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Changing pronunciation but stable social evaluation? ‘Flat a’ in Danish radio news (1956-2010)

Changing pronunciation but stable social evaluation? ‘Flat a’ in Danish radio news (1956-2010). Jacob Thøgersen 1 & Nicolai Pharao 2 University of Copenhagen 1 LARM Audio Research Archive & The Lanchart Center 2 The Lanchart Center. Denmark – Scandinavia - Europe.

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Changing pronunciation but stable social evaluation? ‘Flat a’ in Danish radio news (1956-2010)

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  1. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Changing pronunciation but stable social evaluation?‘Flat a’ in Danish radio news (1956-2010) Jacob Thøgersen1 & Nicolai Pharao2 University of Copenhagen 1LARM Audio Research Archive & The Lanchart Center 2 The Lanchart Center

  2. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Denmark – Scandinavia - Europe

  3. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Denmark – Scandinavia - Europe

  4. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Long ahistorically – The (æ:) variable 18thcentury 19thcentury 20thcentury [ɛː] (æː) [æː] [aː] [ɑː]

  5. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Short ahistorically – The (a) variable 19thcentury 20thcentury (a) [æ] [a] [ɑ]

  6. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) ’Flat a’ = ”æ” in orthography ’flat a’ in populardiscourse ’flat a’ in sociolinguistics = ”a” in orthography

  7. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) The birth of the ‘flat a’ • Georg Forchhammer (1895) mentions ”the more [e]-like [pronunciation of (a) & (æ:)] we normally have in Danish, and which is particularly noticeable in the ’københævnske’ [a satirical spelling of ‘københavnske’; the Copenhagen dialect]”. And that the [e]-like pronunciation “deviates from the ‘purer’ pronunciation [ɑ]” • Philologist Brøndum-Nielsen (1940): “It is our sincere wish that the Scandinavism of our times may help eradicate the terrifyingly increasing [e:]-pronunciation (in gade,glade…), a stinky fungus in the language” (quoted from Jacobsen 1973). ‘Would you care to say A’ (1962) ”Employees in radio and TV must be trained in better use of the language. This from an anticipated announcement in the Danish radio: ‘Since quite a lot of complaints are made about the announcers’ pronunciation of Danish, director Dahlerup will conduct an investigation as soon as possible.’” Jensenius (1962), in Skovmand (1975)

  8. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Previous sociolinguistic studies on ‘flat a’ • Have focused on the raising of short (a)[ɛ] • Brink & Lund (1975) described both short (a) and long (æ:) as raising over a century-long period and spreading from Copenhagen. • Jørgensen (1980) proclaimed that ’the flat a will prevail’ because he found short (a)[ɛ] more frequently among younger speakers in Copenhagen and assumed it would spread from there. • Gregersen & Pedersen (1991) found mixed results and no clear indication that (a)[ɛ] was on the rise in Copenhagen. • Maegaard et al (in press) found (a)[ɛ] to be receding in Copenhagen but still on the rise in the periphery of the country. • Has the ‘flat a’ prevailed or is it dying out, then?

  9. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Denmark’s Radio – The BBC of Denmark • Denmark until the 1980s had a broadcast monopoly (DR) • Established 1925 • With strong national and educational aims • Focus on ’proper’ language in particular in ’serious’ programs like the news • View ’proper’ language as a sign of ’credibility’ • Widely accepted as more ’proper’, and also demanded to be more proper, than other language users • National media reflect language ideals and disseminate language ideals (Mugglestone 2007) • van de Velde et al. (1996, 1997) argued for the use of radio recordings in long-term longitudinal studies of changes in standard languages

  10. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) The ‘flat a’ – in official pronunciation manuals • Albeck (1942): Rule 1: “A [(a),(æː)] must be kept in adequate distance from æ ([e],[eː])”. • Skyum-Nielsen (2008): ”Especially among the young Danes there is a terrifying instability in the use of vowels. Many vowels are uttered as if it meant nothing if they hit home or miss completely, […] an a-sound [(a),(æː)] is pronounced as æ ([e],[eː])”. • Stable variation, then? Jensenius (1962)

  11. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Research questions • For more than a century (1895-2008) commentators have noticed that something was wrong with the (a) and (æ:) especially among the young in Copenhagen. They are ’flat’. • The popular definition of ’flat a’ is stable in describing them as (a) or (æː) which approach [e], [eː] too much • The sociolinguistic interest has focused on short (a)[ɛ], i.e. an overlap in quality between (a) and (æ:). • Throughout the history of the National Broadcasting Corporation, ‘flat a’ has been stigmatized and proscribed against in the prestige norm. • How have news readers responded? Have their (a) and (æː) raised, or has the proscription held them in check? • Is it the same vowel qualities that are being criticized today as it was a century ago? • Is this a case of stable variation (e.g. stylistic or age-grading), • or a case of change-in-progress?

