Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change
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Tamara Rathcke
Abstract
The idea that broadcast media can be a factor in sound change has been widely and controversially debated. This chapter outlines the main posits, issues, and evidence surrounding the ongoing debates and offers a new empirical perspective on the subject matter. It hypothesizes that mass media may be the primary factor initiating and promoting sound change if there are limited opportunities for face-to-face contact, with media being the only or main source of exposure to sound innovation and dialectal variability. Such situations occur frequently during second language acquisition, which is the focus of the study discussed in the chapter. Eighteen German teenage learners of English were divided into two groups and asked to watch either a British or an American television series daily for the duration of two consecutive weeks. Comparisons of sound productions recorded before and after the two-week exposure period revealed significant changes in the participants’ frequency of /t/-flapping and rhoticity, in the direction predicted by the media accommodation account. In line with previous discussions, the observed influence of the media was partly moderated by the participants’ emotional involvement with the series they watched. A change towards the televised variety was observed primarily in high-involvement (but not in low-involvement) speakers. The chapter concludes with a discussion that aims to inspire innovative directions in future research of this much-debated topic that currently lacks pertinent empirical study.
Abstract
The idea that broadcast media can be a factor in sound change has been widely and controversially debated. This chapter outlines the main posits, issues, and evidence surrounding the ongoing debates and offers a new empirical perspective on the subject matter. It hypothesizes that mass media may be the primary factor initiating and promoting sound change if there are limited opportunities for face-to-face contact, with media being the only or main source of exposure to sound innovation and dialectal variability. Such situations occur frequently during second language acquisition, which is the focus of the study discussed in the chapter. Eighteen German teenage learners of English were divided into two groups and asked to watch either a British or an American television series daily for the duration of two consecutive weeks. Comparisons of sound productions recorded before and after the two-week exposure period revealed significant changes in the participants’ frequency of /t/-flapping and rhoticity, in the direction predicted by the media accommodation account. In line with previous discussions, the observed influence of the media was partly moderated by the participants’ emotional involvement with the series they watched. A change towards the televised variety was observed primarily in high-involvement (but not in low-involvement) speakers. The chapter concludes with a discussion that aims to inspire innovative directions in future research of this much-debated topic that currently lacks pertinent empirical study.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
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Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
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Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
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Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- On the nature of speech dynamics: approaches to studying synchronic variation and diachronic change 1
-
Part 1: Empirical perspectives on diachronic change
- Fifty years of monophthong and diphthong shifts in Mainstream Australian English 17
- Coarticulation guides sound change: an acoustic-phonetic study of real-time change in word-initial /l/ over four decades of Glaswegian 49
- The impact of automated phonetic alignment and formant tracking workflows on sound change measurement 89
- One place, two speech communities: differing responses to sound change in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian English in a small rural town 117
- Prosodic change in 100 years: the fall of the rise-fall in an Albanian variety 145
-
Part 2: Factors conditioning synchronic variation
- Control of larynx height in vowel production revisited: a real-time MRI study 175
- Sheila’s roses (are in the paddick): reduced vowels in Australian English 207
- The future of the queen: how to pronounce “König✶innen” ‘gender-neutrally’ in German 245
- Synchronic variation and diachronic change: mora-counting and syllable-counting dialects in Japanese 273
- Reconstructing the timeline of a consonantal change in a German dialect: evidence from agent-based modeling 307
-
Part 3: Theoretical approaches at the interface between synchronic variation and diachronic change
- On (mis)aligned innovative perception and production norms 343
- Phonological patterns and dependency relations may arise from aerodynamic factors 369
- Actuation without production bias 395
- Understanding the role of broadcast media in sound change 425
- Connecting prosody and duality of patterning in diachrony, typology, phylogeny, and ontogeny 453
- Index 483
