Course: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Accents, Attitudes and Identity

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

‘Salience’, ‘audience design’ and ‘accommodation’ are commonly explored in sociolinguistic research. Watch Professor Paul Kerswill explain more in this short video. Is there anything which particularly strikes you in what …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …