REGIONAL ACCENTS OF BRITISH BROADCAST NEWS OUTLETS

The UK broadcast news media outlets reflect regional accents of British English. These accents are spread in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland due to the influence of Scottish and Irish Gaelic and the Welsh language.

British broadcasting policy in Scotland and Wales reflects the multilingual diversity of its inhabitants. For example, BBC Alba is a television channel broadcast in Scottish Gaelic, numerous BBC radio channels list BBC Cymru (broadcast in Welsh), BBC Gaelic and others.

With respect to phonology, Scottish English has the following characteristics:

- [r] is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Received Pronunciation (RP), [r] may be an alveolar approximant [ɹ], although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap [ɾ];

- for most speakers, the short vowels [ʌ], [ɛ], [ɪ] are kept distinct before [r], so that burn, earth, and bird have three different vowels, unlike in most other accents;

- the contrast between [o:] and [ɔ] before [r] (as in hoarse vs horse) is preserved;

- the contrast between [hw] (as in which) and [w] (as in witch) is preserved;

- the accent has no [ʊ], instead transferring Scots [u]. Phonetically, this vowel may be pronounced [ʉ] or even [ʏ]. Thus pull and pool are homophones;

- for many speakers, the vowel of cot and that of caught are merged, usually to [ɔ];

- for many speakers, there is no short A-broad A distinction, so that palm, trap and bath have the same vowel, typically [a];

- [l] is dark in all positions (the palatalisation of [l] occurs, [l] is usually velarised).

WelshEnglish is strongly influenced by the phonology of the Welsh language, which more than 20 % of the population of Wales speak as their first or second language. The Welsh accent has distinct intonation pattern of a falling-rising tone of the affirmative sentences (thereby the rhythmical pattern of a sentence becomes uneven). It makes that accent different from the Scottish and Ulster accents.

Other phonetic peculiarities of the Welsh accent list:

- the substitution of [iə] by [ø]: here ([hiə]) is pronounced as [(h)jø] in the broader form;

- a more open pronunciation of [ʌ] as in love and other;

- [æ] is widely realised as [a:];

- a strong tendency (shared with Scottish English) towards using an alveolar tap [ɾ] (a tapped r) in place of an approximant [ɹ] (the r used in most accents in England);

- some gemination between vowels is often encountered, e.g. money is pronounced [mɜ:ni];

- in northern accents, [l] is frequently strongly velarised. In much of the south-east, clear and dark [l] alternate much like they do in Received Pronunciation.

Some wide spread characteristics of Ulster English (Northern Irish English) include:

- with some local exceptions, [r] occurs postvocally;

- [t] is not pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially in some Irish accents; instead, it is often pronounced as a slit fricative [θ̠];

- as in Scotland, the vowels [ʊ] and [u] are merged, so that look and Luke are homophonous;

- the distinction between w [w] and wh [hw], as in wine vs. whine, is preserved;

- the diphthong [aʊ] is pronounced approximately [əʉ];

- in words like took where oo usually represents [ʊ], speakers may use [u];

- the alveolar stops [t, d] become dental before [r], [ər], e.g. tree and spider;

- [eɪ] often becomes [ɛ] in words such as gave and came (becoming [gev] and [kem]);

- [t] often undergoes flapping to [ɾ] before an unstressed syllable, e.g. eighty [eəɾi];

Ulster English also always uses the alveolar or light L sound, as opposed to other English dialects which use a velar or dark L in word-final position.The rest of Ireland speaks Hiberno English (Irish English) that has been the language of everyday communication in the country since the late 18th century. Irish remains the first language in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking areas), located along the remoter areas of the western seaboard. Today, between 5 and 10 % of the living in Ireland speak Irish on a daily basis.

British radio and television news media discourse also embraces social accents that are characteristic of the people with low educational level. In essence any social accent is characterised by the following features:

- indistinct articulation;

- omission of initial or final sounds in pronunciation of some words;

- deviation from the standard phonetic pattern of a phrase;

- wide use of reduced words and elliptical sentences.

Control Questions

1. What are the major regional accents of British broadcast news outlets?

2. Why are social accents be observed in British broadcast news outlets?

Practical Tasks

Task 1.Watch Video 3.1(Unit 3),Video 5.1(Unit 5),Video 10.5 (Unit 10), Video 11.2 and Video 11.3(Unit 11), Video 12.7(Unit 12), Video 13.1(Unit 13), and say what regional British accent you hear in the listed clips.

Task 2. Folder ACCENTS in Unit 14 contains two subfolders:Accents Phonology and What_Accent.

The first subfolder reflects phonetic features of British English regional accents and several social accents1. It also contains accent samples of Australian English, Canadian English and New Zealand English. Each accent is represented by a separate subfolder (Scottish, Welsh, Hiberno and Ulster, UK_Northern, Social, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand).

Watch the files in each subfolder to get acquainted with the phonology of the accents in question. Pay special attention to British Regional accents.

Task 3. Watch Video_posh_accent (Folder ACCENTS) to get its idea. Does it seem strange to you?

What are well-educated people doing to disguise their RP accent? How is this accent called otherwise?

Task 4. Do you know what the following terms mean?

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 672