1. Roskilde University, Denmark
Short vowels in real time: TRAP, STRUT and FOOT in the South of England
Anne Fabricius
Roskilde University, Denmark
ICLAVE #5, Copenhagen
June 27th, 2009

2. Introduction
Language change in progress, its social embedding, predictions and complications
A real-time diachronic study of some features of modern RP/changing SSBE
At one level a quantitative study of patterns of variation implicated in linguistic change in some cases
At another level, a study of the evolution and devolution/transformation of modern RP as a social practice and its place in the sociolinguistic landscape of the UK
Here: an exemplificatory look at short vowel configurations
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

3. Background
Phonologically and phonetically the RP accent has been well described in the past (native speaker phoneticians e.g. Daniel Jones’ EPD, Gimson & Cruttenden)
Methodological foundations in the structuralist tradition of phonetics, a ‘variety’ perspective
“axiom of categoricity” vs sociolinguistic/variationist school of thought
Historical roots of RP are discussed by Mugglestone (2003): Talking Proper: the rise of accent as social symbol
the traditional ‘non-regional’ accent /as consequence of the insularity of public school boarding life/preparatory schools from age ~7, 8
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

4. RP: fact and fiction (Ramsaran 1990)
‘Native RP’ (s)
Sociolinguistically observable through a defined population in successive generations
Sociologically
Socioeconomic background
Educational background and experiences
Phonological system(s) with phonetic variations …
Change is a different phenomenon in each case
All ‘varieties’ have this potential ambiguity
‘Construct RP’ (s)
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)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

5. What do the titles emphasize and de-emphasize
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 regional history
Modern RP emphasizes a generational sociolinguistic continuity
which however may be illusory in some individual cases
Ask what is the ‘breaking point’, empirically, for a decisive cut with the earlier label…
Connotations of ‘RP’ led many to abandon it in the 60’s.
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

6. Empirical background: Social polarities in the UK
Historical social differentiation in UK secondary education: 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 (Access)
Present Economic situation (?)
What are students’ perceptions? (North-South divide, levelling, do accents ’matter’ to people)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

7. Theory: sociolinguistics and class
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 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 was to some extent sidelined compared to ethnicity, social networks and gender as important sociolinguistic categories.
(My interviewees MC/UMC rather than aristocratic UC)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

8. 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. (c.f. creak in RP)
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9. Thus...
A research interest in the sociolinguistics of the successor to RP, e.g. speakers’ rates of participation in ongoing England-wide vernacular changes (such as discussed in Foulkes and Docherty 1999)
Is non-regionality breaking down/changing, e.g. in Oxbridge contexts?
What does Higher education contribute to koinéization processes (Bigham 2008)?
Reflects a changing picture of (fluid) relationships between language and socioeconomic privilege and historical processes
Part of the picture of English in the UK in its entirety
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

10. Moreover
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 potentially complement 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 based on Wells 1982)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

11. The research questions arising here
To what extent is there still a non-regional accent of English in the UK?
What phonetic characteristics does it maintain from earlier generations?
and to what extent are ongoing UK-wide processes of vernacular change visible here?
Are there changes particular to this variety alone?
What is its relationship to ongoing metaprocesses of standard-formation/devolution/transformation
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

12. Methods Interview corpus with present author as interviewee
40+ interviews collected 1997/1998
40+ interviews collected 2008
At Cambridge University
Students with independent school backgrounds
Structured sociolinguistic interviews, 1hr duration
Ongoing project
Quantitative studies of phonetic variation to ’map’ the accent variety empirically to an extent not attempted before
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

13. Presuppositions
The forces of linguistic change which act on all varieties of a language will also apply to n-RP
whether internally-motivated endogenous or contact-induced 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-RPs (cf Rampton’s ’posh’ performances)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

14. 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 societies are sometimes emphasized (Rampton Language in Late Modernity)
So is the British accent landscape characterized by stability as well as change?
Coupland and Bishop 2007 reporting stability in regional vernacular downgrading
Plus 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)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

15. ...contra social practice perspectives
Social practice emerging through ethnographic approach
We 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 wider change?)
Communities of practice in the Cambridge University landscape: rowing clubs, choirs, subject groups (Classics?), different colleges, could form basis for ethnographic studies
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

16. Data: short vowels in reading passage data
Data set
Analysis
CORPUS
FEMALE
MALE
1998 4
2008
Lexical items with tone group prominence
PRAAT analysis using standard settings (adjusted with greater Hz range for female voices)
PRAAT script by Tyler Kendall to extract mid-point formant values
900 tokens in all, 8 keywords
Hand checked, 4 tokens discarded
FLEECE
KIT
FOOT
DRESS
LOT
TRAP
STRUT
START
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

