Nothern Teacher Told To Sound 'More Southern'

Very recently a secondary school teacher, originally from Cumbria but currently working in the south, was sanctioned with an outrageous target to adapt her northern accent, by her own school, to sound more southern.

Descriptivism is the term used to describe the belief that the correctness of a person’s language is dependent on context and should be defined by what is appropriate in any context. Prescriptivism is the opposite – the belief that there is one correct way of speaking, no matter the context. A belief that I think is slowly on the downfall, a belief only followed by the older generations.

I believe descriptivism should be the linguistic mind-set of today’s society. It is much more common now a days, with new technology and transport, for people of different geographical backgrounds to come into close contact with one another. Even people born and raised in your own geographical locations are likely to talk differently to yourself. For example, I have friends that went to a school that was about a 10 minute walk away from mine, yet they seemed to have a whole variety of different slang. In addition, with the growing counterculture developing in our youth, new slang, dialect and even accents are often found to differ with each new generation. With this in mind, it is impossible for one to be a believer of prescriptivism without conversing with at least one person with a different way of speaking. The school in this article is quite clearly one of prescriptivism. This, I believe, is a contradiction with the development of our society.

Having read the article of a northern teacher being victimised by both her own school and Ofsted, I am outraged. I believe a person’s accent is something to be proud of, it’s a representation of your beloved hometown and precious childhood. Every region of England will have different accents, who has the right to say that theirs is the ‘most correct’ or to ban another person from talking in their natural voice.

To begin, I am in disbelief that an established organisation, like Ofsted, would have the courage to single out a teacher for a personal feature of hers that would have absolutely no effect on her teaching skills – the kind of skills that Ofsted should be judging. In their defence I do not know how strictly they commented on her accent but, nevertheless, they did. What angers me the most is the actions of the school, whether they were strictly told to tell this teacher to change her accent or not, they should have stood by her side, they should be as outraged as I am. Whereas, they seemed to just abandon their own employee, setting her this ludicrous of changing an unalterable aspect of her own personality.

The targets set by schools after Ofsted inspections are supposed to be SMART:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Realistic

T – Timed

Although, rather mockingly, they were very specific - in the sense that the school said she needed to sound ‘more southern’ - the school have not reached any of the requirements when setting their employee a target to improve. This is a disgrace and very unfair to this individual. How on earth does a person measure how southern they sound? What point of her southern sounding development we be considered her target? It is ridiculously unrealistic and impossible to put any sort of time frame on it.

This school could not be any more immoral. This woman now has to go into work every day, having to concentrate on changing just the way she speaks (on top of all the stress of being a secondary school teacher); in fear the she could potentially lose her job. There is no evidence to say that this woman is a bad teacher or even to say that any of her classes are negatively affected by her diverse accent, so there is absolutely no reason for her to be criticised in the way she has been. Could this potentially be an act of sexism? I never heard of a male teacher being criticised for the way he speaks.

I believe no one on this planet has the right to dictate what the ‘correct’ way of speaking is. We are all different and no one person sounds the same, so who is in the position to say that their way of speaking is ‘correct? The way we speak represents a part of our personalities and even demonstrates an aspect of our precious childhoods. The way you speak should be embraced and loved by all, if someone doesn’t like the way you speak, you shouldn’t like the way they think.

Language Research

English Research Task

I read the article on Accents and Dialect. It brought me to the realisation that people will often judge and be judged depending on their accent and choice of dialect. Furthermore, people from different geographical, native locations will often despise each other, as they will believe that their own group or culture is the centre of everything - that their accent is the 'norm'. I have also learned that the simple feature of your accent, can determine a person's entire opinion of you, ranging from personality to even attractiveness.

Communication – Back Channelling - When we hear someone telling a story or narrating an event, it is not uncommon to hear listeners responding with mhm, uh-huh, wow, oh, and the like. At face value, these words or short phrases may not seem to contribute to the conversation. Researchers Jackson Tolin and Jean E. Fox Tree argue that these backchannels, as they are called, actually do influence the narrative. In their data, the authors distinguished between generic backchannels and specific backchannels. Backchannels typically display comprehension and reception. Their research showed that participants actually perceive the backchannels to be important in determining their choice of what comes next. The backchannels therefore have a role in shaping the story telling. When you use a specific backchannel such as wow, you actually invite an elaboration, thereby steering the story, allowing the storyteller to add emphasis and elaboration. Accordingly, the type of backchannel gives a sense of predictability about what kind of information would follow it. This might make it easier for people to follow a particular conversation.

Pair ordering – A researcher found that the order of the words in the pairs perpetuated images about the social roles of women and men that now seem outdated. Men came first in general, especially in pairs referring to professions (doctors and nurses) and the nobility. The conventional ordering in sons and daughters reflects, she claims, previous traditions of sons being more important than daughters. The ordering in word pairs related to marriage reflects traditional gender discourses: men dominate during marriage (husband and wife) but women come first when they are not yet married (bride and bridegroom), no longer married (widow and widower) or when raising children (mum and dad).

The power of language – Adam Croom, a linguist, studied the use of ‘slurs’ and power within language. He used the concept of ‘face’, which is the desire for respect from other speakers within your linguistic community.  ‘Face’ is a type of social currency as, just like money, you can get more things done with the more positive ‘face’ or respect you have.  Offending people threatens their ‘face’ and complimenting people adds to their ‘face’, with slurring terms often used in this bargaining process.  In fact, the use of racial slurs can be extremely destructive to the actual character of their targets and speakers who use them are contributing to a history of derogation that harms their social identities. It is quite common to find that the victims of slurs have actually turned their meanings on their head a started to use these ‘offensive’ slurs positively, for example the black person’s adoption of the word ‘nigger’, which is often found in modern hip-hop and black people are often comfortable to refer to each other as ‘nigger’.

