Globalisation versus internal development: the reverse short front vowel shift in South African English

The South African Chain Shift involved the raising of the short front vowels KIT, DRESS and TRAP when compared to Received Pronunciation (Lass & Wright 1986). This raising wasparticularly evident in the speech of middle class white speakers of South African English, as well as coloured speakers in the Cape. Recent scholarship has suggested that this raising is being reversed in the speech of young white South Africans. In particular, Bekker and Eley(2007) and Bekker (2009) report the lowering and retraction of TRAP. Mesthrie (2012a)reports not only the lowering and retraction of TRAP, but also the lowering of KIT and DRESS. In addition, scholars such as Mesthrie (2010) have found post-segregation deracialisation of middle class South African English. This thesis therefore investigates the extent to which the reversal of the older South African Chain Shift exists in the speech of white and black middle class South Africans from Cape Town. It furthermore explores the potential merger between TRAP~STRUT and KIT~DRESS. In so doing, 53 participants in sociolinguistic interviews are reported on. The Forced Alignment and Vowel Extraction Toolkit was utilised for formant measurement and extraction. Statistical testing via R was performed, including linear mixed-effects modelling, random forest analyses, conditional inference trees, Euclidean Distance measures, Welch's Two Sample t-tests and Pillai Scores. The analysis finds evidence of the reversal of the South African Chain Shift in the speech of participants under the age of 30. In particular, speakers aged between 18 and 25 participate the most in lowering KIT, DRESS and TRAP. Moreover, the short front vowels are retracting in the speech of younger Capetonians, indicating that within the process of vowel lowering, further innovation occurs via vowel retraction. The Reverse Vowel Shift is found to be a combination of push and pull chains: the fronting of FOOT causes the lowering of KIT, and the lowering of TRAP causes the lowering of DRESS. The retraction of TRAP furthermore causes the backing and raising of STRUT, such that an anti-clockwise rotation of the short front vowels (barring LOT) is evidenced in South African English. The Reverse Vowel Shift evident in Cape Town is similar to trends observed in California, Canada, southeast England, Ireland and Australia. This illustrates the effects of globalisation on English in South Africa, though internal motivations are also responsible

A Study of Variation in the BATH Vowel among White Speakers of South African English in Five Cities

This paper is part of a larger project covering South African English dialectology via five cities (Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley, Johannesburg and Durban) and four ethnicities (Whites, Black, Coloured and Indian), using a single vowel to explore and exemplify regional and ethnic similarities and differences. For reasons of space only the White speakers are analysed in this paper. BATH was chosen as exemplar since it is known to vary in the White communities between an RP-oriented central to back variant, a fully back variant with weak lip rounding and a raised and rounded variant. BATH tokens arising from interviews with 50 speakers were subjected to acoustic analysis via PRAAT and statistical analysis via ANOVA. The results show a diversity of means per city and gender for Whites: in general females show means closer to the older prestige RP norm; while Kimberley the smallest city shows the broadest realisations of BATH (as superback and raised)

Social class differentiation in South African Indian English : a sociophonetic study of three vowel variables

Since Mesthrie's (1992) pioneering work on South African Indian English (SAIE), very little work has been done on SAIE exclusively. Therefore enough time has passed to test his findings and postulations with current data, new variables, and new techniques. In particular the paper draws on progress in acoustic sociophonetics in the description of the vowels of the GOOSE, NURSE and THOUGHT sets, and basic statistics

A perception test for the deracialisation of middle class South African English

Recent sociophonetic research has demonstrated how the effects of post-apartheid desegregation at schools upon the social networks of young middle-class South Africans have fostered major changes in South African English. In particular, middle-class speakers of Black, Coloured and Indian groups show different degrees of accommodation to the norms of erstwhile White South African English. Moreover, some speakers appear to have completely crossed over— linguistically speaking—into what used to be the space of young, middle-class ‘General’ speakers of White South African English. This article tests the extent of the crossover by a sociophonetic perception test. University students from a range of backgrounds were asked to judge from brief clips excerpted from interviews the ethnic background of a selection of Black and White university students with a multiracial school background. As hypothesised, the results show that (a) respondents are in many instances unable to differentiate between Black and White speakers by voice alone and (b) they are able to differentiate ethnic background more easily for male speakers than females