British Accent-West Country Assignment 2022

Running head: BRITISH ACCENT-WEST COUNTRY 1
British Accent-West Country Accent
Name
Institutional Affiliation

BRITISH ACCENT-WEST COUNTRY 2
BRITISH ACCENT-WEST COUNTRY
Introduction
The regional pronunciation English accent chosen for this discussion is the British accent
primarily that spoken in the West Country Accent. The main discussion or analysis focuses on
the phonetics and phonology of the West Country accent by including the vowels and consonant
inventories with relevant descriptions based on labels studied for different characteristics and
group of sounds. The analysis also includes detail regarding how the West Country Accent
sounds are articulated using the components of the vocal tract, thus demonstrating the
understanding of the production of speech.
Analysis of British Accent:
West Country English (WCE)
The WCE is a cohort of English language varieties alongside accents utilized by much of
the indigenous population of South West England; the area occasionally called West Country.
West Country is made up of counties like Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, City of Bristol,
and Wiltshire alongside Gloucestershire. The West Country accent remains the most awesome in
Britain with the origin being traced back to several West-Saxon dialects that ultimately
developed into Old English (OE) in Middle Ages (Najafian, Safavi, Hansen & Russell, 2016).
Certain academics still believe that accents of several Saxon tribes remain manifested to
date in the somewhat variations amongst the accents in towns in West Country. The Saxon
influence remains unhidden in most basic verbs, “I be” rather than the Standard English (SE) “I
am.” It is never a mistake-it really reflects how the verb was being conjugated in OE. Though
never common in the contemporary West Country, bist, instead of the SE "(you) are," was

BRITISH ACCENT-WEST COUNTRY 3
further a feature of this WCA. The West Country dialect showcases that German and English
come from same Saxon-dictated family, even when German looks, well, fully foreign.
The West Country accent has stayed do unique up till date. This is attributed to the
geography-this region remains extremely isolated, implying there have traditionally been few
external linguistic influences. The accent remains usually linked to seafaring and farming, both
traditional industries in this region, and both of which add to the isolation of the linguistic accent.
Indeed, the fishing industry culminated in West Country accent being the foundation for what
one might acknowledge as a typical “pirate” discourse.
Definition of Accent/Dialect/Variety
Accent refers particularly to regular pronunciation variations like the utilization of a
specific set of vowels or the usage of the glottal stop for come consonants. On the other hand,
dialect refers explicitly to characteristics of linguistic mechanism particular to a specific
geographical and or social group. Dialect can widely refer to any linguistic resource which
includes, for example, grammar and vocabulary.
"Dialect" and "accent" usually have negative connotations as compared to "language" and
"standard." Accent can be utilized as a neutral phrase because everyone has a specific accent.
Linguistic variety, on the other hand, refers to a cluster of features of a language which merge to
form a unique way of writing or speaking. It is a more comprehensive and neutral phrase which
entails such concepts as "dialect' and "accent."

BRITISH ACCENT-WEST COUNTRY 4
Figure 1. Accents of British Isle:
Source: map of British Isle accents and dialects
From the above diagram, the West Country accent is chosen for this discussion.
Phonetics and phonology of the West Country
This section analyzes both vowel and consonant inventories of the West Country Accent
based on the description of label terms studied in a range of groups and characteristics of sound.
Phonology is defined as the study of sound patterns in a language and crossway language and
deals with categorical organizations of sounds of speech in languages, how speech sound get
organized in our minds and utilized in meaning conveyance. On the other hand, phonetics is the