Transcript Prolegomena to a sociolinguistics of 'modern RP

Anne Fabricius
Roskilde University, Denmark
Guest Lecture, University of Cambridge, 2nd December 2008
Introduction
 The issues behind today’s title:
 the implications for the whole of each part of the title
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Real time studies of speech communities
Modern RP/SSBE
‘Native’ and ‘construct’ varieties
Varieties and social practice perspectives
Language change in progress, its social embedding, predictions and
complications
 Blending these ingredients into the theoretical, methodological and
empirical foundations for a real-time diachronic study of some
features of modern RP/changing SSBE
 Prolegomena: a series of introductory remarks or prefaces
 …amounting to the kernel of a research project description…
 …with exemplificatory sound samples…
First, a case for relevance...
 Making a contribution to models of the relationship
between language change and social embedding
 Regional sociolinguistic studies often focus on a broad
working class/middle class dichotomy
 Would perhaps a priori exclude speakers who had e.g.
boarding school backgrounds
 (Is there sometimes a slippage/false analogy between
‘vernacular’ and ‘non-standard’ in sociolinguistics?)
 Result: Ignoring the non-regional accent as a historical
process and product
Of the interaction of class and
sociolinguistic theory...
 Chambers (1995:37),
 The “upper class,” consisting of people with inherited wealth and privileges, is
so inconsequential – nonexistent outside Europe and Asia and dwindling
rapidly there - that it will not be considered here.
 Schneider's (1999:51) review of Chambers
 "we are less well-informed about [upper-class] speech patterns, attitudes, and
model character, and although it may be true that for sociolinguistic purposes
they are rather irrelevant, that still does not imply non-existence, - for
sociolinguistic modelling, a continuum of which one pole just does not exist,
would not be very convincing."
 Macaulay (2002: 398) points out, social class has to some extent been sidelined
compared to ethnicity, social networks and gender as important sociolinguistic
categories.
 MC/UMC rather than UC
And also ...
 Phonologically and phonetically the RP accent has
been well described (native speaker phoneticians e.g.
Daniel Jones’ EPD)
 has its scientific foundation in a structuralist tradition
of phonetics, a ‘variety’ perspective
 has therefore not always sat easily with the
sociolinguistic/variationist school of thought arising
in the 1960s.
 Historical roots of RP discussed in Mugglestone (2003)
Therefore...
 Much less is known about the sociolinguistics of successor
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to RP, e.g. speakers rates of participation in ongoing
England-wide vernacular changes (such as discussed in
Foulkes and Docherty 1999)
Is a regionalizing process taking place?
Is non-regionality breaking down/changing?
Higher education koinéization (Bigham 2008)?
a changing picture of (fluid) relationships between
language and socioeconomic privilege and social processes
Part of the picture of English in the UK in its entirety
Philosophical issues
 When is an accent variety no longer the same, when has it
changed beyond recognition (mutually intelligible still
across generations or breaking down: through changes
below consciousness... yeast/used, toasties/tasties)
 Linguistic Variety perspectives and social practice/social
constructionist perspective complementing each other
(having an accent versus doing being a student at
Cambridge linguistically)
 Thus, linguistic and ethnographic/sociological perspectives
can/must potentially intertwine...
 Need an updated model of the generational picture also for
’modern RP’ speakers (cf Rampton’s model, Wells 1982)
Some overarching theoretical issues for
sociolinguistics ...
 the role of cognitive processes in the initiation of language
change and their relation to social life
 Variation, variability and the triggers of language change
 Actuation problem: why does change X emerge here and now?
 Labov (1994: 415): “The diffusion of linguistic change in large
cities is promoted by women who combine upward mobility with
a consistent rejection of the constraining norms of polite society”
 UMC?
 The core of the transmission problem (Labov 1994: 416) is
“Children must learn to talk differently from their mothers, and
these differences must be in the same direction in each
succeeding generation”
 Also UMC, for some changes
Social polarities in the UK
 Historical social differentiation in UK secondary education:
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public school - independent school – grammar school - state
school (similar to Australia, vs e.g. Denmark, Scandinavia)
Universities, Govt. Education policy and Access schemes
Are educational backgrounds blurred or maintained in a higher
education context?
