Dr Ella Jeffries
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Email
e.jeffries@essex.ac.uk -
Telephone
+44 (0) 1206 873762
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Location
4.207, Colchester Campus
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Academic support hours
Wednesdays 10-11am and Thursdays 2-3pm
Profile
Biography
My interests lie in the field of sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on regional accent variation. My PhD research looked into children's developing perceptual awareness of phonological regional accent differences. Building on this, my current research investigates children's attitudes towards speakers with different regional accents. This work incorporates approaches from different fields of linguistic research including language variation and change, sociophonetics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics. Other topics of interest within sociolinguistics include language and gender, varieties of English and language attitudes/ideologies.
Qualifications
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BA Linguistics,Lancaster University
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MA Linguistics, University College London
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PhD Linguistics, University of York
Appointments
University of Essex
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Lecturer in Linguistics, Language and Linguistics, University of Essex (1/9/2017 - present)
Other academic
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Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics, English, University of Worcester (1/8/2016 - 30/6/2017)
Research and professional activities
Research interests
Sociolinguistics
Sociophonetics
Regional accents/dialects
Variation in language acquisition
Conferences and presentations
Accent bias in childhood and beyond
1st Annual Meeting of the Speech Systems Lab, 12/6/2025
Accent bias in UK healthcare settings
14th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17/12/2024
What does it mean to have an accent?
Invited presentation, UAL Language Centre guest series, University of the Arts, 27/11/2024
Regional accent bias in children: Investigating 5-year-olds’ implicit attitudes
UK Language Variation and Change, University of Edinburgh, 26/6/2023
Language attitudes towards Cantonese, English and Mandarin of two communities – Hongkongers in Britain and Hongkongers in Taiwan
The Sixth Forum on Cantonese Linguistics (FoCaL 6), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 10/6/2023
Accent the positive: An investigation into children's implicit attitudes towards different regional accents
Variation in Language Acquisition, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1/6/2023
Children’s categorisation of speakers by regional accent
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Undergraduate Linguistics conference, University of Kent, 3/4/2023
Accent the Positive: An investigation into children's implicit attitudes towards different regional accents
New Ways of Analyzing Variation 50 (NWAV50) conference, Stanford, United States, 15/10/2022
Negotiating heritage language and identity: a mixed-method study of multilingual HongKonger migrants in Britain
British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom, 2/9/2022
Children’s categorisation of speakers by regional accent
Invited presentation, Invited talk (online), The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 5/7/2022
Children’s categorisation of speakers by regional accent
Invited presentation, LML RESEARCH SEMINAR 2022, The Education University of Hong Kong, 5/7/2022
Children's developing awareness of regional accent variation
Invited presentation, Essex Language conference for teachers (online), Colchester, United Kingdom, 2/7/2022
Exploring the role of face-to-face and online interactions in rates of accent change for university students during the COVID-19 pandemic
Language Variation and Change in the South of England, Univesity of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK, 22/4/2022
Exploring the role of face-to-face and online interactions in rates of accent change for university students during the COVID-19 pandemic
Language Variation and Change in the South of England, Ipswich, United Kingdom, 22/4/2022
The roles of familiarity and similarity in children’s developing accent awareness
UK Language Variation and Change 12, London, United Kingdom, 4/9/2019
The BATH TRAP split in the West Midlands a real time investigation
The International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, ICLaVE10, Leeuwarden, Netherlands, 27/6/2019
Children’s perception of monophthongal GOAT and FACE vowels from Yorkshire and Tyneside speakers
8th Northern Englishes Workshop, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 28/3/2018
Not exactly West Midlands: findings from the Worcester Dialect Archive
UK Language Variation and Change 11, Cardiff, United Kingdom, 30/9/2017
Developments in accent perception between the pre-school and primary school years and the effects of exposure to variation
Workshop on Speech Perception and Production across the Lifespan, London, United Kingdom, 27/4/2017
The role of linguistic input in children’s perception of vowel changes in progress: The FACE and GOAT vowels in York
4th Workshop on Sound Change, 4th Workshop on Sound Change, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 21/4/2017
Methodological issues: investigating children’s perception of regional variation
Variation in Language Acquisition 3 (ViLA 3), Salzburg, Austria, 8/2/2017
Pre-schoolers’ categorisation of speakers by regional accent
UK Language Variation and Change 10, York, United Kingdom, 2/9/2015
Pre-schoolers’ categorisation of speakers by phonological variables
International Child Phonology Conference, St. John's, Canada, 25/6/2015
Pre-schoolers’ categorisation of speakers by regional accent
Variation in Language Acquisition 2 (ViLA 2), Aples, France, 4/12/2014
Teaching and supervision
Current teaching responsibilities
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Language and Gender (LG220)
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English Language in the media (LG222)
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English in the British Isles (LG353)
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Sociolinguistic Theory (LG532)
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MA Dissertation (LG981)
Previous supervision
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 28/10/2024
Publications
Journal articles (4)
Jeffries, E., Lawyer, L., Cole, A. and Martin Vega, S., (2025). Accent the positive: An investigation into five-year-olds' implicit attitudes towards different regional accents.. Journal of Child Language, 1-26
Jeffries, E., (2022). 5–9-year-olds categorisation of regional accents: The role of exposure to variation. Lingua. 267, 103189-103189
Asprey, E., Jeffries, E. and Kailoglou, E., (2021). First approaches to an underexplored dialect region: Trudgill’s Upper Southwest. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica. 29 (1), 137-159
Jeffries, E., (2019). Preschool children's categorization of speakers by regional accent. Language Variation and Change. 31 (3), 329-352
Reports and Papers (1)
Jeffries, ERW., (2015). Pre-school children’s identification of familiar speakers and the role of accent features.
Other (6)
Jeffries, E., Book Review: How To Talk Like A Local by Susie Dent, 2010.
Jeffries, E., You say pot[e:]t[o:]and I say pot[eɪ]t[əʊ].,Babel: The Language Magazine, Issue 30 (2020)
Jeffries, E., (2025).Children link accents with intelligence from the age of five, says study,The Conversation
Jeffries, E., (2022).Ask or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality,The Conversation
Jeffries, E., (2020).Accentism is alive and well – and it doesn’t only affect the north of England,The Conversation
Jeffries, ERW., (2011).Book Review: Just a Phrase I’m Going Through by David Crystal, 2009.. Language and Literature. 20(2),SAGE Publications
Grants and funding
2022
Dialect and identity in Essex
University of Essex (CPPE)
2019
Accent the positive: an investigation into children's implicit attitudes towards different regional accents
British Academy
Contact
Academic support hours:
Wednesdays 10-11am and Thursdays 2-3pm
