The Accent Bias Britain Project: An Overview
The Accent Bias Britain project brought together a team of sociolinguists, psychologists, and lawyers to investigate attitudes to various British accents and how these attitudes might play a role in …
Course: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Accents, Attitudes and Identity
Current research into language discrimination in the workplace
Watch Dr Dominic Watt describe a current research project that explores language discrimination in the hiring process of jobs in the legal sector. Share your thoughts about the video with …
Case study: Multicultural London English in schools
Professor Paul Kerswill offers a short video on the topic of MLE, or Multicultural London English. Does the video raise any particular issues or ideas for you? Share with the …
Justifications for accentism
So far on this course, we’ve mainly framed accentism as a negative thing. But if accent discrimination is so widespread, and it is not a criminal offence, are there any …
What is accentism?
An emerging topic of study for sociolinguists is that of ‘accentism.’ The term accentism describes discriminatory or unfair behaviour centred on someone’s accent or language use. Accentism is increasingly something …
Things to consider when collecting sociolinguistic data
Let’s begin this activity by looking at some of the main considerations sociolinguists must face when they want to conduct their own research. Ethics No matter who is being studied, …
Looking at an example of a linguistic factor
In this video, Dr Sarah Kelly describes an example of a linguistic factor: the effect of position in the word on how different variants of the ‘t’ sound in English …
Language attitudes and correctness
In this video, Dr Claire Childs explains the link between the attitudes we have about accents and how these relate to ideas of ‘correct’ language use. Let’s take some time …
Case study: an example of a language attitude
Let’s look now at a real-life example of a language attitude. The text below is taken from an email sent to BBC presenter Steph McGovern after one of her regular …
Attitudes, prestige and ideology
When we talk about language attitudes in sociolinguistics, we’re looking at how people associate different forms of language with positive and negative traits. As well as the idea of a …
These articles are from the online course:
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Accents, Attitudes and Identity
How to teach English abroad
Interested in teaching English abroad? We discuss your options for teaching English as a foreign …
What’s the future of workforce development?
Explore the key workforce development trends, challenges, and opportunities that lie ahead for L&D practitioners, …
The Top Skills in Nigeria for Employability
Find out the top skills employers in Nigeria are looking for. We take a look …UConn partners with FutureLearn to expand digital education presence globally
Partnership begins with courses on anti-Black racism The University of Connecticut has partnered with FutureLearn, …