Lifespans & Styles highlights outstanding undergraduate work in sociolinguistics.
Welcome to the second issue of Volume 7 of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Papers in Sociolinguistics. This issue includes five papers that continue the journal’s mission of showcasing excellence in undergraduate research in sociolinguistics. This issue’s papers are thematically similar to one another in very interesting ways – more so than any set of paper published in any previous issue. The first two focus on language and race, racism, and African American English; the other three are all about lifespan change and second language/dialect acquisition.
Perceived Accentedness in Monolingual and Simultaneous Bilingual Children
Previous research on accentedness in simultaneous bilinguals has produced inconsistent results and has focused on adult speakers. The current study explores the question of whether simultaneous bilingual children are perceived to have stronger accents in comparison to monolingual children. Adult participants were asked to rate the accentedness of English-Mandarin simultaneous bilingual children and English monolingual children. The difference in ratings between the two groups was not found to be statistically significant. It is concluded that simultaneous bilingual children seem not to differ in accentedness when compared to monolingual children, which has a number of social and theoretical implications.
Copyright (c) 2021 Cambria Willis, Anna Colpitts, Lauren Denusik
Sociolinguistic Factors Affecting Tense Variation in Singapore English
Despite English being the primary official language of Singapore, many of its citizens show deviations from Standard Singapore English (SSE) in speech or writing. In particular, it has been noted that Singapore English speakers may produce non-standard tense morphology, often omitting verbal past-tense markers in past-tense contexts. However, a couple of open questions remain: are there any social or external factors driving this variation, and is this variation morphological or phonological? To address these questions, I asked participants to complete a verbal interview and written questionnaire designed to probe how they inflect verbs, and examined if conformity to SSE is predicted by age, sex, or mother tongue. The results suggest that non-standard tense use does not differ along these lines. They also support earlier claims that tense marker omission in SSE is phonological, rather than morphological, for a majority of speakers, but that there is a small group for whom the variation may be morphological.
This paper investigates mergers of the DRESS-TRAP and FOOT-GOOSE vowels in pre-lateral position for speakers of diverse varieties of English in Melbourne, Australia. A total of 35 participants were recorded producing 22 words from a list representing 11 monophthongs in pre-t and pre-l position. The vowels were measured for F1, F2, and duration, from which Pillai scores were calculated. Variation due to the speakers’ variety of English was as predicted. Duration contrasts for both vowel pairs were present for most speakers as a way to differentiate the vowels when their formants overlapped. This was expected for FOOT-GOOSE but previously unreported for DRESS-TRAP.
Food-market speech is an under-researched area of third-wave variationist sociolinguistic studies. This study addresses the gap by exploring food-market speech styles and hawker personae. Combining descriptive auditory analysis and online questionnaire data, I demonstrate that situated discursive practices of prosodic variables construct both persuasive and aggressive speech styles, and they are stereotypically associated with female and male hawker personae. Furthermore, this paper also explores the ideological construal of hawking as authentic market-ness, further revealing the semiotic saliency and social significance of food-market hawking as not only the language of a speech community but the language of market.
This paper examines the effect of middle and older age on Michael Caine’s realisation of the English dental fricatives. The results show convergence to prestige forms during middle age. Caine only exhibits TH- fronting during his older years within a familiar social setting (audience and speech styles), while TH- stopping is present in both age groups with a significant increase in his older years. It is proposed that the discrepancy between stopping and fronting exists because the two variants carry different levels of stigma in Caine’s linguistic community.
Welcome to the first issue of Volume 7 of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Papers in Sociolinguistics. This issue includes five papers by eight authors that continue the journal’s mission of showcasing excellence in undergraduate research in sociolinguistics.
The English low back vowel merger, where words like caught and cot are pronounced identically, is a well-studied phenomenon. Generally, these studies focus on mergers within given regions, comparing vowels of non-mobile individuals. My research differs in exploring the effects of relocation. I examine pronunciation differences of vowels in differently gendered twins from England who moved to Canada as children. Despite growing up in similar environments, their vowel patterns differ: there is some evidence of merger in the female’s but not the male’s vowels. This suggests that mobility and exposure to a new dialect may affect pronunciation changes but are not the sole factors.
