Example linguistics dissertation topic 10:

Inverted snobbery: The debasing of Received Pronunciation and ‘posh talk’- a case study.

The linguistic degrading of Tony Blair’s speech patterns to include ‘Estuary English’ was well documented during his time as Prime Minister. This study focuses on the University of St Andrew’s in Scotland, which has the highest rate of independently educated students within Scotland (40.6%) whilst being based in an area that has an overall percentage of 7% of students attending independent schools prior to tertiary education. This dissertation looks at two distinct aspects of language: perceptions of those with RP or ‘posh accents’ amongst local residents, and secondly why a number of those with RP or ‘posh accents’ feel a need to adopt aspects of regional accents in their everyday speech patterns. This is a study that involves a substantial amount of primary data collection through the use of volunteers (both listeners and speakers) as well as being grounded in existing secondary literature upon the wider subject.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Foulkes, P. and Docherty, G. (eds) (1999). Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hughes, A. and Trudgill, P. (1996). English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles (3rd edn). London: Hodder.
• Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent. Abingdon: Routledge