  12. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Data & Method • Radio news readings (1956-2010) • ≈ 7 hours • ≈ 43 individual programs • ≈ 41 individual speakers, 5 females • Controlled contexts: Only the actual news readings, not e.g. interviews and reports • Semi-automatic method • Words containing the vowels in question or reference vowels, [iː], [ɪ], [e], [u], were found automatically based on standard pronunciations • All measure points (≈ 7.200) were manually verified and corrected • Formants 1, 2, and 3 were automatically measured with standard settings in Praat (5 formants under 5000/5500 Hz) • Formants were normalized with the Lobanov method and plotted using the NORM suite (Thomas & Kendall)

  13. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Distributions

  14. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Speaker means

  15. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Means for all speakers per decade i: u e ɛ æ: a ɑ ɑ:

  16. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Changes in the acoustics of (a) and (æ:) News 1950s – Group means i: u e ɛ News 1970s – Group means i: u e æ: News 1990s – Group means ɛ i: a æ: e u ɑ ɑ: ɛ a æ: ɑ ɑ: a ɑ ɑ:

  17. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Conclusion? • The (a) and (æ:) are raising in the prestige norm of the national news readings. • Are the changes significant, or are the group means misleading? News 1950s – Group means News 1990s – Group means i: u i: e e u ɛ ɛ æ: æ: a a ɑ ɑ: ɑ ɑ:

  18. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Significantchanges? • Addressed by evaluating the separation between distributions of tokens in vowel-pairs’ formants 1, 2 and 3 using MANOVA. • Statistically signicantly different distributions (MANOVA, p<.05)? • Pillai score (a part of the MANOVA) (Hall-Lew 2010; Hay, Warren & Drager 2006). • Pillai indicates degree of separation between distributions: • 0 indicates no separation, • 1 indicates very high separation. • Plot Pillai score per speaker, and the number of speakers with significantly different vowel distributions

  19. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Differences between (æ:) and (ɛ) ɛ æ: a ɑ ɑ: Each dot represents 1 speaker Solid dots = sig. difference (p<.05), MANOVA

  20. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Differences between (a) and (ɛ) ɛ a ɑ ɑ: Each dot represents 1 speaker Solid dots = sig. difference (p<.05), MANOVA

  21. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Differences between (a) and (æ:) ɛ æ: a ɑ ɑ: Each dot represents 1 speaker Solid dots = sig. difference (p<.05), MANOVA

  22. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Vowelchanges • All three vowel-pairs approach each other over time as the lower vowels are raised. • Most speakers display statistically significant differences in formant measures. • Only the pair (æ:)-(ɛ) approach a merger in quality. •  Implications for proscriptivism?

  23. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Prestige language and norminglanguage • Proscription against ‘flat a’ seems to has had limited success in stopping the (a) and (æ:) raising in news broadcast. • On the other hand, • Proscription against ‘flat a’ lives on in spite of the (a) and (æ:) raising. • The vowel qualities defined as ’flat’ seem to change along with the phonetic changes • Albeck’s (1942) ‘flat a’ is presumably Skyum-Nielsen’s (2008) ’standard’ (or possibly even conservative) (a) and (æ:). • Albeck on the other hand, would probably hear Skyum-Nielsen’s ‘flat a’ as (ɛ), (ɛ:).

  24. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Did the ‘flat a’ prevail or is it dying out? • Jørgensen (1980) proclaimed that ‘the flat a will prevail’. • He defined ‘flat a’ as a merger in height between (a) and (æ:). • ‘Flat a prevailing’ would entail acceptance in the prestige norm of the radio news. • Entails little or no difference in height between (a) and (æ:), cf. Jørgensen’s definition of ‘flat a’. • little or no difference news readers’ (a) and the (a) in spontaneous Copenhagen speech.