Non-Verbal Communication – Some researchers set out to investigate the use of facial expressions, like smiling, during conversations. They recorded several conversations between two subjects. The first observation highlights how a speaker is able to ‘make light’ of the topic that is being discussed or has previously been discussed.  One example the researchers used to illustrate this is an interaction between two female speakers discussing the possibility that a boy that one of girls is interested in may have lied about his age.  The discussion in the initial stages of description is quite delicate.  However, there is then a silence in which the speaker, who has shown an interest in the boy, smiles. She follows this with a comment relating to how, after you reach a certain age, you are more likely to lie about your age. In this exchange, the smile represents the turning point between a serious or frank tone of discussion to a lighter, more humorous tone, where the girls make light of the boy’s potential dishonesty. The other point of note in this exchange, as well as all the others identified by the researchers, is that the recipient of the smile always joins in and smiles back. The researchers found that there is a range between initial pauses before smiles and the taking on of a new humorous tone. These two extremes have implications for the relationship between the speakers as well as the speakers’ relationship to the content of the interaction.  For example, an immediately reciprocated smile may indicate that the recipient of the smile trusts that the speaker is going to establish a more humorous stance or say something with which they are likely to agree.  On the other hand, a delayed return of a smile may show that the recipient is unsure of the speaker’s intentions, or is waiting to be ‘let in on the joke’ if a story is being introduced with which they are not familiar. In conclusion, the researchers suggest that turn-opening smiles are unlike those facial expressions which are labelled ‘emotional contagions’.  These are, for example, smiles which are copied or mimicked automatically.  Instead, they perform an important role in the organisation of conversation and emotional projection across subsequent discourse.

Accent and Dialect

Dialect
Dialect is the certain words that are actually spoke by a person.
Dialect is a specific variety of English that differs depending on where you live and there are three factors that will alter: lexis (vocabulary), grammar (structure) and phonology (pronunciation or accent). There are lots of different English dialects, most are likely to understand each other but some may not even understand what those are saying from a different region. A speaker from Newcastle, for instance, might speak with localised vocabulary, such as gan for “to go” or clarts for “mud”. He may often use regional grammatical constructions, such as the past tense constructions I’ve went and I’ve drank or the reflexive pronouns mysel, yoursel, hissel etc. In addition he probably uses a range of local pronunciations. For all these reasons he could be described as a Geordie dialect speaker.

Accent

Accent is the different sound of a person's speech, that varies depending on where they are from.Accent is based upon the differentiations in the sound patterns of a certain dialect. For example, a speaker from Newcastle who will usually use ordinary vocabulary and grammar, but whose pronunciation would come across very strong to someone from a more southern region, a Geordie accent. Dialect is often related to Accent. ‘True’ dialect speakers are very uncommon and most believe that everyone speaks with an accent.

Accent and Dialect

Dialect is a specific variety of English that is different from other varieties in three specific ways: lexis, grammar and phonology. English dialects may be different from each other, but all speakers within the English-speaking world can still generally understand them.

 Accent on the other hand, refers to differences in the sound patterns of a specific dialect. For example a speaker from the East-end of London may have a cockney accent, this will involve certain features including; glottal stopping where the letter t is pronounced with the back of the throat, and also L-vocalisation where the L at the end of words becomes a vowel sound ‘pal –pow’.  In simple terms dialect is the term for a variety of linguistic features, one of which is accent. True dialect speakers are relatively rare, but despite popular belief we all speak with an accent.

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis

Mum - it’s a bit foggy out

Nicole - it’s not that bad

Mum - we were in Maldon, it was really bad

Nicole - it’s not that bad on the motorway/           oh my god scariest driver on the motorway I came onto the a one two seven through a slip road a man tried to pull onto the slip road almost hit me

Mum - i don’t get what you mean

Nicole - like he thought it was an exit

Mum - ahh I got you

Nicole - gym clothes are so expensive

Mum - yeah where you looking should look on Adidas or in the outlet store

Nicole - yeah I suppose

This conversation is between a mother and daughter, it is an informal conversation which has very little significance. It is simply a remark on the weather, which leads to recalling a significant event earlier in the day. This then develops on to a completely different topic, as both participants have their attention divided and do not have much care for the current topic.

Both participants are already aware of one another’s presence, this is why there is no sign of greeting each other from the start. Most sentences spoken are grammatically incorrect; they are too short to be correct. This is as a result of informality and the participants having little reason to speak correctly, as it takes more time.

Nicole especially has little concern for the fog, having not picked the topic. With this in mind, Nicole is speaking and then interrupts herself because she has just recalled an earlier incident when she speaks of the ‘motorway/’. The phrase ‘oh my god’ emphasises her shock, it is a colloquial saying which initially looks as though she is concerned with god, however it actually has very little involvement with god.

The phrase ‘I got you’ is intended to mean that she understands what the other participant is saying rather, than actually having possession of them. This is a colloquial phrase but will most likely be understood by all.

The phrase ‘yeah I suppose’ is known as ‘back-channelling’, this is used to give the other speaker feedback that what they are saying is being understood, showing that Nicole is listening and has taken on board Mum’s advice. The word ‘suppose’ is known as ‘hedging’, this is to show uncertainty but in this situation I believe it also shows that Nicole’s attention is divided and isn’t really listening to Mum.

When Nicole says ‘so’ she is exaggerating her shock towards the substantial amount clothes cost. This is recognised as ‘expressive language’ which is used to develop one’s emotions.