Regional Relocation and Phonetic Dialect Markers
This paper tracks phonological change in the (ING) morpheme in two YouTube personalities over time. Both participants relocated to a different dialect region than their hometowns over the course of their careers, motivating the hypothesis of this paper: geographic relocation is a catalyst for adult accent change. With a longitudinal study method, I selected audio clips from different periods in each YouTuber’s life and collected formant measurements of the targeted words. Based on a Pearson’s correlation analysis and hypothesis testing models, the participants showed statistically significant progression in their speech over time. Additionally, the speakers exhibited audible shifts most likely as an effect of aging. It is inconclusive whether this study’s observations are influenced by the difference in dialect or societal pressures of the relocated locations without further research in the other variables of each regional dialect.
Attitudinal Judgments of Dialect Traits and Colorism in African Americans
This study demonstrates how language and complexion influence professional and social perceptions of African Americans. This study contains an online verbal-guise survey where participants either saw a photo of a lighter skin-toned African-American male and female or an electronically darkened version. Audio was attached to each photo, which contains traits of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the case of the male and Standard American English for the female. The results suggest African-American females are more likely to experience colorism in professional traits while African-American males are more likely to experience colorism in social traits. Additionally, the respondent’s race influences perceptions of AAVE.
"We Pray for Our Nation an(d) Our Worl(d)"
This paper examines the effect of race, context, and white public space on the extent to which speakers articulate, hyperarticulate, hypo-articulate, or glottalize word-final English alveolar stops -/t/ and -/d/ in the controlled environment of the quadrennial US Presidential Inaugural Prayer. It shows that African-American speakers hyperarticulated and articulated /t,d/ more frequently than the white speaker, who hypo-articulated and glottalized /t,d/ consistently, especially on words like God, Lord, and Christ. These results suggest that the highly formal context required African-American speakers to perform /t,d/ to index themselves as authorities to an unfamiliar, white audience, while the white speaker did not consider race to influence listeners’ judgements of him, allowing him to index familiarity and trustworthiness.
An increasing amount of sociolinguistic research has been concentrated on diachronic idiolect change: the change of an individual’s dialect over time. This paper adds to this growing topic by analyzing the English idiolect change of Giada De Laurentiis, a heritage speaker of Italian. The study analyzes De Laurentiis’ LOT, START, and GOAT vowels, as well as the voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops [k] and [p] by measuring the utterances of the code-switched word ‘mascarpone’ across 20 seasons on television. The data reflect the influence of L2 US English (rhoticity, diphthongization, lengthened VOTs) on heritage Italian in De Laurentiis’ idiolect.
Does Geographic Relocation Induce the Loss of Features from a Single Speaker’s Native Dialect?
Over the past few years, academics such as Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) and Harrington (2006) have exhibited a marked interest in dialect variation and language change across the lifespan. Though it was acknowledged that individuals could temporarily adapt their language to accommodate to other interlocutors, permanent changes to their underlying grammar were previously thought impossible. What has come to light, however, is that as individuals we have been given increasing opportunities to be much more mobile; and as a result, our language has too. The aim of this study is to provide evidence for the claim that social and geographical mobility (in this case geographical) can cause an individual’s language to change. It was motivated by the belief that language cannot change after an individual has surpassed the critical period. The study focuses on one individual speaker in particular: the musician Ringo Starr. The speaker in question lived in Liverpool until the age of 40, before relocating to America. The data for this investigation were sourced from a number of TV and Radio interviews with Starr, taken from 20 years prior to and 20 years after his geographic relocation. In both cases, the interlocutors were speakers of British and American English varieties. The study examines three stable variables that exist in the speaker’s native dialect of Liverpool English — realisation of /t/ to /r/, non-rhoticity, and NURSE ~ SQUARE merger — and investigates whether these remain stable features, are lost completely, or are altered by geographical relocation. The study found that, although the speaker did not lose any features of his native dialect completely, the salience of the variables was affected by the move to the US. The speaker reduced his levels of /t/ to /r/ realisation and became more rhotic in certain phonological and lexical contexts. He retained the NURSE ~ SQUARE merger, but the results showed that he increased his frequency of F1 of NURSE vowels, articulating them slightly lower. Starr never acquired new, American variables such as the alveolar flap. What these results demonstrate is that an individual is capable of changing their language after the supposed “critical period”; it shows that not all change can be attributed to temporary accommodation. Dialect contact with varieties of American English appears to have resulted in some changes to Starr’s grammar.
