Development
Dialect levelling occurs mostly in socially and geographically mobile groups and in contexts where people have a tendency to adapt to their listener in order to ensure they better understand. People who come to a new town adapt their language and unconsciously leave out local language elements so that the hearer will understand them better. As a result, dialect forms that have a wide geographical and social range tend to be used more often. Eventually these short-term adaptions become long-term changes. Though most of the adjustments happen largely unconsciously, some people are more open to language change and adaptation than others and this influences the extent to which dialect levelling takes place (Kerswill, 2003)(Milroy, 2002).
Historical examples show that dialect levelling generally takes place anywhere and anytime in situations of extensive mobility and cultural and linguistic mixing. One historical example of dialect levelling is the change in the London dialect that took place in the fifteenth century when Northern county immigrants moved to London. Their dialect diffused into southern forms and some elements were incorporated into standard English (Milroy, 2002). Dialect levelling has become a widespread phenomenon in Britain. Southern features seem to be spreading throughout the whole country and typical vowel sounds seem to be centred around big cities like Glasgow, Manchester or Newcastle (Kerswill, 2001).
Due to an increase in mobility, migration and the media, who portray variety in language as something positive, dialect levelling seems to take place more quickly than before (Kerswill, 2003).
Read more about this topic: Dialect Levelling In Britain
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)