Perceptual Diactology: Overall Perception of Language Distribution and Variation

Accents are often considered to be an aspect of one’s self-identification. An individual’s vernacular variety can additionally be recognized as distinguishable from the typical standardization of the English language. John Edwards illustrates this concept of standard and non-standardization as a society “whose patterns of communication are not mutually intelligible.” The study of perceptual dialectology surrounds non-linguistic attitudes towards these “patterns of communication” and their overall perception of language distribution and variation. 

As perceptual dialectology focuses predominantly on the “viewpoint of those who do not speak the accent under consideration”, it can be concluded that this type of study can be recognized as an external observation. It has often been theorized that standard English is, from a social perceptive, regarded as portraying higher prestige than that of regional dialect. Rachel Tatman explores the idea that expressing yourself with a standard speech “can give you opportunities that you might not otherwise have had access to.” Therefore, it can be perceived that non-linguists potentially correlate one’s intellectual abilities with their ‘quality’ of speech. 

A modern example of this can be recognized through the widely-known comedian, Kevin Bridges. Bridges, who speaks with a strong Scottish accent, recounts in his autobiography – We Need to Talk About… Kevin Bridges – how he was told to modulate his speech if he was to ever “get ahead in TV”. Examples of language modification can also be recognized in other aspects away from the media; such as education. A school in Hampshire was previously under scrutinization following concerns being “raised … about their heavy use of local dialect”. This could primarily be considered a teaching of correct grammar and a promotion of universal understanding. However, the concluding paragraph of the article highlights an implication of language having a relation to one’s perception of intelligence. It illustrates how the actress Emma Thompson, a former teacher, advised her pupils to not partake in the usage of local slang as “it makes you sound stupid”. Therefore, there is the question of whether individuals unconsciously associate the way we sound with the way we are and the possibility of whether these evaluations derive from the dissimilarity of the promoted standard English and the local non-standard English. Implicit here is the idea that non-linguists extrude a positive evaluation and orientation toward standard English. This perception of a “correct” speech can be recognized as overt prestige. However, there is also the additional concept of covert prestige. Covert prestige, often ascribed to a certain group of speakers, is the coveting of a certain linguistic variety. Rob Penhallurick states that “overtly prestigious features are associated with social status and covertly prestigious features with social solidarity.” 

Individuals who acknowledge and acquire desirable linguistic features are often part of a smaller speech community. This notion of speech community has always been of great interest to sociolinguistics. William Labov highlights New York in particular as “a single speech community” – noting that “New Yorkers show a remarkable uniformity”. In his NYC 1966 study, Labov focused on phonological variables (such as the variance of vowel sounds and the presence of the post-vocalic /r/). He additionally examined contextual factors and stylistic variation (such as casual speech in comparison to formal speech). Through his study, Labov recognized that a significant number of individuals believed that they inhibited a greater use of prestigious variants than they essentially occurred to have. Therefore, there is the implication that New Yorkers are aware of prestige norms and have a covet to speak in a way that exhibits this. Another example of this can be explored through the work of Manfred Gorlach. In his 1985 study, he explores the attitudes towards and the social history surrounding Scottish dialect. He primarily focused on Scottish grammar and covert Scottish idioms (such as “he’s keeping fine” and “the back of nine”). It was then investigated whether non-linguists found the linguistic features under notice to be considered as overt or covert. Gorlach concluded that “To the informants, “good” usually referred to social acceptability”. His study encouraged the discussion of whether non-linguist impressions of a particular dialect is also dependent on other factors (eg: the background of an individual). 

In both Labov’s and Gorlach’s studies, it was common “to condemn the speech of a person or of a group of people as “rough” or “sloppy” because of the way in which the individual or group is perceived”. Therefore, there is the possible implication that perceptual dialectology not only focuses on the impression on an individual’s speech but also on the internalized feelings toward that particular variety of speech. Along with the regional and geographical aspects of perceptual dialectology, there is the additional societal and class aspect. It is suggested that “a middle-class speaker can ‘get away with’ … the use of a number of marked Scotticisms, provided they occur against the background of a middle-class and not a working-class accent”. In the 1950s, Canadian psychologists designed a methodological procedure that was intended to “tap into the subject’s unconscious attitudes towards languages and dialects”. Now known as the matched-guise technique, It was an indirect approach to examining how the subject would classify an individual’s personality and traits depending on how they sounded. Through this technique, “speakers record several controlled samples (the same passage) in different linguistic varieties”. However, the recipient would be unaware that the speech passages were performed by the same individual in different guises or, in other words, speaking in different varieties. 

Therefore, “the only variable being rated by the judges was the language or the dialect used in each recording”. An example of the matched-guise technique can be identified in a 2012 study of adolescents located in Spain and their attitudes towards standard Galician, non-standard Galician, and Spanish. The study illustrated that “different values are attached to the three linguistic varieties investigated”. Their findings highlighted the social stigmas attached to having a Galician accent or exhibiting non-standard Galician speech. Therefore, it could be concluded that “Spanish was still more socially valued in the cities” by non-linguists. Evidently, the use of the matched-guise technique allows linguists to examine speakers' internalized attitudes toward certain language varieties and was eventually used in practice by sociolinguists such as William Labov in the 1960s. Although the matched-guise technique developed and extended research for attitudes towards regional dialects, it did receive negative connotations surrounding its experimental aspects and attitudinal results. 

