Regional Variety and Diversity: Dialect

Regional Variety and Diversity: Dialect

Task One: Bradford Asian English and South London Dialects

• Print and read Gary Ives'study of this dialect.
• Answer the following questions on the interviews from the school in Bradford:

1. What is code switching?
2. Who are 'freshies'? How did the boys interviewed diverge from the language of 'freshies'?
3. What words/ phrases unify young Asian speakers according to one teenage boy? (top of page 155)
4. What was different about the teenage girl interviewed? What does this suggest about the impact of the ethnic demographic of a school on a speaker's decision to code switch?
5. Based on interviews with all participants, which were the most commonly used Punjabi words?
6. What factors do the students feel influence their lexical choices?

• Answer the following questions on the interviews from the school from London:

1. What three categories could summarise the key features of the dialect spoken in this school?
2. Which words used in this dialect have Jamaican or Afro Caribbean roots?
3. What evidence is there from this set of interviews that language used is 'not about ethnicity' but about 'where you live now'?

• Write one paragraph to respond to this question:

How does Ives' research challenge the idea that dialect is fixed and based only on where you live?

- Include vocabulary such as: diverge/ converge/ ethnicity/ age/ variables/ evolving/ unifying mechanism/ code switching

Task Two: Dialect Levelling

• Read the extract about dialect levelling.
• Complete and print the summary table at the end of the extract.

Complete these two tasks for homework. You will be having an assessment on diversity and region in the very near future, so make sure that your folders are organised and your notes are up to date!