JOHN HONEY'S SOCIOPHONOLOGY •Vojtěch Bezděk •541025 Blue letters on a black background Description automatically generated A person with a beard and glasses Description automatically generated Who was John Honey? Who was John Honey? A person with a beard and glasses Description automatically generated Understanding Sociophonology • Example: • • British dialect: American dialect: • •Leisure [ˈleʒ.ər] [ˈliː.ʒɚ] • •Lever [ˈliː.vər] [ˈlev.ɚ] • Řeč Understanding Sociophonology Evolution of RP Received Pronunciation Evolution of Received Pronunciation Two forms of RP •Marked – royal family, aristocracy, senior army and naval officers, university teachers • • •Unmarked – BBC, doctors, teachers • • •Markings = indicators of special social privilege or pretension Profile of a person with a flag on her hat Description automatically generated A person holding a test tube with a green liquid Description automatically generated • •Features cluster around acrolect (standard), basilect (broad popular speech), and mesolect (majority) • •hyperlect (marked RP accent) and paralect (close to RP with minor nonstandard features) • •Education influences movement towards RP on the continuum • • • Continuum of Linguistic Variation Significance of RP and Standard Accents •Variants can be positive or negative, often based on social perceptions • •We distinguish between: •indicators (variants with minimal social significance) •markers (variants with clear social significance) •stereotypes (general characterizations of speech forms) • •Stereotypes extend to languages, with some languages perceived as “beautiful” while others are deemed “ugly” or “harsh” • •Cultural differences influence evaluations; for example, the Kipsigis language in East Africa was praised for its melodiousness by a British colonial governor • Social Significance of Accent Variation Hierarchy of Accents in UK Persistence of Accents A person in a dress Description automatically generated with medium confidence Accent Adoption •What influences our accent? • •Adolescents adopt nonstandard accents as badges of identity • •Language serves as a powerful expression of local identity • •Pygmalion, educatedness = “well spoken” Register and Accent Variation Glasses on top of a book Related paper 1 •Variability and change in Received Pronunciation •A study of six phonological variables in the speech of television newsreaders (2006) • •Dissertation by Bente R. Hannisdal • • •University of Bergen • • A logo with an owl on it Description automatically generated Variability and change in RP •Empirical investigation of current RP as spoken by television newsreaders • •Aims to explore aspects of RP variability by a detailed analysis of a set of phonological variables • •Empirical basis for the investigation is 30 hours of speech produced by 30 news presenters from three different television news channels • •Speech aspects • •Honey claims that social class was never the most important defining characteristic of RP, and “superior social rank was not in itself a guarantee of the right accent” • Variability and change in RP •No spoken standard • •RP displays considerable variability and that the phonetic properties of the accent have not remained static • •Updating RP • •Further research • Related paper 2 •Sociophonology of Received Pronunciation: Native and Non-Native Environments (2017) • •Dissertation by Ludmila Urbanová • • •Masaryk University Piles of paperwork Blue letters on a black background Description automatically generated Sociophonology of RP Sociophonology of RP Related paper 3 Colourful rolled magazines •Translation Challenges in Rendering Idiolects of Literary Characters (2019) • •Article by Olha Sung • •Kyiv National Linguistic University A logo of a book and a globe Description automatically generated Translation Challenges in Rendering Idiolects of Literary Characters Thank you for your attention! References: •https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2012/03/07/who-was-john-honey/ •https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2012/11/22/researching-john-honey/ •HONEY, JOHN. "Sociophonology." The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Coulmas, Florian (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 1998. Blackwell Reference Online. 28 December 2007 References: •https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30809552.pdf •https://is.muni.cz/th/fjgk5/Sociophonology_of_RP.pdf •https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/1112616 •