Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Evaluative Reactions to the Language of Disadvantage 161and language attitudes. We can now predict with some confidence whatsorts of reactions will be elicited when people hear varieties of BlackEnglish, Newfoundland English, Cockney, ‘Received Pronunciation’,Boston Brahmin English and many others.Attitudes are dynamic and not static, of course. This suggests (amongother things) that investigations must be repeated from time to time inorder to pick up any changes. A recent example here is provided byFabricius (2006: 119120), who points out that ‘Received Pronunciation’(RP: traditionally the highest-status variety in England) is sometimesstigmatized. Its speakers may be perceived as ‘posh’ or ‘snobbish’(a longstanding view, as we have already seen) and their accents asreflective of an ‘elitist discoursal stance’. Young people in particular, it issuggested, are now likely to repudiate ‘attitudes that sustained accentprejudice’.Accents and dialects change, too. Even the Queen’s English has alteredover the last half-century; it now shows some influences of ‘EstuaryEnglish’, a combination of London working-class speech and RP, firstdescribed by Rosewarne (1984, 1994). Analyzing the Queen’s vowelsounds over four decades of her annual Christmas messages, Harringtonet al. (2000: 927) found significant changes, evidence of a ‘drift in theQueen’s accent towards one that is characteristic of speakers who areyounger and/or lower in the social hierarchy’. Her accent has movedcloser to what the authors style ‘standard southern British’, although itremains ‘clearly set apart’ from it. Besides raising the intriguing notionthat the Queen no longer speaks the Queen’s English the way she oncedid, the import of these studies is a bit broader. It is one thing to describethe rise and appeal of the new estuarine accent among younger speakers,but it is another to show its effects upon existing speakers, especially RPspeakers. The fact that the speech of the Queen herself is influenced bychange suggests that, for more ‘ordinary’ individuals, the alterations arelikely to be greater. As Harrington et al. (2000: 927) conclude, ‘the extentof such... influences is probably more marked for most adult speakers,who are not in the position of having to defend a particular form ofEnglish’ to which we might add that they also live in rather closerproximity to those influences than does Elizabeth R.As part of this little digression, it may be useful here to make a pointabout terminology. While common usage refers to language-attitudestudies, most are actually studies of belief. If, for example, you assessresponses to questions like ‘How intelligent do you think this speaker is?’or ‘How fluent is this speaker?’, you may find out what the respondentbelieves. It would take further probing to add the affective or emotional