Accents and variation

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Accents and variation

• Lect 4A LING1005/6105

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Topics and key concepts

• Types of speech variation
• regional,
• social
• stylistic
• British, American, Australian, New Zealand
  English.
• What differentiates them?
• How the differences arose.
• The concept of a national standard
• Is it still relevant?

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Dialects or varieties of English

• What are the dominant varieties of English
  recognized internationally?
• American English (General American) and
  Standard British English. Which of these two
  standard varieties currently enjoys most
  prestige, influence on world English?
• Which of the two accents is most widely adopted
  as a model by second language learners?
• Is there a dominant model of international
  English or simply a range of varieties?

4
Features that distinguish British and American
English

• Setting aside differences in lexicon (petrol
  gas etc.), grammar, and spelling.
• The main features of pronunciation?

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Major regional accents of the British Isles
Hughes Trudgill, (1997)

• NE north east, Newcastle
• CN Central North
• CL central Lancaster
• M Merseyside
• SE South East
• A highly complex situation.

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Standard British English

• Traditionally known as RP received
  pronunciation.
• The historical importance of RP
• Its waning influence and changing character.
• Estuary English
• Changes to the Queens English.

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Estuary English

• Estuary English is a name given to the form(s) of
  English widely spoken in and around London and,
  more generally, in the southeast of England
  along the river Thames and its estuary.
• A hybrid of Working class London English and RP.
• A case of dialect levelling or merger.
• First brought to general notice Rosewarne,
  David, 1984. Estuary English. Times Educational
  Supplement, 19 (October 1984).

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Some characteristics of Estuary English

• If one imagines a continuum with RP and London
  speech at either end, "Estuary English" speakers
  are to be found grouped in the middle ground.
• Limited use of a glottal stop in the place of the
  t or d found in RP.
• shedding /j/s after /l/ in "absolute", "lute",
  "revolution", or "salute".
• not to pronounce the /j/ after the /s/ of
  "assume", "consume", "presume" .
• Lengthening of final i in city, pity
• R Intrusion better /bet?/, but better off
  /bet?r?f/
• Vocalization of /l/ Dark (syllable final) /l/
  becomes a high back rounded vowel fold /f??d/
  becomes /f??d/

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Claims made about Estuary English

• "Estuary English" describes the speech of a far
  larger and more linguistically influential group
  than "Advanced" RP speakers. The popularity of
  "Estuary English" among the young is significant
  for the future.
• It gives a middle ground between RP and regional
  varieties.
• Because it obscures sociolinguistic origins,
  "Estuary English" is attractive to many.
• A linguistic reflection of the changes in class
  barriers in Britain.

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Other indicators of weakening status of RP

• Introduction of regional accents in BBC
  newscasts.
• Changes to the Queens English.
• Harrington et al. (2004) studied acoustic changes
  in the Queens vowels in her broadcast christmas
  messages over a 30 year period.
• Found that changes in her vowels reflected
  on-going changes in London vowels over the same
  period.

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Factors in Dialect/Accent change

• External or social factors
• Imitation of prestige forms
• Social Distancing
• Covert prestige
• Internal factors
• Chain shift Applies particularly to the vowel
  system, where change in one sound has
  implications for all other sounds in the system.
  E.g. Great English Vowel Shift.

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Major regional dialects of the United States

• Traditionally Eastern, Southern, Western
  dialects are distinguished,
• with the national standard identified as
  Mid-western, displacing Bostonian of earlier
  times.
• Modern dialect survey (Labov, 1997), based on
  telephone recordings, reveals a complex situation.

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Major regional dialects of the United States
1. The inland North
2. The south
3. The West
4. The Midland
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Major regional dialects of the United States

• The Inland North centred on Chicago, the Great
  Lakes to upper New York state.
• The West including California and the mid-west.
  Noted for preservation of post-vocalic /r/.
• The Southern non-rhotic dialect, Noted for
  monophthongization of ay
• The Midland a residual domain with much greater
  diversity, where most individual cities have
  developed dialect patterns of their own.

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Historical influences on development of dialect
differentiation in the United States

• The dialect of the Mayflower original settlers
  (1620)
• By the time of the American Revolution, there
  were 3 major dialect areas in the colonies New
  England, Midland (Pennsylvania), Southern.
• Loss of post-vocalic /r/ in Southern England
  affected the speech of settlers in New England
  and Southern colonialists who were influenced by
  prestigous British speech.
• Later immigrants from Northern England, where /r/
  was retained, settled the Western United States.

