Lecture 6. Sociophonetics

1. Geographical Variation: Basic Concepts

2. Major Accent Types: British and American

3. British Regional Features

4. American Regional Features

5. Social Variation: Social Factors and Social Markers.

6. Language Change in Progress.

Sociophonetics deals with the way language functions in the speech community, in social environment. In other words, as Joshua Fischer put it, "who speaks, what language, with whom and to what end." Sociophonetics considers the way people's pronuncia­tion, or accent, varies in different social situations.

Accent variation may be geographical, social and situational.

1. Geographical variation

No one would deny that English has now become a global language. It spoken by approximately 1,500 mil­lion speakers. This is caused by a number of historical and socio-cultural factors.

Ask ss to name some of them. Among the factors are: the British colonization, the impact of American power in political life and business, especially in computer software and entertainment industries. There is also a necessity for a "lingua franca" to serve the needs of international trade, business, diplomacy, safety, media, and cultural exchange.

The result is that there are many spoken “Englishes" while the written forms have a lot more in common (Crystal 1997).

Thus English is a language which consists of many varieties, each dis­tinctive in its use of sounds, grammar and vocabulary.

In geographical variation we have to distinguish two basic concepts:

1. Dialect (or variety) is distinguished for its vocabulary, grammar and pro­nunciation. In this sense the two major varieties of English, the British English and the American English, as well as any two local varieties, like Lancashire or New York Brooklyn speech, may be treated as "dialects".

2. Accent is a type of pronunciation. By that we mean only the sounds of spoken English, i.e. vowels, conso­nants, stress, rhythm and intonation. Phonetics is mainly concerned with accents of English spoken on different ter­ritories, in diverse social groups, by particular individuals.

Accents of English worldwide are grouped into:

• accents in the countries where English is the mother tongue of the majority of the population ("the inner circle"): the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the white population of the Repub­lic of South Africa;

• accents in the new developing states, former British colonies, where English is one of the official languages ("the outer circle"): India and Singapore, for instance;

• accents in the countries where English is the most widely used foreign language taught at schools ("the expanding circle"), like Russia and China (Crystal 1997: 54).

Among native English accents there can be distinguished British-oriented (the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and North-America-oriented (the U.S.A., Canada) accents.

Within the countries there are their national pronunciation standards, regional standards and local accents.

National Standards

• RP (Received Pronunciation), or BBC English, in the United Kingdom,

• GA (General American), or American Network English, in the U.S.A.,

• GenCan (General Canadian) in Canada,

• GenAus (General Australian) in Australia.

National pronunciation standards are associated with radio and tele­vision newsreaders and presenters of serious channels (Channel 3 and Channel 4 on BBC, CBS and NBC on American Network).

Georgaphically, the area which is associated with RP in Britain is the south-east of the country. Ask ss why.

As for the American standard, the linguists trace back its origin to the Great Lakes area, i.e. the North. In fact, newsreaders for American ra­dio and TV are selected from people who are from the North, North Midland and the West or they are trained to sound as if they are (Preston and Shuy 1988). American national news agencies and radio stations are located in the North-East, while the entertainment industry which ca­ters for the production of films and videos is stationed in the West (in Hollywood).

Regional standards are smaller geographical divisions. They are the accents of educated population in a certain area.

Regional Standards

• Southern, Northern, Scottish and Northern Irish on the British Isles,

• Northern, Northern Midland, Southern Midland, Southern, Western in the U.S.A.

Regional, or territorial, linguistic divi­sion reflects the history of early settlement. Ask ss to give examples.

In the U.S.A., for instance, the history of migration developed in three main routes which is reflected in the division into the North, the South and the Midland (further subdivided into North Midland and South Midland); the three strands merged in the West, with the northern one dominating.

Regional standards, as spoken by most educated people in the coun­try, show a certain degree of regional deviation from the standard, often referred to as regionally "modified RP".

In Britain, speakers from the North and the West of England (Celtic areas) are often identified as having a northern regional accent. Among these areas the Scottish accent is more easily identified, next to it comes the Irish accent, while the Welsh educated accent is confused either with the Scot­tish or the Southern type.

In the United States, geographically, the situation is quite the reverse: it is the South and South Midland which stand out for their marked dif­ference from the standard pronunciation. Southern accent features are negatively assessed social markers. Ask ss why? Another area which is identified by Americans for its accent is the East, with a prejudice against New York accent and a certain respect for Boston.

The true American accent is to be found in Western and Mid-Western parts of the country. Actually, this is the area where you cannot hear either a northern or a southern accent.

Local Accents

Less educated people use numerous local accents which can be either urban (characteristic of a city like Liverpool or New York) or rural (spoken in the countryside, like South Wales or the Appalachians).

In the old time a natural barrier like a river or a mountain would be enough to make the speech of two villages different. But today mobility of the population have increased immensely. In­novations "leap" from big cities to small towns and countryside. Comparison between the data of the Linguistic Atlas of North America collected in the fifties and the data presented in the Phonological Map of the U.S.A. completed by the end of the century has demonstrated that the accents of the major cities in the U.S.A. have become much more different than they used to be fifty years ago (Labov 1999).