The Role of Dialect Experience in Topic-Based Shifts in Speech Production

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>An individual's language can change in the moment due to the topic of conversation and over time because of regional mobility. This paper investigates the relationship between these two types of shifts by asking whether speakers with substantial second dialect exposure change their pronunciation more when the topic changes in a regionally meaningful way compared to speakers with less exposure. Specifically, topic-based shifts on three phonological variables that differ between British and US English are investigated in native speakers of both dialects as a function of the migrant status of the speaker. Experience matters in that speakers only shift between variants in their repertoire, and expatriates have acquired some second dialect features that nonmigrants do not have. However, it does not appear that more exposure to, or increased <jats:italic>rates</jats:italic> of usage of a variant leads to more topic-based shifting toward that variant. These findings, interpreted within the existing literature, suggest that topic-based shifts are driven primarily by stereotypical sociolinguistic representations.</jats:p>

Observation, experimentation, and replication in linguistics

“…For example, it is easy to find recent studies published in major linguistics journals that present observational research as experimental. In general, these studies compare performance on various production and perception tasks by subjects from different social groups, including comparisons based on first language (e.g., Vanek and Mertins 2020), dialect (e.g., Montrul et al 2015;Walker 2019;Yun andKang 2019), andmultilingualism (e.g., Werkmann Horvat et al 2021). These studies are valid and informative, but they are not experiments: the researchers did not manipulate, and could not have manipulated, the social variables under analysis, precluding the direct isolation of cause and effect relationships.…”

Linguistic constraint, social meaning, and multi-modal stylistic construction: Case studies from Mandarin pop songs

“…Thus, it is also possible that the stereotypical linguistic context is more readily available for linguistic stylization (cf. Walker 2019 for stereotypicality and topic-based variation). Lastly, the fact that release year is not a significant predictor suggests that even as Chou became more involved with the mainland market over the years, he has not shown an overall shift to a more SD-like pattern, which further supports our contention that his adoption of SD variants in the Chinese Flavor ballad is the outcome of linguistic stylization.…”

A forensic phonetic investigation of regional variation and accommodation in West Yorkshire

“…A number of studies have demonstrated that changes in topic of conversation can have robust effects on linguistic variation (Devlin, 2014;Douglas-Cowie, 1978;Leach, 2018;Walker, 2014Walker, , 2019. For example, Devlin (2014) found that conversational topic was a major constraint on variant usage in East Durham, with the most local variants of GOAT, MOUTH, START and FACE tending to be used most often when speakers were discussing the highly local topic of coal mining.…”