Journal of Sociolinguistics 11/1, 2007: 74–93

Journal of Sociolinguistics 11/1, 2007: 74–93

Ideologised values for British accents1

Nikolas Coupland and Hywel Bishop

Cardiff University, United Kingdom

We report quantitative results from a large online survey of 5010 U.K. informants’ reactions to 34 different accents of English, based on simple accent labels. Patterns of accent evaluation, in terms of adjudged levels of prestige, social attractiveness and some other variables, in many regards confirm broad findings from earlier research. Accent-types associated with

‘standard’ speech are, for example, strongly favoured in the prestige and attractiveness dimensions. Several urban U.K. vernaculars, but not all, are systematically downgraded. On the other hand, robust differences emerge which have not been strongly evidenced previously – particularly differences according to informant gender (with females regularly producing more favourable evaluations) and region (with informants often favouring their own and linked varieties). There are also some important effects by informant age, for example with younger informants attributing less prestige to ‘standard’ accents.We interpret the findings as indicating rather persistent U.K. language-ideologies around accent difference that are being reconstituted only gradually and in specific regards.

KEYWORDS: Accents of English, language attitudes, ideologies, prestige, social attractiveness, gender differences, language loyalty

RESEARCHING SOCIAL MEANING

Sociolinguistic indexicalities – relationships between speech forms/varieties and social meanings – can be accessed in different ways and against different theoretical assumptions. Language ideology research assumes that, in particular socio-cultural environments, certain beliefs about the value of sociolinguistic features, styles and practices are structured into people’s everyday understanding

(Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity 1998; see also Lippi-Green 1997; L.

Milroy 2004). For example, James Milroy (2001: 530) argues that speakers of standardised languages live in ‘standard language cultures’where the legitimacy of what is thought of as ‘the standard language’ is taken for granted and where issues of ‘correctness’ in relation to it are taken to be natural concerns that matter. Establishment ideologies have constructed ‘standard English’ as being an intrinsically ‘authentic’ variety (Coupland 2003) – an assumption which sociolinguists have generally been at pains to resist.

C_ The authors 2007

Journal compilation C_ Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA

02148, USA

IDEOLOGISED VALUES FOR BRITISH ACCENTS 75

The fields of language attitudes research and folklinguistics have, in their own ways, contributed substantially to our understanding of indexical relationships and language ideologies, although their approach has tended more towards empirical analysis than towards staking theoretical claims. In language attitudes research it is conventional to distinguish ‘direct’ from

‘indirect’ approaches (Garrett, Coupland andWilliams 2003: 24–81; Garrett in preparation; Ryan, Giles and Hewstone 1988; Ryan, Giles and Sebastian 1982).

Direct approaches involve forms of overt questioning about the meanings of linguistic varieties,while indirect approaches try to uncover tacit and (arguably)

more deeply held beliefs and predispositions. Tore Kristiansen has argued that overtly expressed beliefs about language variation may bear little or no explanatory value in relation to language change, while covert subjectivities

(which need to be accessed in directly) have considerable explanatory value (see

Kristiansen, Garrett and Coupland 2005: 13ff.). This stance builds on William

Labov’s (1972) distinction between overt and covert footings for ‘prestige’,where an appeal to covert beliefs helps to explain a social group’s persistence in using a linguistic variety that they are prepared to describe (in overt accounts) as ‘ugly’,

‘common’, ‘coarse’, and so on.

Under the rubric of folklinguistics, on the other hand, Nancy Niedzielski and

DennisPreston(2003)stress theimportance of people’sovert representationsand evaluations of language varieties. For example, asking informants to draw maps of dialect zones in the U.S.A., then to label them and to characterise the zones’ distinctiveness in their ownwords, has proved to be very revealing. The technique creates an opportunity for people to articulate their senses of where linguistic boundaries exist and of the meaningful differences that linguistic variation represents. Folklinguistics makes language ideologies visible, even though some of its methods (like the map-labelling task) seem rudimentary. Preston in fact argues (in a personal comment) that the very starkness of variety labels (such as ‘Southern speech’ in the U.S.A. or ‘the Liverpool accent’ in Britain) invites a

‘purity’ of ideological response that is not possible when people engage with real speakers or with particular instances of talk-in-action.

In the tradition of accessing patterned ideological responses to linguistic variation – in this case variation across most of the principal accent varieties of

English in Britain, as they arecommonly labelled –we report the results of a recent large-scale survey. Our aim is to capture wide-scale and contrastive patterns of attributed social meaning when informants are asked to produce simple, scaled responses to a very large number of target varieties, presented to them in the form of labels alone. The method is usually referred to as ‘conceptual’ (Garrett,

Coupland andWilliams 2003: 79), in the sense that it invites people to explore the meaning associations of a simple (and arguably ‘pure’) sociolinguistic concept.

We believe it allows us to explore, quantitatively in this instance, how ideological beliefs around British accent variation are socially structured. Social structure here includes the evaluative ranking of one labelled variety relative to many others on particular dimensions of judgement, but also the regional structuring of

C_ The authors 2007


76 COUPLAND AND BISHOP ideological beliefs about accents. In this way (as Preston and others have argued) we are suggesting that social diversity in the attribution of social meaning to speech varieties is sociolinguistically significant, in much the same way as social diversity in speech itself is sociolinguistically significant.

THE VOICES SURVEY

We report data from a large online survey that we helped to design and implement in collaboration with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in

2004. In 2005 the BBC developed and ran a large web-based initiative under the title Voices , a multi-faceted and interactive exploration and celebration of language variation in Britain linked to a series of radio and TV broadcasts (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/). The survey was preliminary to the main Voices initiative. It was designed to provide findings on contemporary British language

attitudes which, when summarised in press releases and media broadcasts, might trigger U.K.-wide interest and participation in the interactive web tasks being launched.

