The Effect of Two Educated Dialects on Sentence Repetition Scores of Five Year Old Scottish Children

Abstract

Five and six year old Scottish children from 4 schools imitated two parallel sets of sentences graded for difficulty and linguistic features, and modelled by two testers who spoke with similar social dialects (educated) but different regional dialects (Glaswegian and New Zealand). Contrary to predictions the unfamiliar New Zealand dialect was no handicap to such young children from either high or low socio-economic districts. Apart from an obvious interpretation that the children had already been exposed to dialect differences by television, a competing hypothesis would be that the speakers' adaptability in a one-to-one situation may lead to an adjustment of features like speed, clarity or articulation which counter the effects of an unfamiliar dialect.