Sorry I’ve been so late in posting my results!!! 6 participants were asked to complete the questionnaire. They were made up of 3 male and 3 female all from the west midlands. Below are my results which were collected;

1. ‘The accent in the television programme ‘Made in Chelsea’ is more approachable than the one in ‘Geordie Shore’’.

Indicate how far you agree or disagree with this statement (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’):

Participant 1; 3

Participant 2; 4

Participant 3; 2

Participant 4; 3

Participant 5; 2

Participant 6; 2

On average it was found that the participants didn’t find the Chelsea accent particularly approachable. This may be because all those that responded to the questionnaire have broad midlands accents which are very different to the accent featured in MLC and so this reflects in the feeling that the accent is not more approachable than that in GS. Furthermore, GS provides a more non-standard form similar to that of the midlands accent.

2. The representation of accent in Geordie Shore is attractive.

Indicate how far you agree or disagree with this statement (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’):

Participant 1; 2

Participant 2; 1

Participant 3; 3

Participant 4; 3

Participant 5; 2

Participant 6; 3

On average the participants seem to be impartial to the way that they view the Geordie accent in terms of attractiveness. Once again this may be accounted for through the less standard use of language as featured in the midlands accent

3. ‘By listening to both the accents, it is clear as to which social class these characters belong’.

To what extent do you agree with this statement? (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’)

Participant 1; 5

Participant 2; 4

Participant 3; 5

Participant 4; 5

Participant 5; 4

Participant 6; 5

Here, the results clearly show that the accent tells the participants something about the social class to which the characters belong. This shows that people do see a correlation between the accents that people use and the social class to which they belong.

4. Circle the words in which you think the pronunciation of the vowels is typical of a ‘BBC accent (as found in the ‘Made in Chelsea’ accent).

Talk 3
Newspaper 6
Captain 2
Watertight 6
Cake 2
Awkward 4
Granted 6
Play 2
Royal 2
Dance 6

All the people I asked were from the west midlands area and so it shows that people who don’t have use standard pronunciation still have an awareness of what the Received form. It shows that people have an understanding of what a more prestigious word form or pronunciation might be.

5. ‘How do the accents in the two programmes contribute to your ideas about social expectations and class within the areas of Newcastle and Chelsea?’:

Participant 1; The language used is a representation of where people come from and the way in which they socialise and so inevitably influences how I perceive people from these areas.

Participant 2; If people speak with a more standard language then I would expect them to be from a higher social class.

Participant 3; If people speak posh I believe them to be of a more affluent educational and social background and so from the higher classes.

Participant 4; Language represent who we are and where we come from so if a person uses RP, then they are exposed to a more prestige language form and so I presume they would be from a more posh background.

Participant 5; No. There are other factors influencing a person’s social standing.

Participant 6; If someone is more well-spoken then you would expect them to be of a higher class.

This question shows that the way in which people perceive social class is reliant upon accent and dialect.

Natalie x

here are the last two of mine so we should have plenty now, especially if nat has done hers too...
1. 1/1
2. 3/5
3. 5/5

4. captain/watertight/awkward/granted
talk/captain/watertight/granted/royal

5. -their accents reinforce stereotypes from other media outlets and produce certain social expectations. MIC that everyone is posh and snobby and the respondent would feel uncomfortable talking to the chararcters from MIC
Respondent would feel less judged by those with the GS accent despite it being less attractive and resinforces the stereotype of them belonging to a lower social class.

-People in Newcastle are generally of a lower class than those from Chelsea- the more the accent deviates from London the more the respondent associates it with people living in socially inferior societies.

Bronwyn's results

I asked a variety of participants; one from the north of England, three from the Midlands and one from near London.

1. Varied response to this question, but 3/5 agreed that the MIC accent was more approachable than the GS one. One of the other participants disagreed and another neither agreed nor disagreed.

participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	4	3	5	4	2

The results are very close, but they do show that the majority of people think that the MIC accent is more approachable that the GS one. Although I was surprised that one of the participants disagreed, and one neither agreed nor disagreed. This could show that not everyone thinks that the approachability of a person is based on their accent.