In some respects it is a replication and extension of Howard Giles’ widely cited

(1970) study which collected data on people’s evaluations of several British accents, presented firstly as audible spoken ‘guises’ and then (as in the Voices survey) as conceptual labels (see also Giles and Powesland 1975: 28–32). A comparison of Giles’ original results with results from the new survey is available in Bishop, Coupland and Garrett (2005) where we dealt with a sub-set of the available new data chosen to match Giles’s original voice-types as closely as possible.2 The Voices survey, however, collected evaluative data on 34 different accents from 5010 respondents. The sample was demographically diverse and very widely distributed across geographical regions of the U.K. All respondents were over 15 years of age, and all completed the entire online questionnaire. As such the data provide a rare opportunity to survey general patterns of response to many of the most conventionally labelled British accent varieties, and to assess the extent of variation within a large judgement sample.

The online BBC survey was conducted between the 17th and the 26th

November 2004. A market research company, Greenfield Online , was contracted by the BBC to administer the questionnaire. The company maintains a panel of registered respondents from which its samples for different surveys are drawn.

In Britain this panel consists of approximately 140,000 individuals, all of whom will have ‘double opted in’ to participate in online surveys. This means that they must respond to a confirmation message after registration before they enter the panel in question, ensuring that third parties can not fraudulently add data to the results. Members are recruited to the panel on an ongoing basis via a range of media sources.

In the Voices survey informants were asked a variety of questions about their own language use and about their general preferences about linguistic diversity.

As the main task, they were asked to rate the 34 labelled accents of English,

C_ The authors 2007


IDEOLOGISED VALUES FOR BRITISH ACCENTS 77 which included most major regional British accents, some accents associated with other countries but which have some presence in, or relevance to, British social life, and some major global varieties of English. The choice of variety labels is of course crucial, and the results themselves sometimes allow us to trace the effects of alternative labels (see below; also Bishop, Coupland and

Garrett 2005). In most cases we were able to select relatively unambiguous regional or national accent labels. In the area of ‘standard English’, however, we opted for the phrases A standard accent of English and

Queen’s English

.

These are not uncommon but certainly not neutral characterisations, and we doubt that neutrality of representation is possible in conceptual research of this sort. Informants communicated their judgements electronically by clicking on numerical values of seven-point rating scales across a number of judgement dimensions.

Below, we report informants’ responses to questions about the prestige and pleasantness of the 34 accents,which were the survey’s main focus. The questions were posed directly for each accent: ‘How much prestige do you think is associated with this accent?’,and‘How pleasant do you think this accent sounds?’. Language

attitudes research has found that these are highly productive and inclusive dimensions in the social evaluation of regional and social speech varieties (see for example Garrett, Coupland andWilliams 2003; Zahn and Hopper 1985). A few supplementary questions were asked about perceptions of ‘proper speech’ and about pride in people’s own accents.

Working with outside agencies – the BBC and Greenfield – meant that we did not have full control of the overall design and even the final content of the survey.

For example, not all of the accent categories that we wanted to include could be accommodated, and the regional classification of respondents was carried out in ways relevant to the regional organisation of the BBC itself. But the survey collected a greater volume of data than is usually possible under the normal constraints of academic research. The sample was not selected on strict quota principles, for example to reflect gender, age, social class or geographical demographics or to ensure perfect balance between regions. However, maximum respondent numbers were set for all regions and the design ensured a good geographical spread of responses (although there was a slight shortage of respondents in some respondent cells from Northern Ireland). Table 1 gives demographic details for the whole sample of respondents. There is a good gender balance in the sample, but a slight imbalance in age distributions: the majority of informants fall in the twomiddle-age categories, leaving the 25–64 age group over-represented and the 15–24 and 65+age groups under-represented. Again, however, the large overall sample size allows valid comparisons to be made (and the statistical package in any case adjusts for unequal cell sizes). No social class details were collected, as this was not a priority for the BBC.

Informants were asked to indicate where they currently lived, information which we recoded into six U.K. regional categories: Wales, Scotland, Northern

Ireland, North of England/Midlands, South-East of England and South-West

C_ The authors 2007


78 COUPLAND AND BISHOP

Table 1: Demographic characteristics of the whole sample n %

Gender

Female 2544 50 .

8

Male 2466 49 .

2

Age

15–24 301 6 .

0

25–44 2301 45 .

9

45–64 2123 42 .

4

65 + 285 5 .

7

Region

Wales 279 5 .

6

Scotland 550 11 .

0

Northern Ireland 98 2 .

0

North/Mid England 1998 39 .

9

South-East England 1458 29 .

1

South-West England 575 11 .

5

Diversity

Low 319 6 .

4

Medium 2218 44 .

3

High 2473 49 .

3 of England. We asked for a scaled response to the statement ‘I like hearing a range of accents’, which we took as a rough index of informants’ stances towards sociolinguistic diversity. Responses to this diversity measure were then grouped into three categories – high (those who answered either six or seven on the diversity measure), medium (four or five), and low (one, two or three).

They arguably reflect more progressive to more conservative stances towards sociolinguistic diversity. Table 1 shows that a large majority of informants categorised themselves as moderately or very well disposed to diversity, but there is variation which, as we will see, is systematically associated with patterns of response to the different accents.

In the remainder of the paper we report results for all 34 accents, firstly according to mean responses for the whole sample, for both prestige and social attractiveness (Table 2). To arrive at more differentiated results, we carried out eight separate MANOVA (multiple analysis of variance) analyses, four for prestige and four for social attractiveness, with the 34 accents as dependent variables, and with informant age, region and sex, plus the ‘diversity’ dimension, as independent variables. These results are recorded in the two largeAppendices.

For the MANOVA using region as an independent variable, we included age, sex and diversity as covariates in the analysis, and correspondingly for the other analyses.

