat]
absence of contrast // & // e.g. CanEng (AmEng) cot, caught [kt]
// rather than //
e g AmEng can
e.g.
cantt [knt]
absence of contrast // & // e.g. AmEng bother [b], father [f]
voicing/tapping of intervocalic /t/ e.g. AmEng better [b]
unrounded // (rather than //) e.g.
e g AmEng pot [pt]
syllabic /r/
e.g. AmEng bird [bd]
absence of contrast // & /u/ e.g. ScotEng pull [p], pool [p]

dialect refers to regional or social variation in grammar, vocabulary and

pronunciation. (Yule: 195)
e.g. Geordie: them days you didnt live wi lasses.

language a dialect with an army and navy

Distinguishing between dialect/language on grounds of linguistic features:

a written standard?

mutual intelligibility?

linguistic similarity?

Received Pronunciation 1

Received Pronunciation 2

Received pronunciation has its roots in the south-east of England.

e.g. pass [ps], home [hm], bird [bd], poor [p], hill [h]

19th century became the accent of public school system, the Civil
S
Service
off the British Empire, the armed forces,
f
i.e. authority & power

Established over 400 years ago as language of the court & the upper

but nowadays it is a regionless accent

classes.

understood and spoken all over Britain

Term coined in 1869 by the linguist A. J. Ellis in On Early English

but by only 3-5 % of population

P
Pronunciation
i ti to
t mean accepted
t d or approved.
d

it is still a social accent (middle & upper classes)

shows variation from conservative to contemporary RP, typically

In the present day we may, however, recognise a received pronunciation

all over the country [[]] It may be especially considered as the educated
pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit and the bar. (23)

spoken by older & younger speakers, respectively (Gimson 1990)

but there are many more speakers of near-RP accents or modified

RP

RP New Developments 1

RP New Developments 2

T tapping a tap (or flap) sound produced by flicking the tip of the

T glottaling the consonant /t/ is realised as a glottal stop []

tongue against the roof of the mouth, c.f. American English []

T voicing a /t/ pronounced almost identically to a [d]

increasingly in these two environments:

1. syllable-final before a following consonant

[]
a lot of them actually came and stayed with us. So they
[d]
came over with their duty-free
duty-free, their bottles of gin and

e.g.

cut them [km], fat content [fkntent],

sitcom [skm]

2. with certain consonant clusters, such as [] [ns] [mp]

e.g.

watch [w], since [sns], camp [kmp]

vodka

RP New Developments 3

RP New Developments 4

But t glottaling is also appearing between

vowels (esp. at word boundaries) among
younger RP speakers:

Vocalised l the final /l/ is realised as a

vowel []

[]

[] []

this friend of mine had this studio apartment at very

[]

[]

[]

low rent and I thought, Well, what the heck? Got a

summer free []

e.g. well [w], cold [kd], kill [k]

RP New Developments 5

Estuary English

High rise intonation (upspeak, uptalk) using a rising

intonation at the end of statements (instead of falling) more
common among women, teenagers, the working class & ethnic
minorities (Crystal 2005: 249)

Estuary
E
t
English
E li h the
th tterm was coined
i d iin th
the 60s
60 for
f the
th features
f t
of London regional speech spreading out along the Thames
Estuary especially to Essex and Kent
Estuary,
Kent. These features include
vocalised l and glottaling, but also grammatical features.

Uh, I guess the first time I, kind of, went abroad really by myself was

straight
t i ht after
ft A L
Levels
l and
d I wentt tto P
Paris,
i so th
thatt was th
the summer off

And there was, and there was a caravan park just, uhm,
[]
nearby, which, uh, obviously is still there, which had the
[]
[]
swimming pool and all the entertainment and everything

ninety-one and I stayed two and a halff months in Paris

Regional Dialects 1 (Yule 2006:

2006: 196196-8)

Regional Dialects 2

Aim of traditional dialectology to discover regional differences in

Dieth-Orton Survey undertaken 1948-61

pronunciation and vocabulary

NORMS:

non-mobile,

older,,

rural,

male speakers

were typically selected because thought to be less affected by

external
t
l iinfluences,
fl
ii.e. outside
t id th
their
i region.
i

over 1,300 items in 313 localities throughout England

biased towards rural communities

Topics: e.g. farm/farming, animals & nature, house/housekeeping,

human body, numbers, time, weather etc.
Speakers: mainly working class men mostly over 60, locally born in
g communities
farming
1978 Linguistic Atlas of England appeared with an interpretation of
selection of the data.

Dialect Boundaries 1 (Yule 2006: 197197-8)

Isoglosses 1

isogloss:
g
a boundary
y between
areas with different linguistic

Isoglosses for the

pronunciation of home

features, e.g. pronunciation

Orton, Harold et al. (1978) The

Linguistic Atlas of England

or lexical items
di l t boundary:
dialect
b
d
a boundary
b
d
characterised by bundles of

RP (contemporary)

i
isoglosses
l
((often
ft along
l

RP (conservative)

natural boundaries in the

l d
landscape)
)

Regional Dialects 3

Isoglosses 2

Place: Portesham, Dorset

Topic: Sid talks about traditional stacking and threshing techniques.
Speaker: Sid Hodder (b.1877; male, retired farm worker)
Date: 1956

Isoglosses for postvocalic /r/

(Hughes & Trudgill 1979: 33)

I dont care what nobody say. Sheep is the place for

the farm and thats what the farms, thats what the
land is missing now, is sheep.

Isoglosses 3

Grammatical Features 1
Tag questions in standard English question tags agree with main
verb of the clause (or use forms of do).
e.g.

Isoglosses for the

pronunciation of path
(Hughes & Trudgill 1979: 30)

He isnt coming, is he?

They arrived late, didnt they?

Aggressive
gg
tags
g In British usage,
g , there is a special
p
use of tag
g
questions which works as a put down (rather than inviting the
y
2005: 299))
listeners involvement)) ((Crystal

e.g.

Well, you would say that, wouldnt you?

A: [to a young man on the phone] Is that your brother?
B: Its my dad, innit. (Eastenders 1986)

Grammatical Features 2
Invariant tags In many parts of the world (especially where
English is spoken as a 2nd language), is it/isnt it? has arisen as
an invariant form (Crystal 2005: 299)
e.g.

They do a lot of work, is it? (Wales)

Shes gone to town, is it? (South Africa)

Bibliography
Trudgill, Peter & Hannah, Jean (2002) 4th edn. International English: A Guide to
Varieties of Standard English
English. London: Edward Arnold
Hughes, Arthur & Trudgill, Peter (1979) English Accents and Dialects. London: Edward
Arnold Ltd
Svartvik, Jan & Leech, Geoffrey (2006) English. One Tongue, Many Voices.
Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan
Crystal David (2005) 2nd edn.
Crystal,
edn The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
Language.

The fairly widespread (Cockney?) tag innit (isnt it) in British English
is also showing similar signs of invariance.
Aint used in question tags and ordinary negations, this invariant
g
form is found in many
yp
parts of the English-speaking
g
p
g
negative
world used for both m not/isnt/arent and hasnt/havent

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press