Eckert and Cheshire/Research Task

Eckert and Cheshire

 

In every school there are always going to be distinct groups. Eckert studied two high school groups in America; the jocks and the burnouts. In the UK, there is not so much focus on the specific groups, they are often just classed as ‘friendship groups’. However having said this, you often do get the sporting groups, whether this be football or cricket or rugby etc. The members of these groups tend to be close to one another as they have to build up teamwork when they are playing and this therefore helps develop friendships. Typically, as these friendships develop, you would expect members of the group to pick up on each other’s language choices and this may be reflected in the way they later go on to speak. For example, a phrase that one member of the group may use could then go on to be a phrase that an entire group go on to use. All of this goes for the other friendship groups, whether they be a large girl group, a smaller girl group, ‘nerds’, a mixed friendship group etc. Linking this in to Cheshire’s studies, she showed that girls who didn’t have positive attitudes towards fighting and swearing etc. tended to speak using correct grammar against those who did have a positive attitude towards those things: they spoke using more incorrect grammar. This could link in with friendship groups and their overall attitude towards school; for example, stereotypically you would expect those groups who didn’t care about school or showed a negative attitude towards it to not focus so much on their grammar against those who are studious and willing to work. As a general note, I think that when surrounded by the peers in your friendship group you would tend to use more colloquial language because these are the people you feel the most comfortable around and therefore you don’t pay as much attention to the actual words you are saying.

 

Research Task

• Accent only relates to pronunciation and intonation rather than grammar and vocabulary.
• Listeners can make judgements on peoples’ intelligence and warmth purely by listening to a recorded accented speech.
• Engagement with TV programmes seems to have an influence on young’s people speech
• When analysing tweets, it was found that women use more pronouns and use terms involving emotions.
• It was also found that swearwords and taboo words  were more commonly used by men whereas women choose milder terms