C_ The authors 2007



Table 2: Mean ratings (whole sample) of 34 accents by social attractiveness and prestige

Social attractiveness Prestige

1. Accent identical to own 4.87 (2) 4.14 (3)

2. Afro-Caribbean 3.72 (21) 2.90 (30)

3. Asian 3.21 (31) 2.74 (33)

4. Australian 4.04 (13) 3.51 (11)

5. Belfast 3.67 (23) 3.11 (27)

6. Birmingham 2.92 (34) 2.70 (34)

7. Black Country 3.16 (33) 2.81 (32)

8. Bristol 3.64 (25) 3.22 (21)

9. Cardiff 3.67 (24) 3.16 (25)

10. Cornish 4.22 (8) 3.38 (13)

11. Edinburgh 4.49 (5) 4.04 (4)

12. French 4.09 (11) 3.74 (9)

13. German 3.20 (32) 3.21 (23)

14. Glasgow 3.45 (29) 2.93 (29)

15. Lancashire 3.90 (15) 3.24 (20)

16. Leeds 3.73 (20) 3.15 (26)

17. Liverpool 3.40 (30) 2.82 (31)

18. London 3.70 (22) 3.89 (6)

19. Manchester 3.61 (27) 3.22 (21)

20. Newcastle 4.13 (10) 3.21 (23)

21. New Zealand 4.37 (6) 3.84 (7)

22. North American 3.90 (15) 3.80 (8)

23. Northern Irish 4.05 (12) 3.30 (17)

24. Norwich 3.81 (18) 3.38 (13)

25. Nottingham 3.78 (19) 3.39 (12)

26. Queen’s English 4.28 (7) 5.59 (1)

27. Scottish 4.52 (4) 3.98 (5)

28. South African 3.51 (28) 3.34 (16)

29. Southern Irish 4.68 (3) 3.63 (10)

30. Spanish 3.88 (17) 3.29 (18)

31. Standard English 4.96 (1) 5.44 (2)

32. Swansea 3.64 (25) 3.11 (27)

33. Welsh 3.95 (14) 3.29 (18)

34. West Country 4.16 (9) 3.36 (15)

MEAN RATINGS

Table 2 lists the 34 accents alphabetically, but also provides rank-orderings

(bracketed) for each semantic dimension.Onthe seven-point scale, themaximum possible mean value is 7.0 and the minimum is 1.0, with 4.0 being the mid-point.

C_ The authors 2007



Thetableshowsthattherangeofmeansfromthewholesampleofrespondentsis greater for prestige (some high values in the fives and some lowvalues in the twos) than it is for social attractiveness. Also, the raw values for social attractiveness are higher than for prestige with all but four accents – German-accented English ,

London English ,

Queen’s English and A s tandard accent of English . This suggests that, overall, judgements of accent prestige are more widely differentiating and less generous than those for social attractiveness.

A simple comparison of the rank orderings for social attractiveness and prestige shows that several accents attract rather similar evaluations in both dimensions. A standard accent of English and An accent similar to my own are both strongly favoured in both dimensions. Birmingham English , Black Country

English (referring to the urban English Midlands, which includes Birmingham) and Asian-accented English are the three least prestigious varieties while also being three of the four least socially attractive varieties. On the other hand (still according to rank orderings), Southern Irish English , Newcastle English and Afro-

Caribbean English are rated far higher on their relative scales for attractiveness than for prestige. Conversely, London English , North American-accented English ,

South African-accented English and German-accented English are all ranked higher for prestige than for attractiveness. In most of these cases, we presume that nationallyidentifiedlanguagevarieties areattracting positive prestigewhichneed not be matched by the perception that they are attractive.

There is some support for the idea that urban vernaculars are systematically downgraded. This is certainly the case with Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow, also to a lesser extent with Swansea, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol. But

Edinburgh is one of the most favoured accents in the whole set of 34 on both dimensions. Similarly in the national stakes, Scottish English is highly favoured for prestige and attractiveness, and Southern Irish English is highly rated for social attractiveness, though less highly ranked for prestige. Northern Irish English and

Welsh English have mid-table rankings. Of the non-indigenous British and Irish accents, New Zealand English and French English have more favourable profiles than Australian English and Spanish English . As noted, German English is ranked

very low for attractiveness.

PRESTIGE

The whole-sample results for prestige include statistically significant variation according to all four variables shown in the columns of Appendix 1. (In both appendices we provide data only for significant effects, leaving non-significant cells blank.) Sex emerges as a powerful variable differentiating respondents’ prestige evaluations, with all but 12 of the 34 accents showing significant differences. (Asterisked cells in Appendices 1 and 2 indicate significant effects and mean values are given for significantly differentiated sub-groups.) There is a reliable tendency for women to afford a given accent more prestige – with only two accents where men are significantly more positive: An accent identical to my

C_ The authors 2007


IDEOLOGISED VALUES FOR BRITISH ACCENTS 81 own and West Country English . As far as we are aware, this tendency has not been demonstrated robustly in earlier language attitudes research, although it is a useful addition to long-running debates about gendered variation. It is very well known that women tend to use ‘more standard’ speech than men do for a given social class and speaking context. Our new finding shows that women nevertheless afford more prestige and, as we shall see, social attractiveness to most regional varieties, but not to their own speech.

For the independent variable made up of the six U.K. regions (that is, the regions where informants were based), 16 of the 34 accents were evaluated for prestige in ways that showed significant regional variation. In a number of cases the findings show clear ingroup loyalties, most clearly from Scottish respondents. For instance, post hoc Tukey tests show that, for two of the accents from Scotland ( Scottish English and Edinburgh English ), Scottish respondents provide more positive prestige judgements than respondents from all the other regions.With respect to the Glasgow accent, Scottish informants are again most positive, although there is no significant difference between the respondents from

Scotland and those from Northern Ireland.