Supernanny: An Intraspeaker Study of Addressee Effects in the Speech of Jo Frost
Limited research exists evaluating the extent to which intraspeaker style-shifting is conditioned by addressee age and addressee nationality. The current study investigated Supernanny Jo Frost’s realisations of (t) as glottal or non-glottal towards British and American adults and children. Frost was found to style-shift to child-directed speech (CDS) when addressing children, which is interpreted in terms of communication accommodation theory as a communicative strategy to enhance clarity. Frost generally avoided convergence towards her American (and British) interlocutors, such that her style-shifting was found to be conditioned less by addressee nationality than by addressee age. I argue that this avoidance of convergence was motivated by her desire to construct an authentic, authoritative identity, which she achieved through her exploitation of particular indexical meanings associated with [t] and [ʔ].
Goin’ Home: The Role of Vowel Raising in Indexing an Ethnic Identity
Vowel height can be seen as a feature indexing a particular ethnic identity or indicating a style shift between two such identities. This paper focuses on Bradford-born South Asian musician Zayn Malik, an interesting subject given his prominent status as one of the most influential Asians in Britain today (Parveen 2016). I consider the role of vowel raising in the GOAT lexical set (Wells 1982) over the period of 2010 to 2016 and in style-shifting between casual, interview, and performative styles. The results of my study indicate significant differences in F1 and F2 values between particular years, and differences in F1 values between performative and interview speech. I explore these shifts in relation to the hostility Malik has faced and study the causes of his shifting, particularly in terms of speaker agency and audience design (Bell 1984).
Code-Switching as Strategically Employed in Political Discourse
There is extensive scholarship in the field of sociolinguistics on mediated political discourse as strategically employed to gain support in the run-up to and during elections. Among other things, this work reveals that the rhetorical success of politicians greatly depends on their ability to get the right balance between the expression of authority and solidarity in their speech performances. The use of code-switching in achieving such balance has been touched upon in some case studies but never studied in depth. I analyse the speech of Boyko Borisov, now Prime Minister of Bulgaria (and at the time of recording, a candidate for the position), in the framework of Bell’s (1984) audience and referee design theory, with reference to Myers Scotton and Ury’s (1977) views on code-switching. Borisov is found to employ two codes, a standard and a nonstandard one, characteristic of two different personae of his: the authoritative politician and the folksy, regular person. Depending on the situation, he chooses to act out either just one of these personae or both of them by switching between the two codes, thus maintaining the aforementioned vital balance between the expression of power and solidarity. The analysis reveals that the switches occur at specific points in the conversation, in line with existing theory on metaphorical code-switching, confirming that they are strategic in nature rather than random or accidental.
This is the first issue of the second volume of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation. Thanks to the success of our first volume, as well as a new partnership with this volume’s Guest Editor, Dr Laurel MacKenzie (University of Manchester), Lifespans & Styles received four times as many publishable contributions this year as last year. We have split these into two issues and are happy to present the first seven papers here.
Humans cannot help changing their speech in different situations. This kind of ‘intraspeaker variation’ happens every day when news-reporters turn from talking to their colleagues to talking to the camera, or when people suddenly start speaking in a strong dialect when talking with their family. People not only change the way they speak to different people, they also change the way they speak when not talking to people at all. This study examines one speaker and her dog, the goal being to find out why humans change the way they speak when talking to dogs. Dog-Directed Speech (DDS) is characterised by having a high fundamental frequency (pitch), as well as large amounts of questions and imperative utterances (Hirsh-Pasek and Treiman 1982, Burnham et al. 2002, Mitchell 2001). In order to take both of these features into account, we measured and compared the mean pitch of different speech acts which we expected to be common in DDS: disapproving utterances (“Stay”), approving utterances (“Good boy!”), and questions (“Who’s a good boy?”). We wanted to see whether the frequency of certain speech acts in DDS has anything to do with its high pitch and high pitch range. Although we did find variation in the pitch of different speech acts, we do not think that this explains the high pitch and pitch range of DDS. Rather, we conclude that DDS is motivated by social norms associated with talking to dogs. Our findings can give us insight into sociolinguistics in general because they show us that we respond to social norms that come with the speech situation, as well as just responding to the way our audience talks.
