Accents of English

Posted on Updated on by mmarsicCategories:8. semestar - SMJER LINGVISTIKA

Course title: Accents of English
Course coordinator: Dr Višnja Josipović Smojver
Instructor: Mirta Stamenić, assistant
ECTS credits : 5
Language: English
Semester: 2nd (summer)
Status: elective
Form of instruction: 2 seminar classes a week
Enrolment requirements: enrolment in the 8th semester
Exam: none

Student obligations: Each student will be obliged to choose and present one of the relevant topics at an agreed upon time during the course, and can do so individually or in pairs. Students will base their presentations on individually created corpora containing audio materials that illustrate examples of geographical and sociolinguistic variability of pronunciation in modern English. Students will also be required to regularly attend the course and other students’ presentations, and to actively participate in classes.

Basic concepts related to accent variability will be introduced at the beginning of the course including the difference between accents and dialects, the standard and non-standard varieties of English accents, and geographical, sociolinguistic and stylistic variability. Students will be acquainted with the methods of selecting and using existing corpora as well as creating their own corpus based on independently collected materials. The primary focus of this course will be non-standard and lesser-known accents of English which students will not have encountered in obligatory courses in the department of English.

Examples of accents that are presented in the course include: non-standard southern and northern British accents; the accents of the so-called Celtic languages (Welsh, Scottish and Irish); certain regionally recognisable accents of the USA and Canada; Australian and New Zealand accents; accents of the so-called Outer Circle, such as Indian and Pakistani English; accents of the Expanding Circle, such as the emerging accents of the Far East; lesser known but linguistically specific accents of varieties such as Liberian, Filipino or Fijian English.

Course objective: Becoming acquainted with the variability of English accents in the context of contemporary globalisation trends and developing the ability to recognise and linguistically describe its geographical and sociolinguistic varieties.

Week-by-week schedule:

  1. Introduction to the course; review of literature, course objectives and student obligations; accent vs. dialect; main features of accents; basic speech units: phone, phoneme and allophone; prosodic features: intonation, accent, rhythm, etc.
  2. Analysing accents: the main distinguishing features of vowels and consonants; phonetic alphabet (IPA) and phonetic transcription; speech chain; speech analysis methods, e.g., Praat phonetic analysis software.
  3. Accent variability: geographical, sociolinguistic, and stylistic variability.
  4. Standard British and American English accents: RP and General American.
  5. Presentation instructions (selecting and gathering audio materials, creating and using a corpus, describing important accent features).
  6. Examples of British English accents.
  7. Examples of accents of the USA and Canada.
  8. Examples of accents of Australia and New Zealand.
  9. Examples of accents of the Outer Circle.
  10. Examples of accents of the Expanding Circle.
  11. Optional topics for student presentations.
  12. Optional topics for student presentations.
  13. Optional topics for student presentations.
  14. Optional topics for student presentations.
  15. Optional topics for student presentations.

Required reading:

Collins, B., Mees, I. M., & Carley, P. (2019). Practical English phonetics and phonology: A resource book for students (4th ed.). London: Routledge.

Pavlović, N. & Stanojević, M. M. (2020). Znanstvena istraživanja jezika i prevođenja. FF Press.

Trudgill, P., & Hannah, J. (2017). International english: A guide to the varieties of standard English. London: Routledge.

Suggested reading:

Carley, P., & Mees, I. M. (2020). American English phonetics and pronunciation practice. New York, NY: Routledge.

Cube pronunciation dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://cubedictionary.org/

Kortmann, B., Upton, C., Schneider, E. W., Burridge, K., & Mesthrie, R. (2008). Varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Lindsey, G. (2019). English after RP: Standard British pronunciation today. Palgrave Macmillan.

Other independently collected materials from different sources, according to the chosen presentation topic.