A similar pattern emerges with evaluations of Welsh English for prestige.

Respondents living in Wales are significantly more positively oriented to the prestige of Welsh English than are all other groups except Northern Ireland respondents. Again, Northern Ireland respondents were significantly more positive than all other groups other than Scottish respondents in their evaluations of Northern Irish English . On the other hand, they were not significantly differentiated from any of the other regions in their evaluations of the Belfast accent’s prestige.Indeedit istheScottishrespondentswhoorientedmostpositively to the Belfast accent. Ingroup loyalty seems to be filtered in large part through a national lens.While respondents living in Scotland demonstrate strong ingroup loyalty towards all their accent varieties (relative to respondents from other regions), for those living in Northern Ireland andWales it is the accents labelled as generic national varieties that are seen as significantly more prestigious.

In terms of age differences for prestige, there were significant differences between informant groups for 24 accents. In the majority of cases there are no general tendencies in the direction of difference – significant differences are not always linear with age. One interesting finding, however, relates to A standard accent of English , where there is a linear prestige ranking. The oldest informant group attributes most prestige, with a progressive decline in positivity to the

youngest age group (who are still positive overall). Tukey tests further reinforced this trend, highlighting that both youngest age groups differ significantly from the two oldest age groups, but not from each other. Interestingly too, the two oldest groups attached more prestige to their own accent ( An accent identical to my own ). Tukey tests show that the oldest age group were significantly more positive towards the prestige of their own accents than all other groups were, with the45–64age group being significantly differentiated from the youngest age group.

C_ The authors 2007



Not surprisingly, it is the independent variable that we have labelled diversity that shows the most regular tendency for the groups to be significantly differentiated from one another. All accents apart from one are evaluated significantly differently by the different diversity groups. The general tendency is a predictable linear effect, with those who say they are more positively oriented to accent diversity being more positive in their evaluation of a given accent. It is interesting that diversity is the only variable that differentiates the sample in its prestige rating of the Birmingham accent. In other dimensions, the sheer negativity of responses to Birmingham appears to override more subtle discriminations. Predictable though the findings are for diversity, they underline the notion that people are able to assess their own degrees of openness to linguistic diversity, and that their particular evaluative accent attributions reflect this.

SOCIAL ATTRACTIVENESS

Once again, sex actively differentiates judgements of 22 of the 34 accents, this time in the social attractiveness dimension. The general pattern is again that women regularly afford more positive attractiveness values to accents than men do. Cornish English and West Country English are exceptions. Also, similarly to prestige judgements, An accent identical to my own is, however, judged more attractive by men than by women. While, relative to women, men generally withhold favourable judgements of other people’s ways of speaking, men make more favourable judgements of their own speech.

Differences in perceived attractiveness by region are significant for just over half of the accents, with18accents showing significant variation. As with prestige, an analysis of the means as well as more fine-grained post hoc Tukey tests highlight that respondents living in Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland express ingroup loyalty. Scottish respondents show more pronounced ingroup loyalty than all other groups. They are significantly more positive than all other regional groups in their evaluations of the attractiveness of the Scottish accent. They are also significantly more positive than all other groups (except for those from Northern

Ireland) in their judgements of the Edinburgh and Glasgow accents. Tukey tests show that respondents in Wales are significantly more positive than all other groupsintermsof theirevaluations of WelshEnglish ,andthattheyaresignificantly differentiated from all groups living in England in judging the attractiveness of the Swansea accent.

Tukey test results for Welsh respondents’judgements of the social attractiveness of the Cardiff accent, however, do not show significant differences from any of the other regions. Cardiffians endorse the more general pattern of affording low attractiveness to their own local accent. Similarly, the Belfast accent is not

preferred by the Northern Ireland respondents. Indeed the means show that it is respondents from Scotland who orient most positively to Northern Ireland

English in terms of its social attractiveness, with Tukeys highlighting that they

C_ The authors 2007


IDEOLOGISED VALUES FOR BRITISH ACCENTS 83 are significantly more positive than all other groups. However, for Northern Irish

English we do see strong ingroup loyalty. Respondents from Northern Ireland are significantlymore positive than are all the other groups. These complex findings, as with prestige, indicate that ingroup loyalties are most strongly expressed in relation to some national accents in the Celtic countries.

There are interesting regional findings for the accents associated withReceived

Pronunciation (RP) – the accents we labelled Queen’s English and A standard accent of English . For

Queen’s English

, informants in South-East England produce the highest ratings of attractiveness of all regions, significantly distinguished from almostall other regions.NorthernIreland, ScotlandandWalesproducethe lowest ratings. Tukey tests show that these ‘Celtic fringe’ regions (especially Northern

Ireland and Scotland) generally do not differ from each other, but do differ from the remaining regions’ responses. A similar but somewhat less clear pattern is observable for A standard accent of English .

Age differences are slightly less strongly associated with significant variation in judging an accent’s social attractiveness than they are for prestige, with 22 of the accents showing age-related main effects. A particularly important finding here is that, for A standard accent of English and

Queen’s English

, there is a fully linear age effect. The oldest two groups are most positive, with younger groups being progressively less positive. Younger people once again seem to be less embedded in the conservative ideology of positively evaluating ‘standard’ accents. If we compare this with evaluations of a number of the more ‘stigmatised’ accents –

Afro-Caribbean, Belfast , Black Country and Glasgow

– we see an almost completely reversed pattern. The youngest two age groups differ significantly from the oldest two age groups in judging the varieties more attractive. For Welsh English and

West Country English , it is the oldest two age groups who are the most positive.

