The Perception Of Perceptual Dialectology - 1921 Words

The notion of ‘perceptual dialectology’ as a technique in variationist research 1. Introduction 1.1 The language in which we speak represents a true image of who we are and our social identity. From listening to a particular dialect, we automatically make assumptions depending on that alone. Through extensive analysis, it is speculated that none linguistic speakers tend to merge a specific dialect to one location. This is recognised as perceptual dialectology, the study of how non-linguistic speakers identify and perceive variation in language compared to their community rather than sociolinguists. The idea originated from Japan and the Netherlands, with studies from W.G Rensink, where the main aim of the study was to find the linguistic differences from one area to another. Once linguistics have the information from ‘folk’ linguistics and scientific linguistics, then can then compare it between social varieties to examine dialect. There are three ways to approach the perceptual data collected; what people say, how people react to what has been said, and what peopl e say about (Preston, 1999). By looking at these factors within perceptual dialectology, we can study geography, history and sociolinguistic varieties to understand the difference in speech amongst social groups and communities. Throughout the years of the development of this study, perceptual dialectology has advanced due to research provided by the likes of D. Preston (USA) and M.Pearce (North East). 1.1 My