“My Vocal Cords are Made of Tweed”: Style-Shifting as Speaker Design
Intraspeaker variation is evaluated in terms of speaker design in a number of studies (Coupland 1985, Schilling-Estes 1998, Podesva 2008). This study explores possible motives for variation from a speaker design perspective through the analysis of three phonetic variables with differing social status. The variables occur in the speech of Stephen Fry, an intellectual whose public identity is closely linked with his Received Pronunciation (RP) speech. Fry uses more non-standard forms in contexts where his identity is more directly relevant, suggesting his desire to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” associations of the RP register (Meyerhoff 2011:28). However not all the data fit this pattern, demonstrating the need for a broad model of speaker design incorporating multiple motives for style-shifting. It is proposed that the use of linguistic variables with differing social evaluation can give insight into prioritisation of speaker motives in future speaker-centred studies.
The Young and the Old: (t) Release in Elderspeak
Elderspeak refers to a speech style used when talking to the elderly. The aim of this study was to find out whether a higher rate of standard phonetic variants of phonemes is a feature of elderspeak. To test this, the (t) release in the speech of the radio presenter Kirsty Young was analysed, comparing her speech towards younger and older guests. A significant correlation was found between her rate of (t) release and the age of the guests. After analysing the results, an alternative account of elderspeak is presented as well as possible avenues of future research.
It is my pleasure to present the first issue of the third volume of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation . This issue includes five papers on topics about within-speaker variation that are largely under-researched in the field of variationist sociolinguistics.
Black Country English in the Spotlight: A Stylistic Analysis of Variable Contrast between Phonemes in an Urban Regiolect of British English
When examining the COT /CAUGHT merger in central Pennsylvania, Labov (1994) uncovered a stylistic phenomenon, known as the “ Bill Peters Effect” , whereby speakers heavily differentiate between /ɑ/ and /ɔː/ in spontaneous speech, but converge the two lexical sets into a near-merger situation during controlled tests comprising isolated minimal pairs. Whilst it is interesting to discover that a speaker or a community of speakers may exhibit stylistic preferences for merging two variants in particular speech contexts, it is unclear as to what precisely drives this intraspeaker and interspeaker variation. By examining the distinctive Black Country variety of English (BCE) (Clark and Asprey 2013), this paper aims to discover if the Bill Peters Effect is specific to the COT /CAUGHT merger in North American Englishes (Drysdale 1959, Labov 1994, Boberg 2001, Majors 2005, Hall-Lew 2013) or whether it can be observed in merging situations between phonemes in other dialects of English. A study was conducted with 14 native BCE speakers in order to examine in which speech contexts individual speakers distinctly alternate between the FOOT /STRUT and PRICE /CHOICE lexical sets and produce merged variants. The normalised F1 distances between each speaker’s realisation of FOOT /STRUT and PRICE /CHOICE across three different speech conditions were collected and analysed. The results show that BCE speakers show a stronger preference for merging the lexical sets in a controlled wordlist task, where lexical sets are elicited in isolation, than in less formal spontaneous speech, producing the opposite effect to Labov’s Bill Peters Effect.
