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Vowel changes in the speech of Sir David Attenborough
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- Authors
- Issue Date
- 2022-01-01
- Keywords
- phonetics ; vowel change ; Received Pronunciation ; lifespan change
- Abstract
- Cho, Juhyung. 2022. Vowel changes in the speech of Sir David Attenborough. SNU
Working Papers in English Language and Linguistics 18, 1-13. This paper investigates
the vowel changes in the longitudinal data of Sir David Attenborough, a globally
well-known narrator who speaks Received Pronunciation (RP). Harrington et al.
(2000) showed that even the conservative RP speaker as the Queen has changed the
vowel towards the community, showing the influence of younger speakers. To see
whether other RP speakers adapt the community change, the vowel changes of
Attenborough between two time periods were compared to the Queens and
Southern Standard British (SSB) male accent data. The results showed that
Attenborough has changed his vowels which were mostly in the same direction as
the Queens. Low back vowels were in a different direction, where it showed the
merger between the two vowels. However, when compared directly to the SSB data,
even the low back vowels were moving towards the mainstream. The result provides
evidence for lifespan changes, where adult speakers change their pronunciation after
the critical period and the speaker makes a shift towards the community level.
(Seoul National University)
- Language
- English
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