Introduction and Overview

I'm Dr Chris Montgomery.

I'm a senior lecturer in dialect ecology at the University of Sheffield.

This is a series of lectures on accent,

dialect and attitudes to accent and dialect variation.

So in this first section,

I'm going to talk about some definitions.

I'm going to define accent dialect, sociolect

and idiolect, and I'm going to think about some of the wider themes

and debates in attitudes to varieties,

so dialect to start off with.

When we talk about dialect, we're talking about a language variety

that's distinguished from others by differences in grammar

and vocabulary. It can also refer to differences in pronunciation working together

in a systematic way.

So dialect is about the sort of systematic

functioning of a particular variety of a language.

You might also,

in the course of these modules of the lecture,

hear me talking about varieties sort of interchangeably with dialects.

So variety is really something we can think of as another word for dialect.

What's important about dialect, though, is that

you're able to use the phrase, to use the word, to talk about differences in grammar,

in vocabulary and in pronunciation.

If we move now onto accent, accent refers to just the differences in pronunciation.

Okay, so when we're talking about pronunciation, we use the term accent.

Now in everyday life,

we'll probably hear the term accent and dialect used completely interchangeably.

And in actual fact,

some linguists do use the term accent and dialect interchangeably to.

For your purposes, though,

you're really going to want to talk about dialect and accent being separate things,

so dialect to do with the grammar, to do with the words of a particular variety,

and accent to do with the pronunciation.

Okay, so dialect words and grammar, accent pronunciation.

And using those terms accurately will allow you to be really specific about

what you're trying to describe when you're

talking about different types of variation.

I'm now going to talk about two other types of language variety

that you might hear used and that you might use yourself.

I'm going to talk about Sociolect and I'm going to talk about Idiolect. Sociolect

refers to a social dialect, a dialect that's used by a particular group of people.

Now this could be people in a school, for example,

who are all parts of the same sports team.

They might have particular words and phrases that they need to use as part of

that sports team so they can accurately describe what's going on the sports team.

They also might have particular sorts of pronunciation

associated with being part of that group,

and we can talk about that as being a sociolect.

It could also be related to a group of

people that work together in the same professional field.

Linguists, for example,

might be considered to be part of a sociolect. Sociolects

relates to groups of people perhaps engaged in common pursuits,

and so they're different from dialects,

and dialects tend to be these regional varieties

of

language,

whereas sociolects to do with who you hang around with to do with the

people you interact with and forming that

social group and a language that reflects that.

Idiolects

refer to a variety that's used by an individual person.

Now this can be made of a whole load of things.

Let's say you live in a particular place,

but you moved to that place, you're going to take from the place

you moved from some features of the language that was used there to your

new place. Say that you were born and grew up in this place

but your parents lived somewhere else before having you, well,

some of their language is going to influence your own.

So let's say that you are born and brought up in a particular place,

and that was the same for your parents

and your grandparents and their parents as well.

You're still not going to use the same language in the same

way as somebody else who has the same sort of background.

You're going to have lots of different inputs into what you do.

And so idiolect refers to that personal variety

of a language.

Now I'm going to talk about standardness and non-standardness because I'm going to

refer to these terms as we go through the different modules of this lecture,

and you'll also have heard them used.

Standard English is a particular variety of language.

It's the variety of English that's used in print.

That's used probably in this lecture, that's used in the media,

perhaps used by politicians as well.

It's one variety amongst many.

The other varieties are often called non-standard varieties.

Okay, so we have standard English and then we perhaps have non-standard Englishes,

and this means that they vary from standard English. Not that they're worse.

Not that they're less good at doing things.

In a natural fact, they could be much better at doing certain things

than standard English.

Just think about trying to address a group of people using the word you.

We've only got that in standard English,

whereas in a variety of English associated with Liverpool, for example, or the US,

we might be able to say, you's or yin's or your

okay, which accurately

sort of separates out a group of people from

one particular person where standard English doesn't do that.

So in many respects,

non-standard varieties can be much better suited in certain respects

to certain contexts.

So when I talk about non-standard varieties,

I'm just talking about things that differ from standard English,

and I'm not in any way suggesting that they're less good.

They're less appropriate.

They're less adequate because all of the linguistic

study suggests that that's not actually the case.

Now there are some debates about a non-standard varieties regional variety.

So is using regional English

lazy? Does using non-standard English disadvantage speakers?

Can people actually express themselves better

using regional or non-standard language?

So the idea about regional English is being lazy is

something that's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And it's something that throughout those hundreds of years,

people have made money from this idea that people want to improve their English.

There's no evidence that using a regional variety is lazy.

It's just what you were born and grew up with

and in actual fact can actually be something that is really beneficial

to the speaker's. Does using non-standard English disadvantaged speakers.

Well,

this is something I'll returned to in subsequent modules of this of this lecture.

Um, this is an idea that is current today,

and I'll talk about that in relation to attitudes about non-standard English.

And there's lots of linguistic research that suggests that speakers

of non-standard varieties have all sorts of strength and competencies

that can be used.

And therefore there's no reason why

using regional English should disadvantage speakers.

And then can people actually express themselves

better using a regional or non-standard language?

While there's lots of evidence to suggest that this is the case

and when I talk about attitudes I'll talk about

some other linguists have done some research that

suggested that forcing people to use certain varieties

rather than their home or regional variety can actually disadvantage them.

So that's the end of this module, and I'll move on to the next,

which refers to accent and dialect and

some technical terminology in the next module.