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Lecture 6 Sociophonetics

2. Major accent types: British and American

We will compare RP (BBC English) with GA (American Network English). The difference in cultural norms across the two na­tions is also reflected in the status of the pronunciation models: RP is a social prestige accent spoken by a tiny minority of the population, esti­mated at 3-5% only, while the proportion of GA speakers in the U.S.A. is much higher, estimated at 33% of the population.

Generally speaking, the main defining feature of British-oriented ac­cents is the absence of post-vocalic r which makes them all non-rhotic compared to North-America-oriented accents which are predomi­nantly rhotic. However, within each country there are regionally marked accents: the Scottish, the Irish and some other provincial accents on the British Isles are rhotic; in the U.S.A. the Southern, the Eastern and Afro-American types of English accents are non-rhotic. These distinctive features become social markers. In the States they describe Bostonians as pronouncing the phrase with a long a but without r. The cah was pahked in Hahvahd уahd.

Most of the distinctions are found in the system of vowels which was affected by the preservation of /r/ in GA (as is known from history, in South­ern British English it was vocalised).

Vowels

  1. There are 20 vowels in the system of RP and 15-16 vowels in GA: because /r/ was not vocalised, GA lacks diphthongs ending in /ә/ , such as /iә/ or /juә/ in here or pure. In GA the corresponding sounds are pronounced as /ir/, /jur/. Actually, in GA all vowels oc­curring before r within a syllable are likely to become “r-coloured" (retroflexed) to some extent:

RP here [hiә], hair [heә], pure [pjuә]; GA here [hir], hair [her], pure [pjur];