2. One participant strongly disagreed that the GS accent was attractive, 2 disagreed that it was attractive, and another 2 neither agreed nor disagreed.

Participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	3	2	1	2	3

Again, with 3/5 people disagreed with the statement that the accent was attractive, but another 2 neither agreeing nor disagreeing, this could show that like approachability, attractiveness is not always rated on accent, and that not everyone thinks that accents can be attractive or unattractive.

3. One participant strongly agreed with the statement in question 3 and 1 strongly disagreed. 2 others agreed and 1 other disagreed.

Participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	2	4	5	4	1

There seems to be a pattern in my results that there will always be an almost balance on agreement and disagreement of the judgement of the GS and MIC accents. But it remains once again that the majority agreed that you could tell which social class the characters belonged to due to their accent.

4.

Words	Participant 1	Participant 2	Participant 3	Participant 4	Participant 5	Total
Talk		Yes	Yes		yes	3
Newspaper	yes	Yes		Yes		3
Captain		Yes				1
Watertight		Yes	Yes		Yes	3
Cake	yes	Yes		Yes	Yes	4
Awkward		Yes	Yes		Yes	3
Granted	yes	Yes		Yes		3
Play		Yes			Yes	2
Royal		Yes		Yes	yes	3
Dance	yes	yes	yes	yes		4

5.

Didn’t evoke class distinctions	Working class northerners-GS Upper class Londoners	Accents exaggerated/encourage viewers to see the characters as conforming to stereotypes
1	4	2

Interestingly, one participant didn’t think their accents reflected their social background, as they were used in different contexts and situations of men with different obsessions (GS-self image, dating, MIC-status and possessions). However, 80% of the participants thought that the accents did reflect social background, but only half of those participants said that this was emphasized to encourage the viewers to assume the characters’ social statuses.

-By looking at my results I think the majority of people may judge the accent in the programs, but 2 of my participants have noted that they seem to be exaggerated in order to influence the audience, and thus push them to make judgements about these accents.

Presentation Distribution

Yesterday Kasey, Elsa, Bronwyn and myself met to discuss how to create our presentation and how best to show individual results and the group trends that we found overall.

We also decided to refine how our question was written so rephrased it to make it more understandable.

'To what extent do regional accents featured in the TV shows Made In Chelsea and Geordie Shore act as a reflection of social class.'

The following are the titles of the slides which will make up our powerpoint presentation and who we have distributed them to.

Title Page - Natalie

Introduction - Natalie

Background Reading - Melissa

Similar Studies - Melissa

Phonological Transcriptions - Each group member has an individual page with example of own transcription and what inspired us to chose our question.

Research Method - Elsa

Example of Questionnaire - Elsa

Results - Each member produces a page with a graph and evaluation for the question they wrote but using ALL the groups results.

Analysis In Relation to Question -Kasey

Evaluation - Bronwyn

Credits - Bronwyn

We have also decided to just use the results obtained by Elsa, Bronwyn, Kasey and myself as we don't know if Natalie has distributed hers or got results to use due breakdown in communication. We felt this would be best rather than postponing doing our work whilst waiting on that.

We plan to each create our slides along with the voice narration and email them to Elsa who is going to put them together.

