Accent and Dialect article

If it’s good enough for a potential Prime Minister its good enough for you!

Ed Milliband, along with many other people constantly in the public eye, wants to be able to connect with their audience if not with activities they embark on, but with their voice. Your accent can determine how well you are able to connect with these audiences and Milliband has realised this. To be able to ‘impress the voters’ he wants to vote for him in the upcoming election, Milliband uses regional dialect in his campaign and converges to their socailect. This shows how some accents are more appealing than others and in this case, Received Pronunciation is not favoured among the electorates. Giles, a professor from California, conducted some research on capital punishment and what accents are seen to be more persuasive. It was found that regional accents – like what Milliband is putting on to ‘impress the voters’- is seen as more persuasive than the prestigious accent of Received Pronunciation. Therefore showing how the ‘Oxford PPE-ist’ will be more appealing to a different type of socialect.

Your intelligence should not be determined on the accent you have obtained. Why should an accent such as Scouse or Geordie be looked down upon as being unwise and foolish, Making people from Liverpool and Newcastle gain a bad reputation? Ed Milliband is from an area which has an image of being an intelligent, middle-class, high end area of London, so obviously he needs all the help he can get to connect with ‘everyday’ people from working class backgrounds. But is the Labour leader mocking the non-standard English dialect by using statements like ‘it ain’t gonna be like that’ when trying to win over the public? Elisions such as ‘ain’t’ and ‘gonna’ can be used by a range of regional dialects along with Ed Milliband using it while his natural accent is Received Pronunciation. So why should slang be labelled as the working class socialect?

Transport and technology has been expanding for many years now allowing people to have access to connect with a wider range of people from different cities to countries. This development has therefore allowed accents to travel from place to place and now cities can have a mixture of different accents within them. So why should slang be labelled as the working class socialect? If people from Chelsea, a high end area of London, now being able to move to the Bristolian speaking city of Bristol easily, then surely these people will pick up some  ‘gurt lush’ Bristol dialect? Even if a Cambridge university graduate moves to Bristol and picks up some non-standard English phrases like ‘alright me lover’ and ‘proper job’, this does not mean that there intelligence has slipped. It just means that they are exploring new ways of communicating, and personally… I find it interesting learning new ways to say the same phrase.

The way you speak does not determine your intelligence and Berstein and Labov prove this. These researchers found that there is no clear link between spoken language and logical thoughts. So by Milliband using regional dialect, is he actually ‘mocking’ the working class intelligence? Surely he as a potential Prime Minister wants to seem wise and intellectual. By a frequently televised politician using laid back dialect and an approachable accent alongside it, surely people with these regional accents should also be seen as welcoming, intelligent and most of all…employable? Morrison’s don’t think so. They have quoted ‘nobody from Liverpool please’ when promoting job offers to the public. With Berstein and Labov’s results, it is proven that people with regional accents can be as intelligent as someone speaking in Received Pronunciation. If the Labour leader believes in using ‘everyday’ accents and dialect to ‘impress the voters’, why is the public themselves pushing away these unique accents?

holiday homework

Is this truly equality?

After 46 years David Cameroon has fixed the gender pay gap which has been fighting for justice. female workers are now paid the same if not more in some areas like healthcare and STEM roles, and women are finally getting the equality they have always deserved. Nevertheless, more could be said for our little ones. The famous toy collection of Barbie’s are bringing male Barbie’s to our shelves, but how is this inequality?

 The new brand of male Barbie’s will make all parents feel thankful towards ‘Mattel’ ( Barbie company) for making their little boys feel more welcome into playing with dolls, and allowing it to be seen as ‘normal’. But this is not why they have been developed. The manufacturing company of Barbie’s have said how this launch of new male Barbie’s is to ‘inspire girls to dream about what it’s like to hold a top-ranking job in the workforce’ and this is to ‘represent today’s culture’. But surely by making male Barbie’s is going against the stereotypes of today’s culture, so why not do it within the workplace?

When you hear the concrete noun ‘Doctor’, your instinct tells you that person is talking about a man. The use of marked terms relate to inequality in the workplace as you only initiate a work role with a women when the word 'female' is put in front of it. This does not say that men are the only people who can get higher jobs- like Barbie is- but still is showing distinct difference in authority in terms of a job. Why is Barbie shattering children’s dreams before they can come into a reality? Surely you as parents are the only people who can have a say as to what your children can and cannot do in terms of their future job?