Diversity again proves to be the most powerful differentiating variable, producing predictable significant main effects in all 34 accents. The two RPtype accents, however, stand out against the general directional trend: of higher linguistic diversity being associated with higher perceived social attractiveness of accent. The mean values for the RP-type accents, which show significant differences across all groups, are ranked in the reverse order. Once again, the general results for diversity underline the fact that the Voices informant sample is not homogeneous as to its sociolinguistic ideology.We assume that the differences by age, sex and region are also based in, and expressions of, ideological differences. But the general criterion of whether and to what extent people value sociolinguistic diversity is clearly a particularly powerful one, and it cuts across socio-demographic variation.

SPEAKING ‘PROPERLY’

In response to the question, ‘To what extent is it important for people to speak properly?’, the whole sample produced an overall mean of 5.71 (strongly agreeing),althoughthere isaninteresting trend herewithrespect toage.While all

C_ The authors 2007


84 COUPLAND AND BISHOP age groups are strongly disposed to the belief that people should ‘speak properly’, it is the oldest age group that produce the highest score. We then find a linear pattern with increasing age: age 15–24 = 5.36; 25–44 = 5.54; 45–65 = 5.83;

65+ = 6.11. While Tukey tests show that the youngest two age groups are not significantly differentiated from one another, the oldest two age groups are both significantly different from one another as well as from the other two age groups.

ACCENT PRIDE

Scaled responses to the question, ‘To what extent are you proud of your accent?’, produced an overall mean of 4.89 (well above the mid-point). Respondents from

Scotland are significantly more proud of their accent than are all other groups, with all other regional groups not differing significantly from one another. There is also a significant difference between male and female respondents: the mean for females is 4.80; the mean for males is 4.98.

DISCUSSION

We do not claim that these findings account for ‘the social meanings of the different varieties’ that are involved in the survey. The extreme level of decontextualisation in the research design – presenting variety labels to informants starkly and repetitively, then generally restricting responses to numerical markings on seven point scales – has pared down informants’ social attributions to a minimum.

Each informant no doubt has a far richer repertoire of evaluative accounts and experiences that could be brought to the surface by other methods.

Decontextualisation is likely to have predisposed ‘common sense’ judgements of varieties – tropic ideologies, such as pigeon-holing Birmingham speech as the bˆete noire of British urban varieties. In other sorts of sociolinguistic work we would in fact stress that contextualisation is a key process throughwhich social meanings take shape (Coupland in press).

The respondentswere a self-selecting population, and it mightwell be that, as a group, they have some particular social or attitudinal characteristics. They may have self-selected into the study because they have particularly conservative or punitive views about language variation (althoughwe do at least have their own self-assessments of openness to diversity). They may be a group defined partly by their interest in completing surveys, and they may have had some specific predispositions towards language variation related to this. Again then, there is a need for caution in interpreting the findings.

All thesame, themainstrength of large-scale surveys is their ability to generate comparative data, in this case comparing not only across targeted accent varieties but across different sub-groups of respondents. For sociolinguists, there are some disappointingly familiar conservative tendencies in the general rankings of the accents. The low overall levels of prestige and attractiveness afforded to the

C_ The authors 2007


IDEOLOGISED VALUES FOR BRITISH ACCENTS 85 two ethnically linked accents in the survey (Asian and Afro-Caribbean) and to some of the urban vernaculars (Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow) confirm prejudicial attitudes that have been intuited (and, in Giles’ research, empirically demonstrated) for some time. The finding for ‘speaking properly’ confirms that there is a widespread belief that speech style should come under a prescriptive lens. In fact we have to hope that these are the most conservative and repressive

ideological profiles that attitudinal research is likely to expose.

In this context, the fact that younger respondents are less negative about the

‘stigmatised’ varieties – though they are still negative – provides a glimmer of liberal sentiment. If we can read attitudes in apparent time, there may be an indication of ideological value-shift over time here. Similarly, the findings for gender and diversity, at least to a limited extent, challenge the inference that there is a consolidated, single ideological set in the evaluation of English accents.

Women are regularly less negative in their evaluations of both prestige and attractiveness.Peoplewhodeclaremoreopenness to linguistic diversitydoindeed, in this design, penalise accents less heavily. Back in the regional dimension of the study, there are accents other than the RP-type accents that enjoy high ratings of prestige, social attractiveness or both: Southern Irish English , Scottish English and

Edinburgh English , in particular. The Celtic varieties fare rather well overall, and we have seen interesting patterns of ingroup loyalty operating most strongly in those contexts.

RP-like accents emerge with their traditional evaluative credentials largely intact,butnotaltogether.Wheninformantsoriented to Astandard accent of English they generally afforded prestige and social attractiveness quite liberally. Younger informants withheld some of this positivity, but not a great deal. The designation

Queen’s English attracted more mixed evaluations for attractiveness, in some cases falling below the scale’s mid-point. It is interesting that people rated their own accents (whatever they were), plus Southern Irish English , Scottish English ,

Edinburgh English and New Zealand English ahead of Queen’s English for social attractiveness.Whether theywere orienting to the actual U.K. Queen’s speech or some other more abstracted variety is impossible to tell. If respondents do take the phrase to refer to a conservative variety of RP, then the survey supports Lynda

Mugglestone’s contention that ‘talking proper’ in Britain is gradually coming to be seen as ‘talking posh’ (2003: 274), even though what she calls (in the same source) the ‘rise of the regional’ has some considerable way to go.

It will be important to assesswhether the broad evaluative tendencies revealed in the Voices surveydoordonot carrythrough into lessabstract,morediscursively mediated contexts. Preliminary datawehave looked at suggest there is reasonable congruencebetweenthe ‘conceptual’ resultswehave set out hereandresultsfrom a quite different judgement task, when informants have reacted to samples of regional speech, directly addressed. This was also Howard Giles’s general finding in the (1970) study.We suspect, therefore, that the judgement patterns revealed in the Voices survey do reflect broad language-ideological structures that are the backdrop to accent encounters in contemporary Britain. To treat them as

C_ The authors 2007


86 COUPLAND AND BISHOP ideologies, as we think they should be treated, however, is to point to their status as familiar metalinguistic discourses of the culture. To appreciate how these discursive resources are put towork in particular contexts requires quite different methods and analytic sensitivities.