Investigating Linguistic Prestige in Scotland: An Acoustic Study of Accommodation between Speakers of Two Varieties of Scottish Standard English
This paper investigates the attachment of overt and covert prestige to different varieties of Scottish Standard English (SSE), namely, Scots-SSE and Anglo-SSE. SSE itself encompasses wide linguistic variation and is often described as an accent continuum: at one pole are the typically “Scottish-sounding” speakers, who use a high proportion of traditional Scottish phonological features (and who are referred to as speakers of “Scots-SSE” for the purposes of this study), and at the other end of the spectrum are those who more closely emulate Southern Standard British English, using more anglicised features than Scottish (referred to here as speakers of “Anglo-SSE”). Although both varieties are broadly viewed as high prestige in Scotland, there has been little research to investigate the subtler social nuances attached to Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE. In order to explore this, the study observes interactions between female lower-middle class speakers — a group for whom linguistic variation due to social pressure should be particularly pronounced — of Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE. The systematic linguistic changes made by the speakers during interaction with one another are analysed with reference to the principles of Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles et al. 1991) to reveal the possible social implications of their behaviour. The study analyses realisations of the vowels /e/ and /o/, which are typically monophthongal in quality for Scots-SSE speakers and diphthongal for Anglo-SSE speakers. To determine the extent to which speech accommodation occurs, the variants produced by speakers in interaction with others using the same speech variety are compared to those that are produced when they talk to speakers who use the contrasting variety. There are salient patterns to the distribution of /e/ and /o/ variants in the speech of the Anglo-SSE and Scots-SSE speakers, suggesting that these are socially stratified within the given context. The Anglo-SSE group showed more evidence of convergence to the contrasting variety than the Scots-SSE group, who generally maintained their own speech style throughout the interactions. The patterns of variation appear to reflect the association of overt and covert prestige with the different varieties. The general avoidance of anglicised variants across the experiment might suggest that the speakers assigned a higher level of overt prestige to Anglo-SSE, which might have been viewed as an inappropriately formal speech style given the informality of the context. In turn, the adoption of Scots-SSE features by Anglo-SSE speakers seems to indicate that these are assigned covert prestige, perhaps as a result of their strong connotations with Scottish national identity. In general, the accommodative strategies used by the speakers during interaction with each other seem to reflect an effort to decrease the sense of an “in-group/out-group” distinction, likely perceived as a result of their different speech styles.
Is a Day out of Hawick a Day Wasted? A Study of Bidialectalism in Young Hawick Females
This study investigates young female speakers from Hawick in southern Scotland. The main focus is to identify whether bidialectal-like shifts occur in the young female speakers’ use of local dialect features, depending on the dialect of their conversation partner. It compares dialectal feature production in 5 participants’ conversations with a Hawick insider and outsider, analysing the phonological, lexical, and morphological variables θ> h, know/ken, and negation. The results show that 3 of the 5 recorded participants demonstrated bidialectal-like style shifts in feature production depending on their conversation partner, whilst the other 2 participants showed less significant shifts. Furthermore, this study uses quantitative and qualitative comparisons of the linguistic features under study to position the participants on a monodialectal-bidialectal continuum. It suggests possible explanations for intra-speaker variation in bidialectalism, including degree of closeness between the speakers, socioeconomic background, and community inclusion. The article points to a need for wider research in the field of bidialectalism to identify influences on monodialectal and bidialectal speakers in different geographical areas.
Achieving Native-like Pronunciation through Phonetic Analysis and Poetry
The problem of identifying phonetic phenomena related to language transfer and correction in second language (L2) production can be approached by conducting broad analyses of the same L2 speaker. This approach is applied in the present study, which investigates errors of pronunciation segmentally (grammatical mistakes, voicing of consonants, and vowel distinctions) and suprasegmentally (intonation and time-gaining techniques) in order to establish the possibility of their being corrected in two recordings of readings by a non-native French speaker. The errors from the first recording were identified, analyzed, and corrected through pronunciation exercises with the aim of raising awareness of the problems to help overcome them on the second reading attempt. The correction methods involved exercises such as reading poetry aloud, pronouncing consonantal segments in various vocalic environments, and reading the target text, syllable by syllable. In addition, the analysis investigates the possibility of phonetic transfer from the two primary languages of the speaker: Bulgarian and English. The researcher is the speaker, the methodological implications of which are discussed, reaching the overall conclusion that it helps to raise awareness of the phonetic background of the errors. Despite the risk of compromising the data through this methodological choice, the results show that a high level of attention and monitoring of the speech alone may be insufficient for internalizing corrections. While grammatical mistakes were corrected most effectively, other segmental and suprasegmental features showed different levels of success. One of the features (the /ɛ/ and /e/ distinction) even exhibited deterioration in the second recording. These examples suggest the presence of “equivalence classification” phenomena and raise the question of the appropriateness of the phonetic exercises for overcoming the errors. Another area of interest was determining the source of errors such as “uptalk”, the reassigning of grammatical gender, word-final devoicing, and elimination of syllable-initial lenis stop prevoicing. Due to the limited amount of data available, it was difficult to draw firm conclusions, but the tendencies observed suggested that the errors might be due to transfer from the speaker’s primary languages, whose influence appeared to be equal. Further research should therefore control for the influence of the two primary languages and extend the scope to include a second post-training recording. Overall, the second recording demonstrated that raised awareness and training helped to achieve acceptable production in the suprasegmental features as well as most of the instances of unfamiliar phones, such as /ʁ/, front-rounded vowels, and nasal vowels.