Deborah Tannen, a theorist, came up with the idea that men and women are different in terms of how they evolve themselves within situations. One of these theories was that men look for status and women support during conversations.in relation to Barbie’s,’ Mattel ‘say how they have created these male Barbie’s to ‘inspire’ girls therefore supporting young females into thinking about their future. On the other hand, it is giving males the authority role with the Barbie wearing a uniform, initiating power over the other female Barbie’s. This inequality is being drummed into your young ones! and for what…to teach them that men rule the world? Margret Thatcher, Karren Brady and Marjorie Scardino are all powerful women who concord extraordinary jobs within business alone, without a male holding their hand. Woman can do it and who is a toy company to tell you any different.

These toy dolls have been manufactured to ‘inspire girls to dream’, so who is to stop them dreaming in a different perspective? Toys are for playing with and your young children, boy or girl, can play with these dolls however they want... am I right? Due to this, ‘girls can truly envision being anything at all’. Even though the male Barbie is in a suit, nothing is to say that a young child cannot play with it as a bin man and allow the female doll to be the’ boss'. Do not allow your little girl to be told what she can and cannot do in the future. Do not allow your little boy believe he is better than any girl he comes across. Do not allow your children to be shut down by stereotypes and labels the media has stamped on them. Labels are there to be pulled off.


https://thegenderblog.com/

work from tuesday 12th april

 

 

Labels do not determine your power

Why are all men addressed as ‘Mr’ married or not? [Pause for 3 seconds while making eye contact with many people]Is it because all men are equal no matter what their relationship status? [Quick pause]If it is to do with equality, then why are unmarried women addressed as ‘Miss’ and married ‘Mrs’?  Is sexism still a big part of humanity?

When you are sat in a classroom and you address the teacher as Mr – when male- you do not know whether [say it while using hands as a way of showing opposites] this male is neither married nor single. As a result, this does not affect how you see this person and you [making eye contact while pointing] do not see them beyond their personal power in the classroom. Do you not? But this is not the case when it comes to females [pause to give thinking time]. As soon as you here the teacher being addressed as Miss, you instantly know that she is not married. In some cases, this could be a sign that she is not [using the gesture for an apostrophe] ‘settled down’ –even though she may have been in a stable relationship for many years. This could either make you see this teacher not as powerful as she would be if married where she would be addressed as ‘Mrs’ as it is an official sign that this women is wed.

But marriage does not mean between a man and a women… [Pause for effect]

By stating this alone shows how the title of Miss or Mrs is not determined by a males power. How men do not determine a women’s status in her work place. Does a female not get a job purely on being a ‘Miss’ or Mrs’? NO [say louder, more passionate but not shouting] I know stereotypes will believe you to be married to the opposite sex but there is a stereotype for everything! Why should you [eye contact] when you are older feel ashamed in whom you marry?

If the concrete noun ‘Mr’ is used to address all men, then surely there is a reason, is it because men dominate conversation when it comes to communicating with the opposite sex? Zimmerman and West found that 95% of men interrupted during a conversation with females. The use of the noun ‘Mr’ therefore could be seen as the reason for why men perceive themselves of having a superior status. However, 5% [puts up 5 fingers] of these men did not interrupt in conversation. This implies that not all men are dominant within conversation and maybe it is to do with individual differences. Could men just be ruder? 

When a doctor or a Professor, the person- no matter what sex- is addressed as Dr for Doctor or Pro for Professor. They have [counting on fingers] the same job, personal power and status and [moving both hands outwards in synchrony] still seen as equal. But why is this seen as a surprise? [Pause for 2 seconds] This question I just made may be more of a shock to women as it does to men, because it is suggesting how women finally are seen as equals in the workplace to males. It might just be in these lexical fields but somewhere, someone has made the mend! As a doctor or a professor is [counting on fingers] a high paid, educated well-earned job, this equality may be a bribe. As men might say [Says sarcastically] ‘Some females are actually as good as we are when it comes to work so they can finally be seen as equals’ This is very old-fashioned views and is why I am saying how this inequality of women being picked out as not being married is wrong!

[Starts walking round as it is a bit of topic so can engage with people more with a laid back vibe]After the Second World War-[tilting head forward] before your time- working class mothers had to stay at home and look after the children. They were seen as stay at home wives and had this label of stay at home mothers. Females had neither time nor money to go and get a degree while the men went off to work .This divide with being married stay at home mothers and non-married women who were seen to not have a stable lifestyle has lived on until this day and age and it is now- I believe- outdated. We are not involved in a war in this country like we were in world war two so why live like it?

Berstein and Labov’s research oppose how women are classed as equals only when or if they become a doctor or professor, due to their results showing how a man’s perceived higher status is nothing to do with their intelligence. This just sums up how this labelling is outrageous and should never make you or any female feel less important or less manageable of having a high skilled job than men.

Labels do not determine your power… so don’t let them!

 

My audience is College students as I want to inform them on how having Labels do not determine the power you have and will have after college because these pupils will be going off and getting jobs and applying to university so need to know that nothing will stop them getting what they want if they try.