It has now been over 30 years since its first edition, but English Accents and Dialects remains one of the best-written, most accessible overall introductions to language varieties of the British Isles, and to regional and social variation in the UK. New chapters added upon every re-release have seen it expand from descriptions of just 11 varieties to 24, with the book doubling in size since its inception, and this edition adding 50 pages to the preceding 2005 release.
In the opening chapter, the authors explain that one of the book's main functions is to help learners of English to recognise common variations in English. Many foreign English learners will most likely have been taught to speak in and recognise one, possibly outdated, variety, with a prescriptive idea of what is ‘correct’. Upon coming to the country, learners may be both blindsided and baffled by the multitude of accents we have to offer, and may consider some of the things they hear to be erroneous. The book aims to explain, as the authors put it, that “the question of correctness is largely irrelevant” (p. 2).
Rose: If you're an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?
The Doctor: Lots of planets have a North!
(Doctor Who, Rose, series 1 episode 1 (2005))
Regional accents have been used throughout popular culture for some years now, and this is only increasing – with just one example given above. With British export films, television and music becoming more and more popular, the book's continued dedication to documenting more regional varieties helps to ensure that non-native English learners are well aware of, and can recognise, the regional varieties spoken by their favourite characters and public figures.
The chapters added to this version of the book see welcome and much-needed attention paid to under-researched urban Northern varieties, such as Manchester, Carlisle and Middlesbrough. It is perhaps surprising that an area like Manchester has not been granted its own chapter before now, but of course the detail must be led by existing research in the field. The chapter documents the region's most salient features, including the lax unstressed vowels found at the end of words like happy, letter and comma; secondary contractions forming [khaːʔ] for can't; and the non-NG-coalescence exhibited by popular Mancunian media figures such as Professor Brian Cox.
It is heartening to see a chapter dedicated to Middlesbrough, one of many newer British towns and cities which exchanges a long, majestic history for one instead tied to industry, community and in-country migration. Such regions are underanalysed and often neglected by dialectologists, but are vitally important when the aim is to create a catch-all book such as this. Analysis of the accent exemplifies seemingly anomalous features like the retention of /ɑː/ in master, and introduces readers to an accent which features both glottal reinforcement and spirantisation of voiceless plosives, not commonly found in many of the other accents documented in the book.
Hull now joins Bradford in chapters dedicated to Yorkshire, ensuring that more of the breadth of variety in the UK's biggest county is accounted for, while Southampton also receives a dedicated chapter. With the addition of these analyses, English Accents and Dialects is expanded to cover all but one of the accent groups identified by the authors (p. 71) – only the region of the South Midlands is not represented.
Continuing the book's balance of more modern accent varieties with documentation of traditional ones, Lancashire and the Shetlands are granted dedicated chapters. Additionally, fleshing out the coverage of Scottish accents is a chapter on Lowland Scots, which brings with it interesting debate around the idea of Scots as a ‘variety’ of English.
This edition also sees the book reflecting the prominence of, and growing interest in, multicultural varieties of English, with a chapter exploring the details of London West Indian English. With the capital's population now so diverse, it would have been remiss to not document one of these prominent cultural varieties, one which brings with it a good deal of social recognition, whether from the users, or from opinionated journalists.
Obviously, there are cases to be made for various other regions not granted a chapter; Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, North Wales and Stoke-on-Trent would be welcome additions, as would many others. However, the scale of the book and the availability of linguistic resources in these areas hinder such additions, and as it stands, this most recent edition presents a rounded, extensive and appropriate introduction to prominent varieties from across the country.
As well as the appearance of new chapters, the existing content has been edited to bring it in line with research in the last seven years, and to add extra sociolinguistic commentary. Observing the trend of recent linguistic research, the book makes reference to the oft-preferred label of Standard Southern British English (SSBE) for what might often be labelled as RP. The newer label is both more accurate and less evaluative, and serves to highlight the scarcity of RP speakers currently in the UK.
Indeed, the authors stress that, increasingly, features of RP speech are seen as ‘affected’ and over-the-top. The 2005 release of BBC Voices material has provided an extremely useful corpus for linguists, and the authors make reference to studies such as Coupland & Bishop (Reference Coupland and Bishop2007), who found that in listener evaluations of the various BBC Voices samples, RP now does not carry quite as much prestige among younger respondents. The opening chapter is expanded, with further discussion of RP and its ‘shelf-life’, which ‘may be much shorter than anyone could have predicted even 30 years ago’ (13).
The chapters on ‘Cockney’, Liverpool and Aberdeen are updated to include recent findings on, for example, the tendency for some younger London speakers to use more /h/s than their older counterparts (Cheshire et al. Reference Cheshire, Fox, Kerswill and Torgersen2008); the spread of l-vocalisation (Johnson & Britain Reference Johnson and Britain2007, Stuart-Smith, Timmins & Tweedie Reference Stuart-Smith, Timmins and Tweedie2007); and the restrictions on the realisation of intervocalic /t/ as [ɾ] or [ɹ], known as the T-to-R rule (Clark & Watson Reference Clark and Watson2011). Reference is also made to alternative direct speech reporting constructions; alongside the prominent quotative be+like construction, Cheshire et al.'s (Reference Cheshire, Fox, Kerswill and Torgersen2011) observation of the emerging this is + speaker – ‘This is them, “What area are you from, what part?”’ (p. 24), for example – is commented upon.
Moreover, the early chapters of the book are sprinkled with references to accent and dialect features in popular culture. For instance, attention is paid to the tendency for BBC presenters to Gallicise [beɪdʒɪŋ] to [beɪʒɪŋ] (for Beijing) during the 2008 Olympic Games, and art critic Brian Sewell is added alongside Noël Coward as a more contemporary example of a speaker of conservative RP. This is a fun and welcome touch that allows the reader to contextualise the features described, and to appreciate the relevance of the text to everyday life.
The final important update that English Accents and Dialects has undergone is the digitisation of its sound archive. Previously stored on a CD-ROM, the word list and spontaneous speech recordings for each accent variety are now accessible at http://cw.tandf.co.uk/linguistics/. Following a quick sign-up, the files can be downloaded directly as both .wav and .mp3 files, meaning ease of access and transportation, and enabling more frequent use in lessons and academic presentations.
Additionally available for download are several detailed maps; one of the UK more generally, one of the accent groups identified on page 71, and two detailing the isoglosses for postvocalic /r/ and the [ɑː/a] distinction. These visual aids are helpful for those unfamiliar with the geography of the country, particularly considering the inclusion of chapters dedicated to areas not so familiar to those outside the UK (Middlesbrough, Carlisle, Southampton, etc.).
English Accents and Dialects remains the most compact, succinct and well-rounded summary of accent and dialect variation in the UK on offer, and its clear writing style combined with its accessible structure means that it is easily understood and appreciated. This newest version brings with it welcome updates, providing a more rounded and thorough summary of major dialect regions of the UK.
