Class Survey: Accents and Dialects

RP	Very	Fairly	Neither…nor…	Not very	Not at all
Friendly		3	3	6	1
Intelligent	10	4
Trustworthy	1		6	1

Brummie	Very	Fairly	Neither…nor…	Not very	Not at all
Friendly		8	4	2
Intelligent			2	9	3
Trustworthy		4	7	2	1

 

Scouse	Very	Fairly	Neither…nor…	Not very	Not at all
Friendly		7	4	1(from Liverpool)
Intelligent	1 (from Liverpool)	4	5	4
Trustworthy	1	6	4	2	1

In This class survey, Recieved Pronounciation (RP) came across as being the most intelligent accent, compared to Brummie and Scouse.This is because 10 people thought RP was very intelligent, no one thinking Brummie was intelligent and only one peron believing Scouse was intelligent (with this person coming from Liverpool and therefore being biased towards her accent).This suggests that people stereotype a well-spoken accent with the person being well-educated and intelligent.

Although RP scored high on intelligence, it did not score as high on friendliness with only 3 out of 16 thinking the accent sounded freindly.This could be down to the content of which the woman was saying.However, woman are seen to have softer voices and speak in polite forms compared to men,  making this evidence not link with Lakoff's theory.Brummie was seen to be the most friendly with 8 people voting it as being fairly friendly, which is only one person more than scouse as being the most friendly. This also does not support Lakoff's theory due to the dialogue in both the Scouse and Brummie clip coming from a man.On the other hand, thier accents may seem more approachable to people due to RP being referred to the Queen and higher class people, suggesting that they may look down on 'lower classes' coming across as less friendly.

Unlike when the person from Liverpool voted her accent of Scouse being the most intelligent, when it came down to friendlyness she voted her accent as being not very friendly.This could be the case as people tend to look down on their owen accent because they believe it is not as nice as others (in this case Brummie).

None of the accent came across to people as being extremely trustworthy because only one person thought the Scouse accent and RP was very trustoworthy with the rest of the group thinking RP was niether trustworthy nor untrustworthy and 4 thinking the same with Scouse.This may be down to RP coming across as snotty and vein due to the stereotypes and people wuth the accent pronounces their words perfectly, and the scouseman being hard to understand but at the same time is a nice accent to listen to as its so unique.

Brummie scored the lowest overall on trustworthy with 7 suggesting it is neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy and one thinking it is not at all trustworthy.This could be because it is a harsh accent and due to it being a mans accent, being very mascaline and dominate down to the dominence model,Therefore attimidating.