Another Look at the Role of Female Speakers in Sound Change

Abstract

Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1989), pp. 238-247

Women, Language and Identity

“…Language is one form of symbolic capital, and authority in the area of linguistic usage is one of the avenues available to women to assert their influence in society. Women are often the family brokers in interaction with outsiders: it is more often women than men who interact with others in shops and neighbourhood interactions, as well as in communications with schools, and between institutional bureaucracies and the family (see Chambers 1992, Moonwomon 1989, Tannen 1990). Women's social activities and jobs often involve them in interaction with a wider range of social contacts than men's (e.g.…”

Glottal stops in New Zealand English: an analysis of variants of word-final /t/

“…It has been claimed that changes away from the prestige norm are generally led by working-class males (Chambers and Trudgill 1980: 97-98), but, in a number of social dialect studies, there is also evidence of women leading vernacular changes, at least in the initial stages (see Moonwoman 1989;Labov 1990;Chambers 1992). It seems clear that glottal replacement illustrates this process.…”

“…The role of women in linguistic change has been much debated (see Eckert 1989;Moonwoman 1989;Labov 1990;Chambers 1992). It is apparent that there are many different and often contradictory factors that need to be considered in different contexts and communities.…”

Setting New Standards

“…In Bayard's studies 6) It has also been suggested that AusE may be a relevant influence on T voicing in NZE, but there is little evidence for this at present given that the levels of intervocalic voicing of /t/ noted in a small set of lexical items elicited in Horvath's (1985) Sydney study were, at 41%, considerably lower than those noted in the New Zealand data. 7) Moonwomon (1989) notes that changes from above are often phonologically isolated, whereas changes from below are more often part of a system change. Given that phonologi cally isolated changes tend to involve consonants rather than vowels, this supports the probability of a prestige rather than a vernacular source for changes such as intervocalic /t/ voicing and the glottal stop for final /t/.…”

“…Birch Moonwomon (1989) points to the importance of contextual factors in accounting for gender differences in relation to linguistic innovation. She notes that women tend to "style shift extremely", and suggests that some of the contradictions which have been identified in studies of women's role in lan guage change may be accounted for by the conflicting role demands experi enced by women, and by working class women in particular (Moonwomon 1989: 244).…”