A Sociophonetic Study on the English Accent Varied among Three England National Footballers

Abstract

English accents have been under discussion by many researchers. It seems that English native speakers still lack cohesion in terms of phonetic features. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the English accents that varied among England’s national footballers to find out what sounds are practiced and how they are categorized socially. Three of them, namely Harry Kane, Luck Shaw, and Harry Maguire, and their interview videos were used as instruments in this study. The data gained were analyzed qualitatively to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge. To help analyze and generate the findings, Estuary English, Received Pronunciation, and Cockney accents were also highlighted here in this study. The findings revealed that these three players happened to share a prestige accent, namely Estuary English, which contains RP and Cockney accents. It is confirmed when the three of them share the most common phonetic features, such as t-glottalization and th-glotalization. For the l-vocalization, it was difficult to determine which accent they belonged to because it was not used often. For h-dropting, neither of the speakers used h-dropping. However, it is also found that each player still has a regional accent.