Application rates to e.g. Cambridge are rising
Economic situation
What are students’ perceptions? (North-South divide, levelling)
Are old distinctions being maintained or dissipating
If the latter, what replaces them? (an empirical ethnographic
question)
Kroch 1996
 Anthony Kroch’s interview-based study of the upper-
class of Philadelphia
 members of that group were users of the same
phonological system as other Philadelphians
 E.g. complex phonetic conditioning of features such as
Philadelphians short /a/.
 What distinguished them in their speech and in the
perception of others was a distinctive set of prosodic
and lexical behaviours. (cf creak in RP)
Accessing the variety empirically
 Interplay of ‘native’ and
‘construct’ results in a systematic
ambiguity; Ramsaran: fact and
fiction
 ‘Native RP’
 Sociolinguistically observable
through a defined population in
successive generations
 Sociologically and
phonologically
 Phonetic variations …
 Change in Native variety and the
‘construct’ variety are different
 ‘Construct RP’
 Systematically related to n-RP
but distinct and with its own
diachrony
 Here the notion of ‘standard’
comes into play, and can change
 E.g. on age-graded reactions to
t-glottalling
 Each generation has its own
cutoff points: ‘posh’
 Examples of ‘clergy-speak’
 A sociolinguistics of
perception… (Harrington ,
Kleber and Reubold 2008, on
generational perceptions of /u/fronting, NWAV)
Categoricity versus Variability
 ‘no-one speaks RP anymore’ ....
 a categorical view following Chambers' (1995:25)
formulation of the Chomskyan "axiom of categoricity”
 all linguistic units are invariant, discrete and qualitative,
 Thus a description of RP ties down that object ...
 However, language in a sociolinguistic perspective is
variant, continuous, and quantitative
 Thus diachronic fluidity is possible through
generational transmission; variability built in
A theoretical presupposition
 The forces of linguistic change which act on all
varieties of a language will also apply to n-RP
 whether internally-motivated endogenous or contactinduced exogenous changes (Trudgill 1999)
 Popular or folk-linguistic notions of, and about,
correctness or standardness also undergo change, due
to historical societal developments,
 these changes represent developments in c-RP (cf
Rampton’s ’posh’ performances)
Modern RP or SSBE?
 A question of naming practice
 Why ‘Modern RP’
 Why ‘SSBE’
 What do the titles emphasize and de-emphasize
 Standard as a label mixes form and function, Southern as
a result of regionalizing
 Modern RP emphasizes a generational sociolinguistic
continuity
 which however may be illusory in some individual cases
 Asking what is the ‘breaking point’, empirically, for a
decisive cut with the earlier label…
The 1997-8 corpus
 Phd thesis, Fabricius 2000, plus subsequent studies on
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weak vowels (2002b) and the short vowel system (2007)
PhD: A synchronic study of word–final t-glottalling in the
speech of 24 ex-independent school students at Cambridge
University recorded in 1997-1998.
Sample evenly split by gender, 12m, 12f
Speakers chosen through a combination of social and
linguistic criteria
Educational background, parents’ occupations
Conforming to a phonological model of RP
The phonological criteria used in
1997-1998
 /i:,
I, e, {, A:, Q,
O:, U, u:, V, 3:, @,
eI, aI, OI, @U, aU, I@,
e@, U@/
 last is lexically limited but solidly present in
Hannisdal’s 2007 study; all 30 BBC announcers have it
 Suggested smoothing was still active (variability here
needs tracking) eg lower, triumph, player in reading
passage 1997-8 and 2008
 Hannisdal 2007 examined smoothing as well in fire,
power sequences; used significantly more by male
Outside the phonological envelope
in 1997-8...
 no contrast between STRUT and FOOT
 Lexical h-dropping in stressed syllables
 TH-fronting
 Yod dropping, new [nu]
 [æ] for the BATH words, such as grass and past
 Velar nasal fronting [n] in –ING forms
Variable phonetic parameters
for the (2000) study
 HAPPY-tensing happy, coffee, valley, but also pre-
vocalically as in various,happier (Wells 1997a: 20)
 GOAT allophony/@U/ before dark /l/, [oU], as in cold,
gold, goal; 24/30 speakers in Hannisdal 2007, 2/6 on BBC
World
 l-vocalization coming into mainstream RP?