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Australian English

• Developed from a mixture of 18th century British
  accents, predominantly London speech.
• Irish English a significant minority influence.
• Origins of the Australian accent, a matter of
  controversy.
• Accent variation in Aust. English Demontatration

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Features of Australian English

• Three major varieties on a continuum of accent
  variation the Mitchell Delbridge model.
• Sociolectal rather than regional variation
  predominates.
• The rise of an indigenous standard or a
  declining influence of the cultivated variety?

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Origins of Australian Accent

• Two competing views
• The mixing bowl theory
• The dialect levelling theory
• Mixing bowl A distinctive Australian accent
  evolved gradually over time and represented a
  blending of the characteristics of the speech of
  different immigrant groups, Londoners, Irish,
  Northerners
• Dialect Leveling A distinctive Australian accent
  emerged rapidly, coinciding with the first
  generation of Australian born speakers, through a
  process of dialect leveling.

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Choosing between the two accounts

• Difficult because of limited historical evidence.
• First informal accounts of a distinctive
  (unpleasant) collonial accent begin to appear
  about 30 years after first settlement.
• A variety of accents would have been heard in the
  early colony,
• Perhaps reflective of social divisions of
  colonial society.
• Officers and gentry vs convicts and free
  settlers.

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Differentiation of the cultivated to the
broad continuum

• Was is present from the start or did it arise
  later, a reaction to the emergence of a
  distinctive Australian Accent?
• With the establishment of urban centres and
  growth of pastoral industry, class formations
  consolidated.
• Key role of private and public schools.
• The rise of the middle class and the colonial
  mentality.

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Features that differentiate Culitvated from
Broad Australian English

• Degree of diphthongization of long high vowels
  /i/ and /u/
• The diphthongs.
• The application of assimilation and connected
  speech processes.
• The latter shows that sociolectal speech variety
  and speaking style (formal casual) are not
  independent dimensions of speech variation.

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New Zealand English

• Developed in parallel with Australian English and
  shared many historical influences.
• Due to internal factors, dialect differentiation
  seems to have taken place from roughly the mid
  1940s.
• Today, there are notable differences bewteen the
  two accents largely in the front lax vowels.

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Differences from Australian English

• The short 'i' in New Zealand English is
  pronounced as a schwa /?/
• The short 'e' in New Zealand English has moved to
  fill in the space left by 'i e.g. iggs for
  brickfast".
• Similarly the short a in bad has raised and
  sounds like bed to the Australian ear.
• Loss of distinction between /e?/ and /i?/ words
  like "chair" and "cheer", (/tSe?/, /tSi?/) are
  pronounced the same way (/tSi?/, that is as
  "cheer" in British, American or Australian
  English).
• Intonational feature New Zealanders will often
  reply to a question with a statement spoken with
  a rising inflection on the last couple of words
  (known in linguistics as a high rising terminal).
  

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Vocabulary differences(relatively trivial) in
AusE NZE

• backless sandals (or flip-flops in other English
  dialects 'J(esus s)andals') thongs jandals
• insulated container for keeping drinks and food
  cool esky chilly bin
• back-country farmer's jacket of each country, a
  woollen shirt and oilskin jacket respectively.
  Driza-bone Swandri
• A kind of convenience store Milk bar Dairy
• A padded blanket doona duvet
• Swimwear cossie togs

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The vowel changes conform to a chain shift model

• Vowels spread themselves evenly in vowel space
• To maximize perceptual contrasts
• If one vowel moves others tend to shift too
• Changing the system as a whole

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New Zealand and Australian English vowels

• There is some evidence that lax vowels in
  Australian English may be undergoing shifting
  similar to those of NZ English.
• Young female speakers appear to have led the
  vowel changes in New Zealand English.
• Young female speakers also appear to lead
  phonetic change in Australian English.

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Questions to think about

• What is happening to regional dialects in the
  major dialects of English? Are they being
  weakened under the influence of mass media? Or
  are they constantly renewing and reasserting
  themselves?
• What is it that determines whether a dialect
  comes to define a standard of pronunciation?
• How are standards of pronunciation changing in
  the major dialects of English?
• How does sociolectal variation in speech relate
  to speaking style (variation)? And why is that so?