17. Comparisons presented here
Compare reading passage data in year and gender cohorts
For comparison with trends in RP over the course of the twentieth century, see Fabricius 2007a and b.
TRAP-STRUT rotation brought about by (1) trap backing and lowering (2) STRUT raising to central or back of central position
FOOT fronting (and unrounding) towards KIT
Changes in short vowel system only.
Comparisons needed with long vowels e.g. START
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

18. Male speakers, 1998 cohort
-talk about how these angle configurations compare with 2007 paper (M3 appears in that paper... See next slide)
-98m2 perhaps a little more conservative (was indeed a notably more careful speaker in interview speech as well (very conservative Cambridge background), eg smoothed triphthongs
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

19. M3’s interview speech
LOT-FOOT
TRAP-STRUT
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20. Male speakers, 2008 cohort
Note 08 M1 diverges from others in angle configurations both TRAP STRUT and LOT FOOT
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21. Female speakers, 1998 cohort
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22. Female speakers, 2008 cohort
Note 08f1 has lower LOT vowel: actress training pretty conservative pronunciation!
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23. Tendencies suggested TRAP/STRUT configuration stable
LOT raising vis a vis FOOT
Females 2008 plus 1 male 2008 speaker
FOOT remains distinct from KIT, process has slowed
STRUT/ START overlapping needs further investigation
Importantly, individual differences can be tracked
Unity and diversity...
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

24. Some sound samples 1997-1998 corpus: 2008 corpus: M2 M3 F1 F4
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

25. Future plans with corpus data
and 2008 materials will be transcribed and annotated
Building up a series of inductive quantitative sociolinguistic-oriented studies of stability, variation and change-in-progress
Mapping the current features of Modern RP/SSBE from a dynamic perspective which integrates individual and group differences
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

26. Language change in progress examples
GOAT fronting/merging with FACE
GOAT-allophony
MOUTH-PRICE onsets
Monophthongisation
T-glottalling
R-sandhi
Vowels in unstressed syllables (weak vowels)
L-Vocalisation (variants)
Gender differentiations, lexical effects, style effects in all of the above
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

27. Potential comparison points
BBC Newsreader corpus (Hannisdal)
London WC (Kerswill, Torgersen, Fox & Cheshire)
DyViS – 100 male SSBE speakers in Cambridge (Nolan, McDougall et al)
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

28. Bibliography 1
The Modern RP page Bigham, D Dialect contact and accommodation among emerging adults in a university setting . Ph.D. Thesis, University of Texas at Austin. Chambers, J.K Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell. Cruttenden, Alan Gimson's Pronunciation of English. 6th edition. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press. Coupland, Nikolas and Hywel Bishop Ideologised values for British accents. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11, 1: Fabricius, Anne. 2007a. 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: Fabricius, A. 2007b. Vowel Formants and Angle Measurements in Diachronic Sociophonetic Studies: FOOT-fronting in RP. Proceedings of the 16th ICPhS, Saarbrücken, August www: Fabricius, Anne H. 2002a. RP as sociolinguistic object. Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol 1, nr 2:
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29. Bibliography 2
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: Fabricius, Anne H. 2002c. Ongoing change in modern RP: evidence for the disappearing stigma of t-glottalling. English Worldwide 23, 1: Foulkes, P. and G. J. Docherty. eds Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. Labov, William Principles of Linguistic Change volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Hannisdal, Bente Rebecca Variability and change in Received Pronunciation : a study of six phonological variables in the speech of television newsreaders . University of Bergen PhD thesis. Harrington, J., F. Kleber and U. Reubold Compensation for coarticulation, /u/-fronting, and sound change in standard southern British: An acoustic and perceptual study. JASA 123,5: 2825–2835. Macaulay, Ronald "Extremely interesting, very interesting, or only quite interesting? Adverbs and social class." Journal of Sociolinguistics. 6.3: Mugglestone, Lynda Talking Proper: the Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2nd edition. Rampton, B Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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30. Bibliography 3
Ramsaran, Susan RP: fact and fiction. In Ramsaran, Susan, ed. Studies in the Pronunciation of English: A Commemorative Volume in honour of A.C. Gimson. London: Routledge.
Schneider, E. W. (1999). Review of Chambers Journal of English Linguistics. 27,
Trudgill, P Norwich: endogenous and exogenous linguistic change. In P. Foulkes and G.J. Docherty 1999,
Wells, J.C Accents of English, 3 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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31. Acknowledgements
Department of Culture and Identity, Roskilde University
Department of Linguistics, Cambridge University
Francis Nolan, Kirsty McDougall, Toby Hudson
Tyler Kendall, Duke University and North Carolina State University.
ICLAVE#5, June 2009

32. Roskilde University, Denmark
Short vowels in real time: TRAP, STRUT and FOOT in the South of England
Anne Fabricius
Roskilde University, Denmark
ICLAVE #5, Copenhagen
June 27th, 2009