Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English (original) (raw)
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Cognitive and social forces in dialect shift: Gradual change in London Asian speech
Language Variation and Change, 2011
This study examines the retention of a non-native dialect feature by British Asians in London. We examine the use of one Punjabi feature (t-retroflexion) and one British feature (t-glottaling) across three groups: first-generation non-native immigrants and two age groups of second-generation British Asians. Cognitively oriented models predict that non-native features will either be innately blocked (Chambers, 2002) or reallocated by native generations. A socially oriented model allows for more gradual change. Contrary to the cognitive view, the older second generation neither blocks nor clearly reallocates use of t-retroflexion; they closely mirror the first generation's non-native use. However, they simultaneously control nativelike t-glottaling, reflecting a robust bidialectal ability. It is the younger second generation who exhibit focused reallocation in the form and function of t-retroflexion. This 20-year lag corresponds to major changes in demographics and race relations ...
Ethnicity and sociolinguistic variation in Manchester English
This dissertation examines the relationship between ethnicity and sociolinguistic variation in Manchester English. The research question is whether Manchester-born speakers with an ethnic minority background adopt features of Manchester English and whether they participate in local and supra-local changes. The sample consisted of four Manchester-born British-Asian Sikhs from a Punjabi-speaking background. Its properties concerning T with glottal features, TH-fronting and H-dropping were compared with those of a Manchester baseline sample. It was found that the British-Sikh speakers in the sample participate in the ongoing changes in T with glottal features and TH-fronting, but with lower proportions of glottal variants of T and higher proportions of TH-fronting than the Manchester baseline. There is a complete absence of H dropping. In addition, it was established that the British-Sikh speakers participate in the Southern English happY-tensing instead of lowering and backing the happY vowel as in Manchester English. They did not display any obvious British-Asian accent features. The differences in T and the happY vowel were explained with an orientation towards supra-local and standard varieties of British English. The high proportions of TH-fronting pointed towards additional factors. The absence of H-dropping appears to be a marker of non-Anglos and therefore a feature of a multi-ethnic vernacular. Further research is needed to verify the results both for a wider range of British-Sikh and for speakers from other ethnic minority backgrounds. Another open question is whether the differences are solely due to accommodation or whether they constitute acts of identity.
First language and sociolinguistic influences on the sound patterns of Indian English
2014
The current dissertation is a systematic study of variation in the English spoken in multilingual and multicultural India. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of two native languages (Hindi and Telugu) on English, which is spoken by almost all Indians as a second language. The first experiment indicated that Indian English (IE) is accented by the first language of its speakers, but high English proficiency and the degree of divergence between the sound patterns of the speaker's native language and his or her IE suggested that other factors might influence the preservation of a native language accent in IE. The second experiment controlled for language investigated the effect of region on IE, finding that listeners were able to distinguish speakers based on region even when they spoke the same native language. The regional variation in IE was more noticeable for native Telugu speakers than for native Hindi speakers. This difference was attributed to differences in the social and political power associated with these native languages: Hindi being the national language and the language of the capital city of India; Telugu, a regional language of Andhra Pradesh and spoken by many fewer people than Hindi. The third experiment was motivated by the idea that persistent effects of the speaker's native language might also be used to reflect a speaker's personal v identity. Accordingly, the experiment investigated the effect of speaking about personal versus neutral topics on IE pronunciation. The results were that speakers' IE pronunciation was more like their native language when speakers' discussed personal topics then when they discussed neutral topics. Overall, the results suggest that the pronunciation of IE is conditioned by social factors, meaning that it has entered the differentiation phase of Schneider's dynamic model of English evolution. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.
La pronunciación de /r/ de hablantes anglo-ingleses y punjabi-ingleses en Yorkshire del Oeste
Matices en Lenguas Extranjeras, 2017
In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used the standard British rhotic, the postalveolar approximant [ ], exclusively, and the Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers who used both British rhotics and a number of different variants influenced by the Punjabi retroflex flap /ɽ/. The influence of the retroflex flap /ɽ/ was proven by formant and duration results, as well as qualitative observations of the speaker spectrograms. It is predicted that Punjabi-English speaker preference for either Punjabi influenced rhotics or British rhotics depended on if they identify as culturally integrated "British Asians" or culturally alienated "Asians". This study also considers the possibility of a progression in rhotic production of West Yorkshire Punjabi-English speakers over the last fifteen years.
Pitch range (difference between maximum and minimum pitch), pitch dynamism and mean pitch level have been shown to differ between varieties of English, and such differences can lead to (un)favourable judgements about a speaker's attitude and like-ability. Little is known about pitch range in nativised varieties of English, which are spoken in postcolonial countries. While in many functional and structural ways they are similar to native varieties, in other ways they resemble learner varieties. Since learners commonly have a compressed pitch range compared to native speakers, this paper investigates pitch range and level in 20 speakers of Educated Indian English (IndE) in order to determine whether IndE is similar to British English or more like learner varieties in this respect. The analysis reveals that IndE has a smaller pitch range than British English in read speech, but a wider pitch range in spontaneous speech, which is not compatible with results for learner varieties. Moreover, IndE has a higher pitch level than BrE. These prosodic differences might explain reports of cross-cultural communication difficulties. Finally, the comparison of four different L1 backgrounds in IndE also shows small L1-based differences, which, however, are not significant.
