[HPforGrownups] Re: Accents & Class

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 45636

Richard:
> 
> 
> <>Some argue that accent is an indicator, if not of class, then of 
> education, 
> <>
> 
> On the subject of accents: the only non-foreigners who spring to my mind as 
> 
> having been clearly identified as not speaking Standard English in the 
> books are Hagrid, Stan, and the other young men at the QWC.
> 
> Over the last couple of days, I've had an ear on this issue when watching 
> TV. Every time someone spoke with a strong accent (Irish, Welsh, Geordie, 
> Brummie, any variety of American or other accents/dialects), I thought 
> about how I'd transcribe it. In every case, I would have transcribed them 
> using standard English, and someone reading the words wouldn't have a clue 
> that they had been spoken with a strong accent.
> 
> As a result, I find it very, very dangerous to assume that just because, 
> say, the Weasley parents are written without any accent indicators, that 
> they speak the Queen's English. Perhaps I'm influenced by TMTSNBN and Julie 
> 
> Walters' strong Midlands accent (which I suspect isn't discernable to most 
> non-Brits), and so I imagine her lines in the books in that accent. The 
> choice of Mark Williams, with his equally strong Midlands accent, to play 
> Arthur, is no accident IMO. Ron's (i.e. Rupert's) accent isn't exactly RP 
> either (to witness the difference, if you can, go see him in 
> Thunderpants!). :-)

I just want to comment on some of the terminology here, as I think it gets a 
bit confusing and that the issues of accent and non-standard speech might be 
getting confused in this thread, particularly for the non-Brits amongst us.

There does seem to be a tendency to use the term 'Standard English' to refer 
to standard pronunciation. I think that more correctly, 'Standard English' 
refers to the form of the language, variations of dialect, etc, whereas 
Standard or Received Pronunciation refers to the accent employed.

[The 'King's (or Queen's) English seems also to be a problematic phrase, used 
variously to mean Standard English, or the type of English associated with 
the highest stratum of society.]

Thus one can speak Standard English (SE) with Received Pronunciation (RP), as 
I do more or less, by current standards, or Standard English with a regional 
accent, as my mother did.
Or, one can speak non-standard English (normally the result of regional 
variation)  thus normally with a  regional accent. Though as I can't really 
do accents, if I read HP out loud my rendition of Hagrid may turn out as an 
example of non-standard English in RP.

Real dialects (as in forms of English with a high proportion of regionally 
specific words and grammatical forms) are dying out in Britain, as a result 
both of education and mass exposure to the media, although there are still 
different forms of regional speech. But it has to be said that amongst the 
educated, what is more commonly found is a variation of pronunciation 
(accent) than any major difference in the *form* of the language.
The exception to this, is, of course where a conscious effort has been made 
to retain one's native mode of speech. But, to achieve academic success, you 
have to be able to use Standard English. If anyone wrote an essay using 
Hagrid's speech codes, it wouldn't get very good marks. At least it wouldn't 
if I marked it. [This is not the place to go into the woeful standards of 
literacy of many of those who manage to get into British higher education 
these days.]

Ironically, as dialects are dying out, so also are 'posh' accents. Even the 
Queen's English (I mean Queen Elizabeth's own accent) has changed. Her 
speech, though still upper-class, is a lot less upper-class than it used to 
be.

Now, the media these days are full of people using non-RP. In fact it seems 
almost de rigeur these days to have a Scottish or North Eastern accent if to 
get a job as a news reader or continuity announcer in radio or on television 
these days (a far cry from the days when the BBC seemed to manage to find 
even working class interviewees with impeccably correct English and 
pseudo-upper class accents!). But what we are talking about is *accent*. You 
would transcribe it as standard English, because that is what it is. In the 
media, it is essential that we *understand* what someone is saying, so 
non-standard English and the most extreme of accents are likely to be edited 
out. I well remember though, visiting Edinburgh many years ago (and I spent 
part of my childhood in Renfrewshire, so it wasn't as though I was unfamiliar 
with Scottish accents) and having tremendous difficulty in understanding what 
some folks said. The accent and form of some people's English was so 
different that I don't think you would have transcibed it without giving, as 
in Hagrid's speech, some indication of it's regional variation: that would 
really have been to *translate* some of it.

