Two Competing Forces: Sociolinguistic and Phonotactic Influences on Phonological Variation in British Music
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2017-06-15
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en
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Abstract
Research on phonological variation in singing is almost exclusively grounded in the field of sociolinguistics, regarding the preference for Non-UK (Trudgill, 1983; Simpson, 1999) and UK variants (Beal, 2009). Though an introduction into possible phonotactic influences has been given by Morrissey (2008), it is only regarded as an alternative to already existing sociolinguistic analyses.
This thesis is an initial attempt to combine the two strands of linguistic research, describing the interplay of sociolinguistic and phonotactic influences on phonological variation by investigating the variation found in the idealistically contrasting genres of British Indie and mainstream music.
A sample of 42 songs was analysed for the variables /t/, intervocalic /t/, LOT, GOAT, BATH and rhoticity. Apart from rhoticity, all variables favour their Non-UK variants phonotactically and their UK variant sociolinguistically. The distribution of the UK and Non-UK variants of the variables was analysed for statistical significance and contextualised using sociolinguistic and phonotactic theory.
The results show a higher use of UK variables by the Indie genre than by the mainstream genre (p=0.001), as well as a more balanced distribution of variants. Also found was a higher use of UK variants by male singers within the Indie genre (p=0.001). The results suggest that there is a competitive interplay between sociolinguistic and phonotactic influences. The sociolinguistic influence comes out on top in the Indie genre, due to their focus on authenticity and the consequently strong influence of Audience Design. In the mainstream genre, the aim of authentication is missing, leading to the phonotactic influence overriding sociolinguistic influence.
Keywords: Phonological Variation, Sociolinguistics, Phonotactics, Audience Design, Ease of Articulation, Sonority, Indie Music, Mainstream Music, Authenticity, Style
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