Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T14:08:52.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Yes, that's the best’: Short front vowel lowering in English today

Young people across the anglophone world are changing their pronunciation of vowels according to a change which started in North America.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2017

Raymond Hickey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In different parts of the English-speaking world various vowel changes have been taking place in recent years, perhaps the most noticeable of which is the vowel lowering in words like DRESS and TRAP. This lowering would seem to have its origins some few decades ago in North America, probably in California and perhaps simultaneously in Canada. The shift, labelled here short front vowel lowering (SFVL), has spread quickly across the anglophone world and is found in locations as far apart as Ireland, South Africa and Australia. In each case where the change has been adopted there has been an adaptation of the change to local circumstances within the borrowing variety. The transmission of the change is also significant as the spread would seem not to be by direct speaker contact.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 9 - 16
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bauer, L. 1985. ‘Tracing phonetic change in the Received Pronunciation of British English.’ Journal of Phonetics, 13, 61–81.Google Scholar
Bauer, L. 1994. Watching English Change. An Introduction to the Study of Linguistic Change in Standard Englishes in the Twentieth Century. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bigham, D. 2010. ‘Correlation of the low back vowel merger and TRAP-retraction.’ Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 15(2), 21–31.Google Scholar
Boberg, C. 2005. ‘The Canadian shift in Montreal.’ Language Variation and Change, 17(2), 133–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boberg, C. 2012. ‘Standard Canadian English.’ In Hickey, R. (ed.), Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 159–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branford, W. 1994. ‘English in South Africa.’ In Burchfield, R. (ed.), English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Development. Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 430–496.Google Scholar
Chevalier, A. 2016. ‘Globalisation versus Internal Development: The reverse short front vowel shift in South African English.’ PhD dissertation. Cape Town: University of Cape Town.Google Scholar
Clarke, S., Elms, F. & Youssef, A. 1995. ‘The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence.’ Language Variation and Change, 7, 209–228.Google Scholar
Cox, F. & Palethorpe, S. 2008. ‘Reversal of short front vowel raising in Australian English.’ Proceedings of Interspeech, 22–26 September 2008, Brisbane. Adelaide: Casual Productions, pp. 342–345.Google Scholar
Cox, F. & Palethorpe, S. 2012. ‘Standard Australian English. The sociostylistic broadness continuum.’ In Hickey, R. (ed.), Standards of English. Codified Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 294–317.Google Scholar
Deterding, D. 2010. ‘Variation across Englishes: Phonology.’ In Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London: Routledge, pp. 385–399.Google Scholar
Dinkin, A. 2011. ‘Weakening resistance: Progress toward the low back merger in New York State.’ Language Variation and Change, 23(3), 315–345.Google Scholar
Docherty, G. J. 2010. ‘Phonological innovation in contemporary spoken British English.’ In Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London: Routledge, pp. 59–75.Google Scholar
Eckert, P. 2012. ‘Northern California Vowels.’ Online at <https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html> (Accessed: 31 January 2016).+(Accessed:+31+January+2016).>Google Scholar
Gordon, M. J. 2012. ‘English in the United States.’ In Hickey, R. (ed.), Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 109–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, J. 2012. ‘The coarticulatory basis of diachronic high back vowel fronting.’ In Solé, M.-J., & Recasens, D. (eds.), The Initiation of Sound Change: Perception, Production, and Social Factors. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 103–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickey, R. 2003. ‘What's cool in Irish English? Linguistic change in contemporary Ireland.’ In Tristram, H. L. C. (ed.), Celtic Englishes III. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 357–373.Google Scholar
Hickey, R. 2005. Dublin English. Evolution and Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hickey, R. 2012. ‘Internally and externally motivated language change.’ In Hernández-Compoy, J. M. & Conde-Silvestre, J. C. (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 401–421.Google Scholar
Hickey, R. 2014. A Dictionary of Varieties of English. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hickey, R. 2016. ‘English in Ireland: Development and varieties.’ In Hickey, R. (ed.), Sociolinguistics in Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 3–40.Google Scholar
Hickey, R. 2017a. ‘Twentieth-century received pronunciation: Stop articulation.’ In: Hickey, Raymond (ed.), Listening to the Past: Audio Records of Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickey, R. 2017b. Variation and Change in Dublin English. Online at <http://www.uni-due.de/VCDE> (Accessed 28 September 2017).+(Accessed+28+September+2017).>Google Scholar
Holmes-Elliott, S. & Smith, J. 2015. ‘DRESS down: /ε/-lowering in apparent time in a rural Scottish community.’ Proceedings from the XVIII International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow. (Accessed: 28 September 2017).Google Scholar
Kennedy, R. & Grama, J. 2012. ‘Chain shifting and centralization in California vowels: an acoustic analysis.’ American Speech, 87(1), 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irons, T. 2007. ‘On the status of low back vowels in Kentucky English: More evidence of merger.’ Language Variation and Change, 19, 137–180.Google Scholar
Labov, W., Ash, S. & Boberg, C. 2006. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology, and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mesthrie, R. 2010. ‘Socio-phonetics and social change: Deracialisation of the GOOSE vowel in South African English.’ Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14(1), 3–33.Google Scholar
Upton, C. 2008. ‘Received Pronunciation.’ In Kortmann, B. & Upton, C. (eds), Varieties of English. Vol. 1: The British Isles. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 237–252.Google Scholar
Upton, C. 2012. ‘An evolving standard British English pronunciation model.’ In Hickey, R. (ed.), Standards of English. Codified Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–71.Google Scholar
Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wong, A. W. 2014. ‘GOOSE-fronting among Chinese Americans in New York City.’ University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 20(2), 208–218.Google Scholar
Yuasa, I. P. 2010. ‘Creaky voice: A new feminine voice quality for young urban-oriented upwardly mobile American women?’ American Speech, 85(3), 315–337.Google Scholar