We are then meeting at 4pm on Friday to view the presentation, make sure it works with the sound and if anything needs to be edited etc and hopefully have it completed!!!

ok so hopefully by tonight I will have a few more to add to this, but I think once we have all posted we will have enough results to analyse...
1. MIC is approachable
3/4/4/4

2. GS is attractive
3/3/2/2

3. Accents good rep of social class
4/3/3/2

4. words typical of BBC English
granted /dance
talk/ captain / watertight/ granted/ dance
talk/watertight/awkward/dance
granted/dance

5. How the accents in the clip contribute to your ideas about social class

-Stereotypically Newcastle represents a lower class and Chelsea a higher class, watching the clips you stick with those assumptions

-The Newcastle accent is much harder to understand and the MIC is one that you hear much more on television eg. news

-GS makes it seem like people from Newcastle are from a lower class than those is MIC though this isn't necessarily true

-Stereotypes make you think that those from Newcastle are of a lower class and those from Chelsea a higher class. Respondent tries not to follow this but watching GS does make you think they are less intelligent and of a lower social rank. Also finds ths MIC not that attractive as it comes across as 'stuck up'

My Results

Hey, the following are my results :)

For question 1 my answers were 5, 4, 2.5, 4, 4.

For question 2 my answers were 2, 1, 2, 4, 1.

For question 3 my answers were 5, 3.5, 4, 5, 4.

For question 4 I will write how many times the word was chosen

Talk-2

newspaper-3

captain-4

watertight-4

cake-1

awkward-4

granted-4

play-1

royal-4

dance-5

Finally these are the key points from each of my responses.

- Accent represents social class divide and also gives an IQ perception to the watcher, however GS accent can be nice, just not when portrayed with these people.

-Learnt to expect more upper class well spoken people in Chelsea than Newcastle

- MIC is easier to understand but in some social situations could actually be intimidating which would change the perception from this instance

- MIC fits expectation of observer, it does sound more upper class however GS doesn't represent the accent very well as they obviously are privileged, perception of poor areas such as mining communities from the accents.

-MIC does associate with being privileged, often due to media influence, assume more intelligent as accent is also associated with high class institutions such as eton, radley and oxbridge. MIC is more high class than Newcastle accent which is more working class and less privileged.

See you all tomorrow at 3. XXX

Elsa's analysis of questionnaire results

Most of Group 3 met on Thursday (24th November) and agreed, as a group, that we would each post an analysis of our results obtained from our questionnaires.
Below is my analysis of the results obtained from my questionnaire. Six people completed the questionnaire, five of these were from the South of England, whereas one was from the North. An equal number of female and male informants were asked.
Consent was obtained from each informant before their data was used in this analysis.

Findings for Question One:
‘The accent in the television programme ‘Made in Chelsea’ is more approachable than the one in ‘Geordie Shore’’.



Indicate how far you agree or disagree with this statement (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’):

• Informant A answered with 2
• Informant B answered with 3
• Informant C answered with 5
• Informant D answered with 3
• Informant E answered with 2
• Informant F answered with 4

These results show that only two people ‘strongly agreed and ‘agreed’ with the statement. The other informants have indicated low responses for this question, which suggests that the majority of informants did not feel that the two accents were markedly different from each other in terms of how ‘approachable’ they sounded.

Findings for Question Two:
The representation of accent in Geordie Shore is attractive.

Indicate how far you agree or disagree with this statement (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’):

• Informant A answered with 3
• Informant B answered with 2
• Informant C answered with 1
• Informant D answered with 4
• Informant E answered with 4
• Informant F answered with 3

It appears that in the second question there is again a mixture of results. Two informants ‘agree’ that the accent in Geordie Shore is attractive, showing that some feel that some regional accents can be regarded positively.
The findings for question two are similar to those in question one because both sets of results seem to show that some informants have a neural or more positive response to the regional accent in Geordie Shore than others.
Similar findings have been recorded in studies which use a ‘matched guise’ technique to elicit informants’ reactions to different regional accents. Beal (2006) notes that:
‘The results of such experiments were very consistent: the RP guise was always given the highest score for features such as intelligence, whereas regional accented guises scored higher for features such as friendliness and honesty…’ (Beal 2006:30).

Findings for Question Three:
‘By listening to both the accents, it is clear as to which social class these characters belong’.