It is my pleasure to present the second issue of the second volume of Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation. This issue includes six papers from nine authors. The first three papers are by undergraduate students in Dr Laurel MacKenzie’s class, Language Change Across the Lifespan, at the University of Manchester. The fourth and fifth papers come from former students of my class, Sociolinguistics, at the University of Edinburgh, and the sixth paper is based on a University of Edinburgh Honours dissertation. As in the two previous issues, Volume 2, Issue 2 offers a breadth of approaches to the study of within-speaker, or intraspeaker, variation.
Has Barack Obama Changed his Language in Later Life? A Case Study of -ing/-in Variation and the MOUTH Vowel
This paper aims to explore whether individual speakers can change their language at the phonological level across their lifespan, especially after the critical period, by conducting a longitudinal study on U.S. President Barack Obama at three time points in his middle years: 1995 (age 34), 2008 (age 47), and 2014 (age 53). The two phonological variants -ing/-in and the /aw/ vowel were investigated. Our data were collected from three formal TV interviews with Barack Obama, available on YouTube. We transcribed the first 14– 17 minutes of each interview as our research samples. A quantitative analysis was conducted on word-final -ing/-in and the F1 and F2 of /aw/ by employing Multivariate Analysis and a Fisher’s Exact Test. As Obama identifies with being an African American, he is expected to use the alveolar variant at a higher rate than the velar nasal. However, according to our results for -ing/-in , Obama shows almost no change in our data. This could be accounted for by his occupations, including that of lecturer and president, requiring the use of the standard language as well as by the stability of the variables -ing/-in themselves. However, in contrast to previous findings that -ing tends to be favoured in nouns, while -in is preferred in verbs (Wagner 2012b), our research showed no such preference, possibly because of the relatively formal speech style. As for Obama’s /aw/ vowel, the data reveal a dramatic change in both lowering and fronting from age 34 to 47, while no difference is found between the ages of 47 and 53. Geographical relocation and social mobility could account for this linguistic change. To conclude, these patterns indicate the possibilities of individuals changing their language across their lifespan; and several motivating factors, such as geographical and social class mobility, style of speech, and accommodation, tend to affect the courses of the change.
Sixty Years of Speech: A Study of Language Change in Adulthood
Research on language change has been complicated and hindered by the problem of obtaining quality data. In many cases, the large volume of time required to collect recorded speech at different intervals, as necessary in lifespan studies, is prohibitive. Researchers further risk having participants drop out, leading to a limited pool of data. One way to avoid this is to use recordings available in the public domain that have been recorded for other purposes. The BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough is one of the few people who have had occasion to be recorded regularly over a great span of their lives. In this study, a selection of clips from wildlife documentaries that he has narrated furnishes the data for a glimpse into the possibilities of language change in adulthood. Received Pronunciation, the accent that Attenborough commands, is in the spotlight in this study. Two features of speech, namely, the presence and degree of t-glottalisation and the TRAP/STRUT vowel distinction, are examined in Attenborough’s speech against a background of known changes in the general usage of Received Pronunciation. The aim of the study is thus to see if language change occurs within the speech of an adult individual, particularly one whose speech is almost iconic. His narration from the 1960s is compared with narrations from the 1980s and 2000s in a dataset spanning nearly 60 years with the aim of discerning any trajectories of change. Some patterns in his formant values for several vowels across the three year groups are also discussed to provide an idea of what sort of changes can occur in the course of nearly 60 years. The study ultimately finds limited change in level of t-glottaling and only a slight movement of his TRAP/STRUT vowels towards each other between the narrations of the 1960s and the 1980s, with no perceptible change thereafter. The changes in community use of Received Pronunciation seem to affect him little. In terms of the overall vowel space, the trend seems to be towards a centering of most of the vowels, particularly the front vowels. Some plausible explanations for the limited amount of change are discussed in the article, which include Attenborough being seen as a steward of the accent as well as its utility to him in his position as a renowned broadcaster. The article also brings up the need for more research into the interface of gerontology and sociolinguistics, as the quite pronounced centering of the vowels may suggest natural age-related pronunciation effects.
