Clive Upton, Professor of Modern English Language at Leeds
University, said that people who are “comfortable in their skin”
are far more likely to use local forms of speech than people who
are unsure of themselves. Prof Upton told the BBC: “If someone
is reasonably comfortable in their skin they will be very
natural in the way they speak and will deploy local forms [of
speech]. If they are a bit twitchy about how they fit into the
scheme of things they are likely to veer towards the standard
dialect.” He said that people who are sure of themselves “can
slide between the standard and the non-standard and fit in very
easily”. The academic also said that people are generally keener
than they were in the past to sound different from other people.
“People now are pretty well freed up to use their local speech
in the right situations. People are cute enough generally to
know when they need to deploy the standard dialect and when they
need to deploy for useful purposes their non-standard dialect,”
he said. Britons u