 Wells(1997a: 21)contra Maidment 1994
 Note two possible variants
 Yod coalescence in stressed syllables :Tuesday
["tSu:zdeI] Wells (ibid).
 Quality of GOOSE, FOOT and TRAP vowel
The unity of varieties...
 Varieties emerging from dialectologically-focussed studies
 Demarcation lines become important; Wells 1982 (RP, near-RP…)
 However, difficulties of demarcation and definition in late modern
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societies are sometimes emphasized (Rampton Language in Late
Modernity)
Or is the British accent landscape characterized by stability as well as
change?
Coupland and Bishop 2007 reporting stability in regional vernacular
downgrading alongside younger speakers’ rejection of standard
prestige in highly decontextualised attitudinal rating settings
Report ”disappointingly familiar conservative tendencies”..(2007:84)
Alongside findings for younger listeners ” [that] at least to a limited
extent, challenge the inference that there is a consolidated, single
ideological set in the evaluation of English accents” (2007:85)
...contra
social practice perspectives
 Social practice emerging through ethnographic approach
 could for example ask how do students do being at
Cambridge linguistically
 speaking differently when they start and when they
finish… (Evans and Iverson 2007)
 Are there gender distinctions? (are they potential motors of
change?)
 Communities of practice in the Cambridge University
landscape: rowing clubs, choirs, subject groups (Classics?),
different colleges, could all form basis for (others’)
ethnographic studies
Real time studies
(Tillery and Bailey 2003)
 Can be done by comparing data from present time to
documented sources (eg dictionaries like EPD; weak
vowels, Fabricius 2002b)
 Real time replication studies of two types:
 Trend survey (community)
 Panel survey (individuals)
 LANCHART in Copenhagen using both
 My replicated corpus is a trend study
Corpus 2008
 Presently being collected (40+ interviews)
 Chance to explore the accent over a ten year span...
 With data collection methodology (sociolinguistic
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interview plus reading passage) replicated, same physical
setting
Aiming again for 12m 12f core speakers, plus a continuum to
local southern varieties/midlands
a trend survey
Defining the community sociolinguistically
Potential disadvantages: wider demographic changes in
community can interfere with real time comparisons
Researcher age/positioning… (effect on e.g. t-glottalling?)
Future plans
for the real-time corpus 1998-2008:
 1997-8 and 2008 materials transcribed and annotated
to form a Praat-based database, similar to LANCHART
(Copenhagen) and DyViS (Cambridge)
 External funding sources...
 Real-time segmental phonetic comparisons over the
ten-year span of the corpus
 Could also be used for prosodic comparisons
 Building up a series of inductive quantitative
sociolinguistic-oriented studies of change-in-progress
Language change in progress: other
potential comparisons
 GOAT fronting/merging with FACE,
 GOAT-allophony
 MOUTH-PRICE onsets
 T-glottalling (caveat…)
 Intonational patterns
 Vowels in unstressed syllables (weak vowels)
 L-Vocalisation (variants)
 Gender differentiations, lexical effects, style effects in
all of the above
Other contributions
 Bente Hannisdal’s Ph.D. Thesis, following six variables
could all be tested
 CURE lowering
 GOAT allophony
 R-sandhi (Linking /r/ overall av. 60% Hannisdal 2007; higher
rates between function words)
 T-voicing
 Smoothing
 Yod coalescence
 Comparisons with London WC vowel patterns (Kerswill,
Torgersen, Fox, & Cheshire)
 Comparisons with DyViS
Sound samples 1
 From reading passage: ”Mr. Beebe sitting unnoticed in
the window, pondered over this illogical element in
Miss Honeychurch”
 ((Sound))
 Variations in l-vocalisation, NURSE vowel, strength of
ejective /t/, creak...