To what extent do you agree with this statement? (1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’)

• Informant A answered with 2
• Informant B answered with 5
• Informant C answered with 5
• Informant D answered with 2
• Informant E answered with 4
• Informant F answered with 4

Four out of the 6 participants agreed that the accents in the clips showed which social class the characters belong to. This implies that, although some informants, may not find one accent to be more positive or negative over another, many of the informants asked felt that there is at least some connection with accents and social class. This is significant because it demonstrates that people do still make value judgements based on how we speak.

Findings for Question Four:

Circle the words in which you think the pronunciation of the vowels is typical of a ‘BBC English' accent (as found in the ‘Made in Chelsea’ accent).

Answers:


Talk 4
Newspaper 4
Captain 1
Watertight 5
Cake 3
Awkward 6
Granted 3
Play 2
Royal 3
Dance 5




The above numbers show how many times each word was indicated by each informant to be typical of a BBC English accent. We found that this was the best way of describing the accent in Made in Chelsea, especially because all of our informants had not studied English Language at degree level.

The data for question four shows that the words: watertight, awkward and dance were chosen most frequently. One reason for this may have been because five out of the six informants asked were from the South of England. Only one person was from the North.

This also demonstrates that people have an almost innate awareness of the idea that Received Pronunciation (or BBC English) is considered to be the most prestigious form by many people.

Findings for Question 5:

Below are extracts from the informants’ responses to:

‘How do the accents in the two programmes contribute to your ideas about social expectations and class within the areas of Newcastle and Chelsea?’:

“They don’t. There is no indication through accent which class these people belong to…”

“I think the accents inevitably have an influence on my beliefs, however the settings and topics under discussion in each programme had a reinforcement of these ideas…”

“The Newcastle accent makes the actors sound very lower class and the language used added to this.”

“I think they reinforce the stereotypes that regional accents belong to the lower classes and people with a ‘BBC English’ accent belong to the upper classes. However, I also think that the swearing and subject matter in ‘Geordie Shore’ also reinforces this – if they were talking about something different they might have given a different impression.”

“Because the accent in Made in Chelsea is more like the BBC English accent, I associate the accent in Chelsea with a higher social class than in Newcastle…”.

“The Accents from the two different areas defiantly confirm the existing preconceptions I had about Chelsea and Newcastle. This may be because of Chelsea’s connections to the above mentioned BBC English… However other aspects of the clips also contribute to my social expectations like the clothing, cursing and the environment of the characters”.

The results for this question are probably the most significant because they show that the majority of the informants asked still have pre-conceived ideas about regional accents and social class.

Week 7 (end of)
Where we are at, and what we have left to do...
We have all watched and transcribed our clips of each show and a few of us are still in the process of having them all phonetically transcribed too. Following a discussion with Elsa and I today we wondered if we needed to fully transcribe all of the clips and they wouldn't be shown to those completing the questionnaire nor would we use all of them in our presentation. Fundamentally, we will use the best parts of the transcript to show the extent of both the accents used and as a sample of our research.
The questionnaire which we are going to distrubute is almost complete we are still waiting for Melissa and Natalie to send their questions to Elsa so that she can add them. As soon as we have those we are done and ready to distribute them to our friends to complete.
Though we are about a week behind on our schedule, it is only the questionnaires that need completing to bring us back on schedule, so that should only take a night or two then we can get on with gathering our research.
As we have not had a group meeting in a while we plan to meet up after the LAVC lecture on monday to really get back on trakc and get ourselves up to speed.
By the end of week 8, providing all goes well we will have our results and data and then be able to decide our analysis and conclusion for the study.
Week 9 may be dedicated to compiling our results and each creating several powerpoint slides each for the final presentation. (this idea will be discussed further at the meeting on monday)
Week 10 is a 'bring everything together' week, in which we can make any last minute changes and make sure everything is ready for presenting.
By the end of week 10 the presentation needs to be totally ready.
Week 11, presentation time!!

I hope this is all ok with everyone and you all agree, see you monday!
Kasey