  25. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Vowelchange in the newsMale speakers only. Un-normalized data 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 600 800

  26. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Male news readers compared with 3*5 Copenhagen MC male speakers 1980s and 2000s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s ’flatness’ 600 800

  27. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Conclusion: The fall of the ‘flat a’? • Did the ‘flat a’ prevail? • Copenhagen MC speakers in the 1980s had an (a) markedly higher than that of the radio news of the time, with almost the same height as the (æ:). • Copenhagen MC speakers in the 2000s no longer have an (a) different from the radio news of the day. • The prestige standard has integrated the stigmatized variant. • The variation is (in the process of being) neutralized • Either the ‘flat a’ prevailed; it has now become accepted in the prestige standard • Or the ‘flat a’ is dead because there is no variation in the (a) variable and no stigmatized pronunciation • Consequences for social evaluation • Either the criticism of the ‘flat a’ will die out, • or the label will be applied to new features – perhaps even to the (now marked) old standard pronunciation? • After being well-established for more than a century, the label ‘flat a’ can hardly be allowed to die…

  28. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) References • Albeck, U. (1942): FarligeOrd [Dangerous words], Copenhagen: Statsradiofonien & Schultz Forlag. • Brink, L & Lund, J. (1975): Dansk Rigsmål 1-2 [Standard Danish 1-2], Copenhagen: Gyldendal. • Forchhammer, G. (1898): Udkasttil en danskartikulationslære [Sketches for a theory of Danish articulation], Special issues of TidskriftförDöfstumskolan, 1894-97. • Gregersen, F & Pedersen, I-L. (1991): The Copenhagen study in urban sociolinguistics 1-2, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. • Grønnum, N. (2005): Fonetik & Fonologi, AkademiskForlag • Hall-Lew, L. (2010): Improved representation of variance in measure of vowel merger, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 9: 1-10. • Hay, J., Warren, P. & Drager, K. (2006): Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress, Journal of Phonetics 34: 458-484. • Jacobsen, H. G. (1973): Sprogrøgti Danmark i 1930’rne og 1940’rne [Language planning in Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s], Dansk Sprognævnsskrifter 6, Copenhagen: Dansk Sprognævn. • Jørgensen, J.N. (1980): Detflade a vilsejre [The flat a will prevail], unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Copenhagen. • Labov, W. (1994): Principles of Linguistic Change vol. 1, Oxford: Blackwell. • Maegaard, M.. Jensen, T.J., Kristiansen, T. & Jørgensen, J.N. (forthc.): Diffusion of Language Change: Accommodation to a moving target, Journal of Sociolinguistics. • Mugglestone, L. (2007) Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol, Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Skovmand, R. (ed.) (1975): DR 50 [Danish National Broadcasting Corporation 50 years], København: Danmarks Radio. • Skyum-Nielsen, P. (2007): Vellyden [The Pleasant Sound], Odense: Danmarks Radio & SyddanskUniversitetsforlag. • Thomas, E. & Kendall, T. NORM. The Vowel Normalization and Plotting Suite, http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/tools/norm/norm1.php. • Van de Velde, H., Gerritsen, M. & van Hout, R. (1996): The devoicing of fricatives in Standard Dutch: A real-time study based on radio recordings, Language Variation and Change 8: 149-175. • Van de Velde, H., van Hout, R. & Gerritsen, M. (1997): Watching Dutch change: A real time study of variation and change in standard Dutch pronunciation, Journal of Sociolinguistics 1: 361-391.

  29. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) ’Flat a’ – new interpretations

  30. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Changes in the news compared with 3*5 Copenhagen MC male speakers 1980s and 2000s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

  31. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Pillai scores (F1/F2/F3): Min/Max and means

  32. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Implications for languagechange • Chain-shift across subsystems? • Raising of long (æ:)[ɛ:]()[eː] conforms to Labov’s (1994) Principle I • Raising of short (a)[ɛ] apparently conflicts with Labov’sPrinciple II • 2 or 3 potential mergers? • Raising of /a/[e] and /æ:/[eː] would lead to mergers by expansion into the /ɛ/ and /ɛ:/ phonemes • Raising /a/[ɛ] would lead to the loss of one of the distinctions (viz. quality) between the /a/ and /æ:/ phonemes • Due to lengthenings also occurring in the short vowel system these could become mergers proper.

  33. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) Vowelchanges 1950s – 2000s i:

  34. Navn på enhed (Indsæt --> Diasnummer) The modern Danish monophthong system • Adapted from Grønnum (2005) • Notice the modifieduse of IPA: [æ] = cardinal 3 • [ɛ] = cardinal2

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