Task 2

TASK 2

Accent and Dialect -

When we talk about accent, it is important to remember that this relates only to pronunciation and intonation rather than grammar or vocabulary. Thus, two people speaking the same language, who use the same grammar and word choices will give different cues about their social and regional origins, ethnic group membership or class. While we, as listeners, naturally pick up these cues about people’s ethnic, socioeconomic and geographical background, experimental research has shown that listeners can also make judgements on others’ intelligence, warmth and even height just by listening to recorded accented speech.

Child Language -

A young child’s world is full of obstacles that they need to negotiate, not least in language.  Imagine constantly listening to lots of gobbledegook and having to work out what the speaker is talking about.  There may be some words you recognise, or even lots, depending on your age, but there are many others that you don’t.  A child will use many different clues to help them understand what the speaker is referring to, including watching to see where a speaker is looking or where they are pointing, and checking to see what objects are in the vicinity to work out if any of them are what is being referred to.

It is believed that children call on an additional resource. A group of people investigated what children infer from speech ‘disfluencies’, which are the uh and um sounds speakers use to fill pauses in speech.  

These often occur before unfamiliar or infrequent words, often those that have not been mentioned before in the conversation, as in this example:

CHILD:                     Telephone?

MOTHER:                  No, that wasn’t the telephone, honey. 

                              That was the, uh, timer.

Here the mother fills a pause with uh as she has difficulty trying to remember an infrequently used word that is, in addition, a new topic in this conversation with her child.

Language and Age -

Although sometimes thought of as superfluous or even careless, filler words may give clues about the sort of person who utters them. The researchers investigated not only how filler words were used across genders and age groups, but also whether they correlate with certain personality traits.

They analysed transcriptions of spoken conversations from 263 participants with ages ranging from 17 to 69. The speech was recorded over 2-3 days using electronic devices programmed to automatically take audio recordings at set time intervals, thus capturing spontaneous natural speech.

The rate of use of each of the five filler words (I mean, you know, like, um and uh) was analyzed in the conversations, and because this study investigated these two types of filler words in relation to one another, interesting comparisons could be made. People who were young, female, or both young and female were more likely to use discourse markers. This supports previous studies regarding the use of the discourse marker like. The rate of filled pauses was not associated with gender; it was, however, associated with age, decreasing later in life.

Language and Gender -

Although sometimes thought of as superfluous or even careless, filler words may give clues about the sort of person who utters them. The researchers investigated not only how filler words were used across genders and age groups, but also whether they correlate with certain personality traits.

They analysed transcriptions of spoken conversations from 263 participants with ages ranging from 17 to 69. The speech was recorded over 2-3 days using electronic devices programmed to automatically take audio recordings at set time intervals, thus capturing spontaneous natural speech.

The rate of use of each of the five filler words (I mean, you know, like, um and uh) was analyzed in the conversations, and because this study investigated these two types of filler words in relation to one another, interesting comparisons could be made. People who were young, female, or both young and female were more likely to use discourse markers. This supports previous studies regarding the use of the discourse marker like. The rate of filled pauses was not associated with gender; it was, however, associated with age, decreasing later in life.

Language and Media -

The research identified several features of sensationalism, pertaining solely to language use, not to the topic. Technique number one hinges on the narrative structure. Fairly sensational headlines are built in a peculiar way. The climax – the part of the story with the greatest suspense – goes first, followed by the complication – a technical term for bits of narrative that say what happened. The resolution, or the ‘how it all ended’ bit concludes the list. Beginning with the climax arouses  the reader’s curiosity and makes them want to find out more about this story.