NOTES

1. The research for this paper was supported by funding from The Leverhulme Trust

(Grant No. F /00 407/D) to the Centre for Language and Communication Research,

Cardiff University, for a larger programme of research on Language and Global

Communication (see www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/global/). We gratefully acknowledge

Peter Garrett’s part in designing the

Voices survey and in analysis of data. We are also very grateful to BBC staff working on the Voices project, and in particular to

Faith Mowbray, Russell Chant and Rachel Muntz for their invaluable help during data-gathering stages.

2. Giles collecteddataonyoungBritish people’sevaluativereactions to16accentvarieties of English speech. His main findings (from the conceptual / labels-based part of the study) were that a ‘standard’ English accent,

Received Pronunciation (RP), enjoyed by far the highest prestige and social attractiveness ratings of English accent varieties, while the vernacular accents linked to the cities of Birmingham, London and

Liverpool suffered lowest ratings on these dimensions. It showed that ‘ethnic’ accents, which

Giles referred to as Indian and West Indies accents, also held lowprestige,while

Frenchaccented

English , North American English , Scottish English and German-accented English were highest-ranked for prestige next to RP, and so on.

REFERENCES

Bishop, Hywel, Nikolas Coupland and Peter Garrett. 2005. Conceptual accent evaluation: Thirty years of accent prejudice in the U.K. Acta Linguistica Havniensia

37: 131–154.

Coupland, Nikolas. 2003. Sociolinguistic authenticities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:

417–431.

Coupland, Nikolas. In press. Style: Language Variation and Identity . Cambridge,

U.K.:

Cambridge University Press.

Garrett, Peter. In preparation. Language Attitudes . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge

University Press.

Garrett, Peter, Nikolas Coupland and Angie Williams. 2003. Investigating Language

Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance . Cardiff, U.K.:

University ofWales Press.

Giles,Howard. 1970. Evaluative reactions to accents. EducationalReview 22: 211–227.

Giles, Howard and Peter F. Powesland. 1975. Speech Style and Social Evaluation .

London:

Academic Press.

Kristiansen,Tore,PeterGarrettandNikolasCoupland.2005.Introducingsubjectivities in linguistic variation and change. Acta Linguistica Havniensia 37: 9–35.

Labov,William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns . Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

University of Pennsylvania Press.

C_ The authors 2007



Lippi-Green,Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and

Discrimination in the United States . London and New York: Routledge.

Milroy, James. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization.

Journal of Sociolinguistics 5: 530–555.

Milroy, Lesley. 2004. Language ideologies and linguistic change. In Carmen Fought

(ed.) Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections . New York: Oxford University

Press.

161–177.

Mugglestone, Lynda. 2003. Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol .

Oxford,

U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Niedzielski, Nancy and Dennis Preston. 2003. Folk Linguistics . Berlin and New York:

Mouton de Gruyter.

Ryan, Ellen B., Howard Giles and Miles Hewstone. 1988. The measurement of language attitudes. In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar and Klaus J. Mattheier

(eds.) Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and

Society

(Volume II). Berlin:Walter de Gruyter. 1068–1081.

Ryan, Ellen B., Howard Giles and Richard Sebastian. 1982. An integrative perspective for the study of attitudes towards language variation. In Ellen B. Ryan and Howard

Giles (eds.) Attitudes Towards Language Variation: Social and Applied Contexts .

London:

Arnold. 1–19.

Schieffelin, Bambi, Kathryn Woolard and Paul Kroskrity (eds.). 1998. Language

Ideologies: Practice and Theory . Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Zahn, Christopher J. and Robert Hopper. 1985. Measuring language attitudes: The speech evaluation instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 4: 113–

123.

Address correspondence to:

Nikolas Coupland

Centre for Language and Communication Research

Cardiff University

Cardiff CF10 3EU

Wales

United Kingdom coupland@cardiff.ac.uk

C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 1: MANOVAs for PRESTIGE with region, age, diversity and sex as independent variables

Region Age Diversity Sex

Accent 0.01 Wales 4.16 0.01 15-24 4.06 0.27 0.01 Female 4.06 identical ∗ ∗ Scotland 4.36 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.98 ∗ ∗ Male 4.22 to own Northern Ireland 3.76 45-64 4.25

North/Mid England 3.90 65+ 4.62

South-East England 4.34

South-West England 4.24

Afro- 0.67 0.01 15-24 3.00 0.01 High 3.01 0.01 Female 3.03

Caribbean ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.03 ∗ ∗ Med 2.87 ∗ ∗ Male 2.74

45-64 2.77 Low 2.29

65+ 2.69

Asian 0.01 Wales 2.87 0.01 15-24 2.82 0.01 High 2.84 0.01 Female 2.81

∗ ∗ Scotland 2.76 ∗ ∗ 25-44 2.81 ∗ ∗ Med 2.71 ∗ ∗ Male 2.67

Northern Ireland 2.65 45-64 2.66 Low 2.25




Australian 0.92 0.82 0.01 High 3.64 0.01 Female 3.66

∗ ∗ Med 3.45 ∗ ∗ Male 3.36

Low 2.99

Belfast 0.01 Wales 2.99 0.01 15-24 3.39 0.01 High 3.25 0.01 Female 3.20






Birmingham 0.16 0.15 0.01 High 2.74 0.49

∗ ∗ Med 2.71

Low 2.28

Black Country 0.09 0.01 15-24 3.07 0.01 High 2.86 0.09

∗ ∗ 25-44 2.79 ∗ ∗ Med 2.81

45-64 2.79 Low 2.41

65+ 2.87

Bristol 0.74 0.01 15-24 3.27 0.01 High 3.28 0.74

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.13 ∗ ∗ Med 3.21

45-64 3.27 Low 2.77

65+ 3.48

Cardiff 0.01 Wales 3.36 0.01 15-24 3.29 0.01 High 3.26 0.01 Female 3.22






Cornish 0.96 0.01 15-24 3.34 0.01 High 3.46 0.96

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.25 ∗ ∗ Med 3.35

45-64 3.50 Low 2.99

65+ 3.71

Edinburgh 0.01 Wales 3.84 0.01 15-24 3.98 0.01 High 4.28 0.54

∗ ∗ Scotland 4.81 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.90 ∗ ∗ Med 3.88