One of the greatest points of criticism was “the use of decontextualized and contrived speech samples”. There was the implication that the samples recorded exhibited artificial or ‘unnatural’ representations of the dialects under consideration. Thus, the authenticity of the attitudes measured was considered questionable. As a consequence, the verbal-guise technique was created as “an attempt to address and avoid the issues encountered with the pre-existing technique”.

The verbal-guise technique was considered dissimilar to the matched-guise technique as it provided recordings of authentic speakers using more natural speech. Due to this, it was believed that the results obtained were of a higher degree of accuracy and reliability. This idea of language variety eventually encouraged the discussion of whether we accommodate our communication to suit those in our environment. In the 1970s, Howard Giles created a theory that “aimed at predicting and explaining many of the adjustments individuals make to create, maintain or decrease the social distance in interaction”. The accommodation theory focused on how individuals alter and adjust their speech in order to suit a certain situation or conversation. For example, the tone someone uses to interact with a close family member would differ significantly to the one they would use at an interview for a job. In the situation of a job interview, the interviewee is most likely to alter their speech in order to include more RP (Received Pronunciation) attributes. When a non-standard speaker (otherwise known as basilect) accommodates towards a standard speaker (otherwise known as acrolect), this is known as upward accent convergence. On the other hand, there is also the concept of downward convergence; when a standard speaker accommodates towards a non-standard speaker. This modification of speech is encouraged by “the desire to gain approval from one another”. 

However, it is evident that individuals, consciously or unconsciously, also adapt their speech in order to socially distance themselves from a situation. This is recognized as linguistic divergence and its aim is to create “an accentuation of speech and nonverbal differences between self and the other”. An example of linguistic divergence can be identified in a 2008 study where individuals learning Welsh were questioned by an RP-sounding English speaker as to why they were so interested in acquiring a “dying language which had a dismal future”. This encouraged several participants to accentuate and broaden their Welsh accents in order to create a distance between themselves and the individual. David Uzzell states that “place is clearly an important concept in environmental psychology, but its theoretical formulation has been varied and problematic”. There is this idea that non-linguists exhibit social meanings to their geographical environment. In 1974, geographers Peter Gould and Rodney White examine this idea of social sensitivity through the concept of mind mapping. 

This technique became a “basic strategy to put people in a fairly free hypothetical situation where they are asked to rank their order of preference for a series of places in terms of residential desirability”. It could be argued that Charles de Tourtoulon and Pieter Willems, both French linguists, first approached this study of mind mapping in the late 19th century. Tourtoulon, in 1876, conducted a study surrounding the major dialect boundaries of France, which was then followed by Willems who, in 1886, focused on the similarities of dialects in the surrounding areas of where low Franconian varieties were present. Preston’s creation of mental mapping was intended to explain an individual’s connections between characteristics and environment. It provided “a lens into the way people produce and experience space”. Individuals tend to create an externalized mental image of a place based on their familiarity, perception, and knowledge of that environment. Therefore, there is the implication that “communal and cultural beliefs, as well as the influence of the mass media, all have some relevance to mental mapping”. 

In 1981, Dennis Preston developed on this idea of spatial preferences by having individuals draw on a map and state what regional dialects they believed belonged there. This practice of perceptual dialectology, previously recognized as folk dialectology, differed significantly with previous research as Preston was aiming to gather research directly from the speakers themselves. An example of Preston’s method in use includes asking individuals to “draw dialect boundaries on a map of the United States in addition to asking the respondents to rank the 50 states on affective qualities”. His study included questions about the degree of difference and correctness and pleasantness. However, he also focused on dialect identification and qualitative data. Dialect identification, for example, involved individuals listening to voice recordings and then matching the voice with the localities presented before them. Following his initial study in Hawaii, Preston continued to develop and expand on these methods in other states. The late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries witnessed the continued growth and expansion of perceptual dialectology. In the 1990s, Japanese Scholar Fumio Inoue developed on his own earlier technique of ‘dialect images’ from the 1970s. 

Inoue stated that “research in dialect maps should not stop at the geographical level”. As his study involved forming dialect images without the use of a specific map, he believed that the use of dialect images could potentially exemplify individuals’ concepts of dialects more accurately than mental maps. Influenced by the work of Charles Egerton Osgood, Inoue eventually expanded the studies of perceptual dialectology by using semantic differential and factor analytic techniques. Preston highlighted that Inoue’s research “recognized the independent, social-psychological importance of PD”. 

Evidently, perceptual dialectology has developed and expanded significantly from the late nineteenth century or perhaps even earlier. Additionally, its purpose to examine the non-linguists understanding of dialectal variation “demonstrates the pervasive and intense nature of speaker attitudes to varieties of language”.