Language and Region

Accommodation Theory

• Speakers change their language to resemble that of their listener
• Convergence
• Divergence

Martha's Vineyard study

• East Coast of America
• Focused on realisations of the diphthongs [aw] and [ay] (as in mouse and mice)
• He interviewd a number of speakers drawn from different ages and ethnic groups
• In younger speakers, a movement from the pronunciation associated with the standard New England norms was happening

Norwich Study

• -ing dropping
• Class has more of a determiner of non-standard usage than gender, although women do tend to speak more over-prestige than men
• If you drop your '-ing's then you are more likely to be working class

Estuary English

• Newly observed variety of English pronunciation
• Recieved Pronunciation (RP) is the standard 'correct' way of speaking English but it is being replaced by Estuary English
• Estuary English is a variety of modified regional speech, it is a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation.
• Glottal stops
• /h/ dropping

• English is less well loved but more used because it has econo-technical superiority