French 0.14 0.45 0.01 High 3.94 0.01 Female 3.92

∗ ∗ Med 3.61 ∗ ∗ Male 3.55

Low 3.07

C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 1: Continued (MANOVAs for PRESTIGE)


German 0.04 Wales 3.19 0.52 0.01 High 3.37 0.01 Female 3.32

∗ Scotland 3.37 ∗ ∗ Med 3.13 ∗ ∗ Male 3.11

Northern Ireland 3.14 Low 2.61

North/Mid England 3.16



Glasgow 0.01 Wales 2.84 0.01 15-24 3.19 0.01 High 3.04 0.01 Female 3.05






Lancashire 0.20 0.01 15-24 3.47 0.01 High 3.34 0.86

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.20 ∗ ∗ Med 3.20

45-64 3.23 Low 2.73

65+ 3.32

Leeds 0.38 0.12 0.01 High 3.25 0.38

∗ ∗ Med 3.11

Low 2.72

Liverpool 0.37 0.01 15-24 2.80 0.01 High 2.90 0.27

∗ ∗ 25-44 2.75 ∗ ∗ Med 2.79

45-64 2.87 Low 2.38

65+ 2.98

London 0.01 Wales 3.87 0.01 15-24 3.99 0.01 High 4.00 0.01 Female 4.04






Manchester 0.72 0.01 15-24 3.31 0.01 High 3.31 0.72

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.15 ∗ ∗ Med 3.19

45-64 3.27 Low 2.71

65+ 3.36

Newcastle 0.79 0.01 15-24 3.19 0.01 High 3.34 0.79

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.12 ∗ ∗ Med 3.13

45-64 3.28 Low 2.67

65+ 3.40

New Zealand 0.86 0.38 0.01 High 4.00 0.01 Female 3.92

∗ ∗ Med 3.73 ∗ ∗ Male 3.75

Low 3.27

North America 0.11 0.77 0.01 High 3.97 0.01 Female 3.91

∗ ∗ Med 3.67 ∗ ∗ Male 3.68

Low 3.97

Northern Irish 0.01 Wales 3.22 0.01 15-24 3.61 0.01 High 3.44 0.01 Female 3.42






Norwich 0.02 Wales 3.46 0.01 15-24 3.48 0.01 High 3.47 0.40

∗ Scotland 3.40 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.33 ∗ ∗ Med 3.36





Nottingham 0.21 0.01 15-24 3.56 0.01 High 3.50 0.01 Female 3.45

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.37 ∗ ∗ Med 3.34 ∗ ∗ Male 3.34

45-64 3.39 Low 2.93

65+ 3.43

C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 1: Continued (MANOVAs for PRESTIGE)


Queen’s English 0.01 Wales 5.66 0.10 0.01 High 5.70 0.01 Female 5.72

∗ ∗ Scotland 5.35 ∗ ∗ Med 5.48 ∗ ∗ Male 5.44





Scottish 0.01 Wales 3.94 0.01 15-24 3.97 0.01 High 4.19 0.06

∗ ∗ Scotland 4.57 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.89 ∗ ∗ Med 3.82





South African 0.54 0.01 15-24 3.63 0.01 High 3.47 0.01 Female 3.48

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.37 ∗ ∗ Med 3.28 ∗ ∗ Male 3.20

45-64 3.27 Low 2.74

65+ 3.33

Southern Irish 0.53 0.15 0.01 High 3.83 0.01 Female 3.69

∗ ∗ Med 3.50 ∗ ∗ Male 3.58

Low 2.98

Spanish 0.75 0.01 15-24 3.39 0.01 High 3.44 0.01 Female 3.43

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.36 ∗ ∗ Med 3.20 ∗ ∗ Male 3.14

45-64 3.21 Low 2.70

65+ 3.71

Standard English 0.04 Wales 5.61 0.01 15-24 5.30 0.01 High 5.57 0.01 Female 5.55

∗ Scotland 5.32 ∗ ∗ 25-44 5.38 ∗ ∗ Med 5.31 ∗ ∗ Male 5.33





Swansea 0.01 Wales 3.15 0.11 0.01 High 3.22 0.01 Female 3.19






Welsh 0.01 Wales 3.72 0.01 15-24 3.20 0.01 High 3.41 0.02 Female 3.33

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.46 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.18 ∗ ∗ Med 3.23 ∗ Male 3.25





West Country 0.02 Wales 3.40 0.01 15-24 3.25 0.01 High 3.42 0.01 Female 3.31

∗ Scotland 3.33 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.18 ∗ ∗ Med 3.35 ∗ ∗ Male 3.40





C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 2: MANOVAs for SOCIAL ATTRACTIVENESS with region, age, diversity and sex as independent variables


Accent identical to own 0.01 Wales 4.77 0.01 15-24 4.86 0.01 High 4.94 0.01 Female

4.79






Afro-Caribbean 0.32 0.01 15-24 4.04 0.01 High 4.08 0.01 Female 3.95

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.92 ∗ ∗ Med 3.46 ∗ ∗ Male 3.50

