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The Role of Dialect Experience in Topic-Based Shifts in Speech Production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2019

Abby Walker
Abby Walker*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Abstract

An individual's language can change in the moment due to the topic of conversation and over time because of regional mobility. This paper investigates the relationship between these two types of shifts by asking whether speakers with substantial second dialect exposure change their pronunciation more when the topic changes in a regionally meaningful way compared to speakers with less exposure. Specifically, topic-based shifts on three phonological variables that differ between British and US English are investigated in native speakers of both dialects as a function of the migrant status of the speaker. Experience matters in that speakers only shift between variants in their repertoire, and expatriates have acquired some second dialect features that nonmigrants do not have. However, it does not appear that more exposure to, or increased rates of usage of a variant leads to more topic-based shifting toward that variant. These findings, interpreted within the existing literature, suggest that topic-based shifts are driven primarily by stereotypical sociolinguistic representations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , July 2019 , pp. 135 - 163
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

Thanks to: the generous participants; RAs Sara Cuschleg, Shikha Saxena, Ashley Rambacher, Shannon Melvin, and especially Yourdanis Sedarous; my dissertation committee Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Cynthia Clopper, Don Winford, and Mary Beckman; Bronwen Evans and UCL for interview space in England; audiences at NWAV (Chicago, October 2014), GURT (DC, March 2015), and LSNZ (Wellington, NZ, March 2016); the anonymous reviewers. This work was funded by an NSF DDIG (BCS 1323897).

References

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