Speech Variations in Pakistani English and Singaporean English
2017
This paper presents acoustic analysis of six English vowels /a: /, /ɔ: /, /i: /, /ʊ/, /ɒ/, /u: / in three minimal pair of English words produced by second language learners in Pakistan. The paper aims to analyze acoustic realizations of Pakistani English vowels and compare them with Singaporean English vowels to investigate as to how much acoustic difference is in terms of F1 and F2 measurements between Pakistani English and Singaporean English. This study used the parameters of vowel quality (F1 and F2) Fundamental frequency 1 and 2 of English vowels. In addition, the analysis compares English vowels between the groups and within the groups. The data were collected through recordings of voice samples from nine subjects (5 male and 4 female) students. The study hypothesized that there are two varieties and will be different from each other, in terms of the production of Pakistani English vowels and Singaporean. The paper also looked at the male and female speakers' acoustic variations within the group recruited in Pakistan. The speakers were the undergraduate students from the department of Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi. Speech differences between female and male voices are associated with multidisciplinary variations. Not only do these refer to acoustic (fundamental frequency) and perceptual judgments but also to the size of the vocal track in individual capacity coupled with educational background of the speakers. The study focused on the height and quality of the vowels to determine the acoustic differences between male and female students and Pakistani vs. Singaporean English.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2009
tioning of Bhojpuri and Hindi. Given the post-World War II expansion of ancestral language classes in Mauritian public schools, it seems plausible that younger generations of Hindu Mauritians, while less competent in Bhojpuri, are relatively more competent in Hindi than older generations. If so, how are ideologies of ancestral language expertise (and prestige) mediated by these opposing processes of Bhojpuri linguistic decline and Hindi linguistic revitalization? The second example concerns the author's somewhat cursory description of social relations and marriage practices between ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious groups. Despite claiming that cultural and institutional sanctions exist to discourage the "creolization" (p. 64) of Indo-Mauritians and Creoles (and Hindus and Muslims as well as North and South Indians, to a lesser extent), the author notes that intermarriage between Tamil Christians and Hindus, Tamils and Telugus, Marathis and north Indian Hindus, and even Creoles and Indians has been or still is relatively commonplace. What statistical or ethnographic evidence could be provided to assess how changes in marriage practices correspond (or not) with the progressive factionalization of ethnolinguistic groups? Are there obvious disjunctures in the biological versus ideological reproduction of ethnolinguistic categories and, if so, are they discursively erased through laws of hypergamy or hypogamy? More empirically, how do children of mixed marriages get assigned to specific ancestral language classes? These questions, while attempting to elicit greater ethnographic detail about the constitution of intergenerational and multiethnic social hierarchies in Mauritius, do not detract from Eisenlohr's accomplishment in demonstrating how diasporic belonging in Mauritius is linguistically mediated. In fact, the rich historical context and linguistic evidence presented in this text renders it a highly informative and thought provoking read for students and scholars of performance, transnationalism, and multilingualism as pertaining to South Asian diasporas in particular and multiethnic societies in general.
Verbal Repertoire in Kanpur: A Sociolinguistic Heterogeneity
The diversity of languages, social structures, communities and religions in India has created a complex yet sustainable relation between linguistic variations and social stratifications. On this heterogeneous background, this paper proposes to adopt sociolinguistic approach towards the study of usage of various languages and dialects in Kanpur city. Kanpur is a very prominent industrial city of Uttar Pradesh State in India. The city of Kanpur is linguistically an area of Kannauji dialect in so-called Hindi belt. The aim of this paper is to understand the social roles, linguistic behaviours and choice of language/dialect in various situations. Repertoire of an area is defined by its societal pattern, historical background and of course linguistic behaviour. This paper is empirical in nature where survey of speech community in Kanpur City (through questionnaires and interviews) was conducted to determine the verbal repertoire. It shall be interesting to note the code-switching, code-mixing and over-all codematrix of this society through this paper. This shall define the current status of different languages and dialects in the city. Hence this paper shall attempt to underline the basic values of Indian society reflected in social structures and colourfully varied linguistic patterns along with sketching the growth of new evolving dialects of Kanpuria Hindi and Hinglish.
Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2011
In the multilingual centres of Northern Europe's major cities, new varieties of the host languages are emerging. While some analyse these 'multiethnolects' as youth styles, we take a variationist approach to an emerging 'Multicultural London English' (MLE), asking: (1) what features characterise MLE; (2) at what age(s) are they acquired; (3) is MLE vernacularised; and (4) when did MLE emerge, and what factors enabled this? We argue that innovations in the diphthongs and the quotative system are generated from the specific sociolinguistics of inner-city London, where at least half the population is undergoing group second-language acquisition and where high linguistic diversity leads to a heterogeneous feature pool to select from. We look for incrementation in the acquisition of the features, but find this only for two 'global' changes, BE LIKE and GOOSE-fronting, for which adolescents show the highest usage. Community-internal factors explain the age-related variation in the remaining features.
—This paper is restricted to the investigation of linguistic variation among the Kashmiri speakers at the level of phonology and lexicon of their language in accordance with certain social variables, viz-a-viz. religion, education, region / socioeconomic status, age and occupation. In the present paper, an effort has been devoted to examine as to how the structure of the Kashmiri language varies at the level of phonology and lexicon, in accordance with above mentioned social variables. It also takes into account the possible reasons behind this variation. The present paper explores as to how the social heterogeneity of the Kashmiri speech community is reflected in the linguistic behavior of its speakers, and gives rise to variations in the use of their language at the level of phonology and lexicon. The paper begins with giving a brief introduction about language variation, social variables, and linguistic variables. It also discusses the historical perspective of language variation, and throws light on the related literature by discussing some important studies of variation carried out by different scholars of linguistics from time to time. In this study an attempt has been made to picturize the social structure of the Kashmiri speech community in terms of its social stratification/ and social heterogeneity. The paper also discusses the research methodology adopted in carrying out this study.