408 E D WA R D F I N E G A N
In Figure 8.10, note that Florida, though geographically southern, is not included in the dialect of the South because Floridians do not participate in the Southern Shift generally, despite some fronting of /u/. Note, too, that speakers in what is labelled the ‘St Louis Corridor’ participate in the Northern Cities Shift, unlike the Midland speakers surrounding them. Finally, note that, unlike most of Canada, Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces do not exhibit the low-back merger (or certain other characteristic Canadian features).
Despite the rapid rate of change uncovered by Telsur’s findings, the investigators emphasise that the basic boundaries separating the dialect regions of North America have remained relatively stable, even while the particular features marking those dialects have changed over time.
8.3.5 |
Social dialects |
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Besides regional varieties, language may vary across social groups of any kind. Ethnic groups, socioeconomic status groups, and men and women differ from one another in vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar, as well as in styles of interaction. It is convenient to think of variation across social groups as occurring within regional dialects, of regional dialects as being a superordinate category, but characteristics ascribed to ethnic groups, status groups, or men or women may transcend regions, and social group variation of one kind typically interacts with that of other kinds. For example, pronunciation of the final consonant in the talking/running class of words varies between [n] and [ŋ]. Both variants appear in most dialects, but [ŋ] appears more frequently in Northern US dialects than in those of the South, more frequently among women than men, and more frequently among higher-socioeconomic status groups than lower-ranking ones.
8.3.5.1Socioeconomic status
Principally for methodological reasons, recent investigations of language use across socioeconomic status groups have focused on pronunciation. In a trailblazing study of New York City, Labov (1966, 1972b) examined the vowels
(æ) and (ɔ) and the consonants (ð), (θ), (r) and (ŋ). The respondents participated in sociolinguistic interviews designed to elicit styles in a range from casual to formal. Across four ranked groups, New York City residents showed remarkable similarity in overall patterns of variation, though they differed systematically in actual realisations of the variables. For example, pronunciations of /æ/ in words like ham and crash varied from [æ] to raised and fronted [ε ] and [iə ]. Pronunciations of the stressed vowel in the coffee and fought class varied from low back [ɑ] to mid back [ɔ] and high back [uə ]. The lowest-ranking SES group showed higher percentages of raised vowels than higher-ranked groups.
Among consonants, (θ) and (ð) represent variable pronunciations of the sounds represented by initial th in words like thin and then, respectively. In a wide range of dialects, these consonants are variably pronounced as fricatives ([θ] or [ð]) or stops
English in North America |
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Figure 8.11 Pronunciation of -ing as /In/ by four SES groups in three situations in New York City
Source: Labov, 1996
([t] or [d]). Frequent stop pronunciations underlie the reputation of New Yorkers for saying ‘dis’, ‘dat’, ‘dem’, and ‘dose’. These and a few other phonological variables (ŋ n, θ t, ð d) have remained stable over long periods of time and showed similar patterns of use among all SES groups in New York City. Upper- middle-class speakers scored higher than lower-middle-class speakers, who in turn scored higher than working-class speakers, who scored higher than lowerclass speakers. A typical display for stable variables appears in Figure 8.11; it shows index values for the four SES groups in ‘styles’ ranging from casual to reading style. Note the roughly parallel pattern: the indexes for the variables across SES groups mirror the indexes for styles; pronunciations that all SES groups favour in more formal styles are the ones favoured by higher-ranked SES groups more generally.
The /r/ variable showed a somewhat different pattern. In the most formal styles, index values were higher for the second highest-ranking group than for the highest-ranking group, creating a pattern of ‘hypercorrection’ that is thought to reflect a sound change in progress. This interpretation is supported by analysis of patterns across ‘apparent time’, where younger New York City residents showed higher realisations of /r/ than older residents in the same SES group. In other words, lower SES groups more frequently dropped /r/ in the car card word class than did higher SES groups, and all groups pronounced /r/ more frequently in careful styles than in casual ones. For these same phonological variables, similar patterns have been found elsewhere in the US (as in Britain; see Trudgill, 1974). Other phonological variables that correlate with SES include consonant cluster reduction, where lower-ranking social groups show a stronger tendency to reduce word-final clusters such as /ʃt/ in words like wished and /rnd/ in words like turned.