> Without his name as a guide, would anyone have known Seamus is Irish before 
> the QWC scenes? There is nothing in his dialogue to indicate otherwise. 

No, there is nothing that I recall. Which is very odd, if he does have an 
accent such as Fry or the CWMNBN give him. There are some small but very 
characteristic usages which characterise Irish English. I'm racking my brain 
for one, but can't think of one off the top of my head. The vicar of the 
parish in which I live is from Belfast. He's lived in England for donkey's 
years, but still has a *very* strong accent, but even leaving that aside, I 
have noted in the past that if you wrote down his speech without any 
indicator of accent, you would still be able to tell from a few 
characteristic usages -  "so he did" at the end of a statement is the sort of 
thing, that he was Irish.

And 
> Moody - most people consider him to be Scottish, all because of a single 
> word: "laddie". Nothing else about him dispels this notion, and "laddie" 
> would be unlikley anywhere else in Britain, but without that word, we'd not 
> 
> be any the wiser.

Really? I'd never though of him as Scottish. Using "laddie" in that 
patronising way I don't think is exclusively Scottish. 

> 
> So even if accent were a strong indicator of class origins, considering we 
> have only the written word as a guide, judging the books' dramatis personae 
> 
> by this standard is frankly impossible.

This is true of accent, but not necessarily of non-standard English.
I think we can be pretty certain that Stan and Ernie don't come from upper 
class backgrounds! And it's unlikely that they're highly educated. 
(Incidentally, I note that Stan is generally interpreted as a Cockney. 
Ernie's accent seems to be different: his use of "summat" indicates he's a 
northerner.)

I think JKR is in a rather difficult situation. How *is* she to indicate in a 
natural sort of way that regional and class variation exist within the WW? 
She is confined to what she can communicate on paper and it is very easy for 
the rendition of regional accents to appear patronising. As it is, she seems 
to have confined it to Hagrid, whom she treats with affection, to Stan and 
Ernie who are slightly comic and the young men at the QWC, who definitely 
are. The House Elves' manner of speech is something else again.

Eloise

The following may be of interest:
(snipped from: http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~1sp/BritishEnglish.html)

>>In Britain, "people are often able to make instant and unconscious 
judgements about a stranger’s class affiliation on the basis of his or her 
accent."  Both the words and pronunciation of many individuals reflect that 
person’s social position. It is agreed that in England, the "phonetic factors 
assume a predominating role which they do not generally have in North 
America" 

<snip diagram referred to below which I presume won't come out!>

Geographical variation is represented along the broad base of the pyramid 
while the vertical dimension exhibits social variation. It can be seen that 
working class accents display a good deal of regional variety, but as the 
pyramid narrows to its apex, up the social scale, it’s also apparent that 
upper class accents exhibit no regional variation. 

Thus by definition, any regional accent would not be considered upper-class 
and the more localizable the accent, the more it will described as a "broad" 
accent.  purports that broad accents reflect: 

regionally, the highest degree of local distinctiveness 
socially, the lowest social class 
linguistically, the maximal degree of difference from RP.

A 1972 survey carried out by National Opinion Polls in England, provides an 
example of how significantly speech differences are associated with social 
class differences. The following question was asked:
"Which of the these [eleven specified factors] would you say are most 
important in being able to tell which class a person is?" Respondents were 
randomly chosen from the British public. The factor that scored the highest 
was "the way they speak" followed by "where they live." At the bottom of the 
list was "the amount of money they have." All this is evidence that then, and 
to some degree even now, "speech is regarded as more indicative of social 
class than occupation, education and income." 





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]