6. Language Attitudes: Education, Employability and Public Shaming

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About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the expression of language attitudes and why language attitudes matter, focusing in particular on: (i) the work of Peter Trudgill and the aspects of language that form the focus of our language attitudes, e.g. correctness, adequacy, etc.; (ii) the issue of language in education, including the attempt to restrict the use of non-standard English; (iii) the purported link between speaking standard English and employability; and (iv) the extent to which public figures who speak non-standard varieties of English are shamed for the way they speak, e.g. Alex Scott, Steph McGovern, etc.

Course

In this course, Dr Chris Montgomery (University of Sheffield) explores accent and dialect variation, and also attitudes to accent and dialect variation. In the first module, we introduce some of the key terms associated with accent and dialect, including 'accent' and 'dialect' themselves, but also 'sociolect' and 'idiolect'. After that, in the second module, we think about the various components that constitute an accent or dialect, which is followed in the third module by a listening exercise. In the fourth module, we explore Multicultural London English (MLE) and Multicultural British English (MBE), before turning in the fifth and sixth modules to consider attitudes to language, particularly in relation to education, employability and public shaming. In the seventh and final module, we introduce the a branch of linguistics called language regard, with a particular focus on perceptual dialectology.

Lecturer

Dr Chris Montgomery is Senior Lecturer in Dialectology at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on non-linguists’ perceptions of language variation, focusing in particular on real-time reactions to regional speech, and especially which features naïve listeners respond to. He is also interested in the wider field of folk linguistics and language attitudes. His recent publications include (as co-editor) Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region (2017) and Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape (2016).