Sound samples 2
 Both conservative and innovative features...
 Male speaker: 1990 (no happY-Tensing..)
 Male speaker: travelling
 Female speaker (So how was starting at college for
you?)
 Female speaker (plans for year abroad?)
 Ejective release on the increase?....
In conclusion
 real-time corpus established
 Enabling quantitative variationist studies of the
embedding of linguistic variables in speech of a
sociolinguistically-identified group
 Gender differences
 changes over the span of ten years
 E.g. changes in vowel and diphthong qualities
 Consonantal features e.g. stops (t-glottalling, ejectives,
lenition)
 ....
Bibliography 1
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The Modern RP page www.akira.ruc.dk/~fabri
Bigham, D. 2008. Dialect contact and accommodation among emerging adults in a university setting .
Ph.D. Thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Chambers, J.K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell.
Coupland, Nikolas and Hywel Bishop. 2007. Ideologised values for British accents. Journal of
Sociolinguistics 11, 1: 74-103.
Evans, B. And P. Iverson, 2007. Plasticity in vowel perception and production: A study of accent
change in young adults. JASA 121, 6: 3814-3826.
Fabricius, Anne. 2007. Variation and change in the TRAP and STRUT vowels of RP: a real time
comparison of five acoustic data sets. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37:3: 293-320.
Fabricius, A. 2007. Vowel Formants and Angle Measurements in Diachronic Sociophonetic Studies:
FOOT-fronting in RP. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbrücken, August 2007. www:
www.icphs2007.de/.
Fabricius, Anne H. 2002a. RP as sociolinguistic object. Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol 1, nr
2:355-372.
Fabricius, Anne H. 2002b. Weak vowels in modern RP: an acoustic study of happY-tensing and
KIT/schwa shift. Language Variation and Change. Vol 14, nr 2: 211-237.
Fabricius, Anne H. 2002c. Ongoing change in modern RP: evidence for the disappearing stigma of tglottalling. English Worldwide 23, 1:115-136.
Foulkes, P. and G. J. Docherty. eds. 1999. Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London:
Arnold.
Bibliography 2
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Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hannisdal, Bente Rebecca . 2007. Variability and change in Received Pronunciation : a study of six
phonological variables in the speech of television newsreaders . University of Bergen PhD thesis.
http://hdl.handle.net/1956/2335
Harrington, J., F. Kleber and U. Reubold. 2008. Compensation for coarticulation, /u/-fronting, and
sound change in standard southern British: An acoustic and perceptual study. JASA 123,5: 2825–2835.
Macaulay, Ronald. 2002. "Extremely interesting, very interesting, or only quite interesting? Adverbs
and social class." Journal of Sociolinguistics. 6.3:398-417.
Maidment, John. 1994. Estuary English: hybrid or hype? Paper presented at the 4th NZ Conference on
Language & Society, Christchurch, NZ. http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/maidment.htm
Mugglestone, Lynda. 2003. Talking Proper: the Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 2nd edition.
Rampton, B. 2006. Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, E. W. (1999). Review of Chambers 1995. Journal of English Linguistics. 27,1. 49-56.
Tillery, Jan and Guy Bailey 2003. Approaches to real time in dialectology and sociolinguistics. World
Englishes 22,4: 351-365.
Trudgill, P. 1999. Norwich: endogenous and exogenous linguistic change. In P. Foulkes and G.J.
Docherty 1999, 124-140.
Wells, J.C. 1982. Accents of English, 3 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgements
 Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde
University
 Department of Linguistics, Cambridge University
 Francis Nolan
 Kirsty McDougall, Toby Hudson
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(for corpus-talk, coffee and companionship )