45-64 3.54 Low 2.82

65+ 3.23

Asian 0.01 Wales 3.30 0.55 0.01 High 3.47 0.01 Female 3.27






Australian 0.93 0.01 15-24 4.39 0.01 High 4.27 0.01 Female 4.22

∗ ∗ 25-44 4.22 ∗ ∗ Med 3.86 ∗ ∗ Male 3.84

45-64 3.83 Low 3.44

65+ 3.72

Belfast 0.01 Wales 3.67 0.01 15-24 4.15 0.01 High 4.00 0.01 Female 3.90






Birmingham 0.61 0.01 15-24 3.21 0.01 High 3.10 0.43

∗ ∗ 25-44 2.93 ∗ ∗ Med 2.80

45-64 2.87 Low 2.38

65+ 2.92

Black Country 0.84 0.01 15-24 3.40 0.01 High 3.36 ` Female 3.29

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.17 ∗ ∗ Med 3.00 ∗ ∗ Male 3.13

45-64 3.11 Low 2.66

65+ 3.08

Bristol 0.01 Wales 3.60 0.01 15-24 3.48 0.01 High 3.81 0.40

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.47 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.53 ∗ ∗ Med 3.50





Cardiff 0.01 Wales 3.79 0.01 15-24 3.69 0.01 High 3.90 0.01 Female 3.75






Cornish 0.01 Wales 4.26 0.01 15-24 3.78 0.01 High 4.46 0.01 Female 4.15






Edinburgh 0.01 Wales 4.38 0.90 0.01 High 4.86 0.01 Female 4.59






C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 2: Continued (MANOVAs for SOCIAL ATTRACTIVENESS)


French 0.14 0.01 15-24 3.89 0.01 High 4.38 0.01 Female 4.31

∗ ∗ 25-44 4.12 ∗ ∗ Med 3.86 ∗ ∗ Male 3.86

45-64 4.11 Low 3.42

65+ 3.86

German 0.01 Wales 3.31 0.95 0.01 High 3.39 0.01 Female 3.28






Glasgow 0.01 Wales 3.39 0.01 15-24 3.79 0.01 High 3.81 0.01 Female 3.68






Lancashire 0.01 Wales 3.86 0.31 0.01 High 4.18 0.88

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.66 ∗ ∗ Med 3.70





Leeds 0.01 Wales 3.72 0.19 0.01 High 3.98 0.40

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.56 ∗ ∗ Med 3.54





Liverpool 0.12 0.59 0.01 High 3.68 0.04 Female 3.45

∗ ∗ Med 3.20 ∗ Male 3.35

Low 2.72

London 0.01 Wales 3.54 0.01 15-24 3.91 0.01 High 3.77 0.01 Female 3.84






Manchester 0.01 Wales 3.53 0.18 0.01 High 3.81 0.09

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.43 ∗ ∗ Med 3.49





Newcastle 0.01 Wales 3.99 0.24 0.01 High 4.52 0.07

∗ ∗ Scotland 4.25 ∗ ∗ Med 3.83





New Zealand 0.80 0.79 0.01 High 4.62 0.01 Female 4.47

∗ ∗ Med 4.18 ∗ ∗ Male 4.27

Low 3.76

North America 0.20 0.62 0.01 High 4.05 0.01 Female 4.10

∗ ∗ Med 3.80 ∗ ∗ Male 3.69

Low 3.47

Northern Irish 0.01 Wales 4.05 0.01 15-24 4.50 0.01 High 4.37 0.01 Female 4.30






C_ The authors 2007



Appendix 2: Continued (MANOVAs for SOCIAL ATTRACTIVENESS)


Norwich 0.01 Wales 3.81 0.01 15-24 3.72 0.01 High 3.95 0.85

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.64 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.70 ∗ ∗ Med 3.70





Nottingham 0.01 Wales 3.79 0.62 0.01 High 3.93 0.01 Female 3.81






Queen’s English 0.01 Wales 4.17 0.01 15-24 3.84 0.01 High 4.18 0.21

∗ ∗ Scotland 3.76 ∗ ∗ 25-44 4.06 ∗ ∗ Med 4.33





Scottish 0.01 Wales 4.32 0.11 0.01 High 4.92 0.01 Female 4.64






South African 0.38 0.01 15-24 3.88 0.01 High 3.66 0.01 Female 3.63

∗ ∗ 25-44 3.58 ∗ ∗ Med 3.42 ∗ ∗ Male 3.39

45-64 3.39 Low 3.01

65+ 3.47

Southern Irish 0.46 0.01 15-24 4.94 0.01 High 5.08 0.01 Female 4.83

∗ ∗ 25-44 4.82 ∗ ∗ Med 4.37 ∗ ∗ Male 4.53

45-64 4.52 Low 3.73

65+ 4.40

Spanish 0.76 0.01 15-24 4.00 0.01 High 4.16 0.01 Female 4.10

∗ ∗ 25-44 4.00 ∗ ∗ Med 3.68 ∗ ∗ Male 3.66

45-64 3.78 Low 3.16

65+ 3.54

Standard English 0.01 Wales 4.98 0.01 15-24 4.71 0.01 High 4.91 0.01 Female 5.01






Swansea 0.01 Wales 3.91 0.01 15-24 3.73 0.01 High 3.86 0.01 Female 3.70






Welsh 0.01 Wales 4.80 0.01 15-24 3.90 0.01 High 4.25 0.21

∗ ∗ Scotland 4.11 ∗ ∗ 25-44 3.83 ∗ ∗ Med 3.75





West Country 0.01 Wales 4.22 0.01 15-24 3.86 0.01 High 4.37 0.01 Female 4.06






C_ The authors 2007


Journal of Sociolinguistics 11/1, 2007: 74–93

Related documents

Products

Support

Journal of Sociolinguistics 11/1, 2007: 74–93

Related documents

Add this document to collection(s)

Add this document to saved

Suggest us how to improve StudyLib