The Influence of Aspects of Social Identity on the Development of L2 Phonology
Over time, second language (L2) speech production changes as the learner gains more experience with the language. Factors such as interaction with native speakers of the learner’s L2 are known to play an important role. It is less clear to what extent, if at all, aspects of social identity influence the development of the L2 (Hansen Edwards 2008:372– 373). This longitudinal study examines the development of the actor Jackie Chan’s L2 (English) phonology. His speech production in two time periods 9 years apart is contrasted: in 1998, before he gained success in the English-speaking world; and in 2007, after he had released multiple Hollywood blockbusters. To check that factors such as age of acquisition were not the only reason for a lack of alignment over time towards English native-speaker norms, another context was taken from 2007, namely, an interview with a French native speaker. In foreigner-directed speech, there exists a pressure to produce more standard variants (Zuengler 1991:234). If Chan uses fewer non-standard variants with a non-native English speaker than with a native English speaker, it would imply that there is some degree of intent in his usage of non-standard forms and that his development, or lack thereof, is not only due to uncontrollable factors of second language acquisition. Two variables are examined: his production of stops in word-final codas containing a single stop and in wordfinal consonant clusters containing a stop as the final consonant. Native speakers of English generally pronounce these stops, whereas native speakers of Chinese often simplify them by deleting or glottalising them (Setter et al. 2010:15, Hansen 2001:340). In 2007, Chan is found to use a greater rate of the standard non-simplified variant than previously; however, he also simplifies his pronunciation by deleting the stop in the codas more often than in 1998. He uses standard forms that align with English native speakers to a greater extent when talking to non-native speakers. After 9 years of working in Hollywood, he would have gained more experience with English due to his social network consisting of more English native speakers, resulting in the expected increased alignment with native-speaker norms. However, his English has developed so that the non-standard variant of deletion is also used to a greater extent; the usage of this variant emphasises Chan’s identity as a Chinese native speaker. This emphasis is possible because of his success in between the two time periods: not only does he no longer have to align as much as possible with English native speakers so as to appeal to the English-speaking market, his success as a specifically Chinese martial artist means that highlighting his identity as a Chinese native speaker has more linguistic capital. Thus, it seems that factors of an L2 learner’s social identity do indeed influence the acquisition and development of their L2.
An Intraspeaker Variation Study of Scottish English /r/ Pharyngealisation
Pharyngealisation— the retraction of the tongue towards the pharynx— of prepausal and preconsonantal /r/ has been recognised as an emergent strategy of derhoticisation in Scotland’s Central Belt (Stuart-Smith 2007). However, previous studies have focused on the incidence of this phenomenon between speakers, with little attention paid to intraspeaker variation. The question remains: How does Scottish English derhoticisation behave in a situation of style shifting? We explore the intraspeaker variation of comedian Frankie Boyle, a recognisable speaker of Scottish English, comparing his production of apical and pharyngealised /r/ in prepausal and preconsonantal environments in two interview contexts. The acoustic correlates of /r/ pharyngealisation are characterised as a rise in F3 with reduced energy in the formant. This is quite different from the plummeting F3 associated with an apical realisation of /r/, allowing for a binary categorisation of pharyngeal and apical tokens as well as an analysis of F3 frequency as a continuous measure. We present evidence that Boyle makes significantly more frequent use of pharyngealisation when interviewed by Kevin Bridges, a fellow Glasgow native, than by Richard Osman, a Southern Standard British English (SSBE) speaker. Further, a secondary analysis of phonation quality shows that Boyle uses significantly more creaky voice with Osman than with Bridges, allowing for a fuller understanding of Boyle’s style in each context. Attempts to attribute the observed differences in pharyngealisation rate to factors other than interview context (e.g., linguistic factors or discussion topic) yielded insignificant results, further reinforcing the notion that the style shift is due to interview context. Even within the binary categories of pharyngeal vs. apical, an analysis of formant frequency found that, on average, Boyle produced “ more apical” apicals with Osman (lower plummeting F3) and “ more pharyngeal” pharyngeals with Bridges (higher rising F3), suggesting that these forms are dynamic and can be strategically produced to varying degrees. This evident style shift between interview contexts is an ideal platform for a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of various sociolinguistic theories. Ultimately, we conclude that audience design best captures the interactional effects observed, but reference to second order indexicality is required to understand what social meaning Boyle achieves through style shifting.