Universität Duisburg-Essen

Campus Essen

WS 2007/8

Hauptseminar:

Language,

Variation and Change

English in the Southwest of

England-

Presentation of a Regional Variation of

English

Hauptseminar Leistungsnachweis

Jens Strohmeyer

2

Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Dialectology 4

2.1 What is Dialectology? Dialect vs. Accent 4

2.2 Regional Variation 5

2.3 Traditional vs. Mainstream Dialects 8

3. English in the Southwest of England 9

3.1 Boundaries of South-western England 9

3.2 Characteristics of the area 10

3.3 Features of Southwest English 11

3.3.1 Phonetic Features 11

3.3.2 Grammatical Features 13

3.3.3 Lexical Features 14

4. Conclusion 15

5. References 17

3

1. Introduction

Like all languages, English is very varied. It comes in many different regional and social

varieties. All these varieties are linguistically equivalent. No variety of the language is

linguistically superior to any other.

1

Since English is one of the most widespread languages in the world, a vast number of

varieties can be found all over the world. These varieties all differ from each other and

are marked by regional and social aspects. Investigating these aspects helps to

prevent misunderstandings (e.g. the same words meaning different things in different

varieties) and offers a lot of information on historical topics. Very often research is done

on geographically far away territories as it is the case between Britain and America.

This is a pity since there are a lot of varieties within British border which are worth

being discussed. That is why this paper deals with a regional variety situated in

England: The south-western variety. This essay will give an overview on the English

spoken in the Southwest of England.

But before the essay is focused on this regional variety chapter two will

present dialectology to the reader. What is dialectology? Which are its aims? Where is

the difference between Dialect and Accent? Why is observing regional variation so

important? To what extend influences social status the occurrence of a social variation?

All these questions will be dealt with in chapter two in order to make the reader aware

of the importance of language study and especially dialectology.

Chapter 3 then will deal with `English in the Southwest′. After a short

presentation of the difficulties of locating exactly `south-western′, the boundaries of the

regional variation are defined. Next will be a presentation of characteristics of the

region in order to make the in the next chapter presented features of south-western

language easier to understand.

The presentation of linguistic features will include phonetics, grammar and

lexis. It will be based on Martyn F. Wakelin′s The Southwest of England, since not

much research has been done on that topic and the work of Wakelin seems to be the

most adequate for this paper. Furthermore, this essay will not present every feature

which can be found when talking about the dialect. Mentioning all would not be capable

for an essay of this size, hence shall the reader keep in mind that the features and

1 Trudgill (1994: 1).

4

examples are only a subjective selection by the author and could be extended

endlessly.

The last part of this essay will be a conclusion, summing up what was said in the

term paper.

2. Dialectology

2.1 What is Dialectology? Dialect vs. Accent

Dialectology is a sub-field of linguistics and deals with the different varieties of a

language. `Different varieties′ does not only mean that dialectology observes dialects,

as the term dialectology might suggest. Accents of a language are regarded as kinds of

varieties and, therefore, are observed as well. But what is the difference between

dialect

and

accent

? Arthur Hughes:

We use dialect to refer to varieties distinguished from each other by differences of grammar

and vocabulary. Accent, on the other hand, refers to variations in pronunciations.2

This definition explains that an accent is a variation only in pronunciation; dialects

differ from each other in grammar and vocabulary. This is a quite understandable

definition, if it is kept in mind that this definition is not as strict as it might be seen: A

dialect, of course, also contains variation in pronunciation but in contrast to an accent,

not only that. Consequently, an accent can become part of a dialect. The problem that

emerges then is the distinction between dialect and language. Why do you call the

variety, spoken in the south of Spain `Andaluz′, a dialect, whereas in Catalonia they

speak the language `Catalan′? Martyn F. Wakelin defines language and dialects as

follows:

The word dialect itself is used with various shades of meaning, but for the present purposes

dialects will be taken to be variant, but mutually intelligible, forms of one language, whereas

language is assumed to imply a form of speech not on the whole intelligible to other

languages. Thus, the vernaculars of Devon and Yorkshire are

dialects

, whereas those of

France and Spain are

languages

.3

2 Hughes (2005: 2).

3 Wakelin (1981: 1).