Accents and dialects. Varieties of English pronunciation

Accents and dialects. Varieties of English pronunciation.

Usmonova Maftuna

What is a dialect ? …… an accent ?

• Dialect - a local form of "a language"; often associated with a particular region (regional dialect) or subsection of a larger language community (sociolect).
• Regionally or socially distinctive
• Vary in relatively minor aspects of their pronunciation ("accent"), vocabulary and grammar (how words are combined into sentences)
• Similar techniques for diagnosing dialects may be used for all languages

AMERICAN REGION DIALECTS

How many dialects are there, and Why do dialect differences arise?

Why is it that people in all parts of the country do not speak in the same way?

1. English, as is true of all languages, is constantly changing.

2. Not all changes take place in all parts of the country, and

3. Not all changes take place at the same time.

Often, the spread of changes is stopped short by barriers to communication between groups of speakers.

1. Geographical isolation

2. Temporal dislocation (separation over time)

3. Social isolation

TYPES OF GROUPS INTO WHICH SOCIETY IS ORGANIZED

Large-scale groupings:

1. Regional dialects

2. Social dialects, or "Sociolects"

-- social classes

-- educational groupings

-- genders

--ethnicities

--age cohorts

Small-scale groupings:

3. Social networks, e.g.

-- immigrant communities

-- neighborhoods and recreation groups

DIAGNOSIMG DIALECT DIFFERENCES

• Phonological differences. For the most part, the features that distinguish us from people in other parts of the country are our vowels!

Vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ai, oi, ei, au)

Consonants (r, t, d, th)

NORTHERN CITIES AND SOUTHERN CITIES VOWEL SHIFTS

ACCENT

• An aspect of pronunciation used by native speakers who all belong to the same social grouping, community
• Speakers of the same accent have the same phonological system (vowels, consonants, stress, rhythm, intonation, prosody)
• Accent is possessed by EVERY speaker as part

of their IDIOLECT

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACCENT AND DIALECT

• E.g., [ǝ ro:dz ǝ d3:ti] : accent? Bcs of ?

but: "reeads is mucky (=dirty)": dialect

• Dialect: ANY speech variety which is more than an idiolect but less than a language
• E.g., I couldn't see no one": sub-standard

variety/dialect

• E.g., * Peter done it: sub-standard variety

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION