English Language and Linguistics

Description

ASSIGNMENT

1: Report on variation in British EnglishQuestion 1: Accent variation in the BBC Voices Project Resources: BBC Voices recordings: http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices/ Focusing on 2-3 selected pronunciation features (e.g. glottal stop, TH-fronting, BATH, STRUT, FACE vowels, etc.), listen to and analyse a selection of BBC Voices clips (minimum 10). You can select the geographical region from the drop-down list. Your report should include at least the following: (i) a summary of what you observed in the clips, e.g. a table of which speakers do or do not have a certain feature; (ii) if applicable, a discussion of whether the results of your study correspond to what the Trudgill reading and the course textbook describe; (iii) a discussion of which social features (age, gender, etc) seem to relate to the use of certain pronunciation features. You might find that there is no difference across, e.g., genders, but this is fine (and you should report that you found no difference). You may want to pay attention to more than one ‘token’ per speaker for a given feature, as individuals do vary.