Accent + Dialect revision

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-code-switches-black-english/586723/

It Wasn’t ‘Verbal Blackface.’ AOC Was Code-Switching. - John McWhorter

Summary:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was accused of 'verbal blackface' but underneath it all she was just code-switching to relate to the black audience. "Ocasio-Cortez was engaging in what linguists call code-switching. Few find code-switching surprising when Latinos do it between English and Spanish, alternating between the two languages within a single conversation or even sentence. The concept perhaps seems less familiar when done between dialects of the same language, but this, too, is extremely common." People are outraged at the fact that Ocasio-Cartez is using Black English and she isn't black. People think that it's just "an act" and that she's belittling and disrespecting the American Black culture. On top of that, people who speak Black English, or people who code-switch between English and Black English, are seen as uneducated people and  "...that Black English is a mere matter of grammatical flubs, a legacy of inadequate education..."

McWhorter talks about code-switching in a positive light and states that there's nothing wrong with changing your dialect slightly to conform with the people around you. He also stated: "More to the point, why would it be wrong for a politician to seek to connect to black audiences by sprinkling her speech with some of their dialect, which she grew up hearing and using herself? After all, language is fundamentally designed for connection."

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NOTES:

Milroy's 'Belfast' study 
Giles 'Capital Punishment' study
Labov's 'Department Store' study
Bernstein and Labov 
BBC 'Voices' project
British Library 'Sounds' project

Milroy's 'Belfast' study:

Milroy investigated three working-class communities in Belfast: Ballymacarrell (a Protestant area in East Belfast), the Hammer (a Protestant area in West Belfast) and the Clonard (a Catholic area in West Belfast). All three areas are poor working-class districts with a high incidence of unemployment. She took part in the life of each community as 'a friend of a friend' She investigated the correlation between the integration of individuals in the community and the way those individuals speak.

What she found was that a high Network Strength Score was correlated with the use of vernacular or non-standard forms. In most cases this meant that men whose speech revealed high usage of vernacular or non-standard forms were also found to belong to tight-knit social networks. Conversely, vernacular or non-standard forms are less evident in women's speech because the women belong to less dense social networks. However, for some variables, the pattern of men using non-standard and women using standard forms was reversed. In the Hammer and the Clonard, for example, more women than expected tended to use the non-standard form of 'a' as in hat.

Her findings can also be linked to:

CLASS – her ‘areas’ were all predominantly working class with high levels of unemployment

GENDER – Women were less likely to use the non standard forms as not part of such tight knit social groups as men

SOCIAL GROUPS – If you are close to people you use similar language.

Giles 'Capital Punishment' study:

Howard Giles presented 5 groups of students with an identical set of arguments against capital punishment. 1 group received a written presentation, and the other 4 received an oral presentation. One was presented by an RP speaker, one by a Somerset speaker, one by South Welsh speaker and the last by a Birmingham speaker. Firstly the students were asked how impressed they were with the competence of the presentations.

• The RP and the written presentations were deemed the most impressive
• The Birmingham presentation was deemed the least impressive 

Then, Giles assessed the persuasiveness of the speakers by asking the student's opinions of Capital Punishment before and after the presentations.

• Regional accents scored the highest
• Those hearing regional speakers were more likely to change their mind than those hearing the RP speaker or reading the printed presentation

It can therefore be concluded that RP is deemed more professional an competent than regional accents, but regional accents are more persuasive than RP accents.