/r/ you listening? Methodological challenges and theoretical insights from investigating a ‘rhotic’ English dialect – Jane Stuart-Smith, 6 November 2024 at 3 pm (online via Teams)

On the 6th November 2024, we held an online talk (via Teams) at 3 pm for the Edge Hill Linguistics Research Seminar Series by Jane Stuart-Smith at the University of Glasgow.

Abstract:

Some sounds appear to do more social ‘work’ than others. One such sound is /r/, whose phonetic variants have long been recognized to be socially informative across many languages, including English (Labov 1972). Indeed, the presence/absence of postvocalic /r/ in in words such as car, card is a key feature distinguishing rhotic from non-rhotic English dialects (Maguire et al. 2010). At the same time, /r/ is phonetically complex which means that tracking synchronic and diachronic variation in /r/ can present challenges – and opportunities – for the linguist.

This talk will focus on the case of postvocalic /r/ in Scottish English, taking as its basis, results from a series of apparent- and real-time sociophonetic studies, in the field and in the lab, using auditory, articulatory and (different kinds of) acoustic analysis, carried out from 1998 until now. Our early studies confirmed earlier reports of socially-stratified variation in Glaswegian /r/, and specifically loss of coda /r/ in young working-class speakers (Stuart-Smith 2003; Stuart-Smith et al 2007).

They also led to the following questions:

• What are the phonetic mechanisms behind the ‘loss’ of postvocalic /r/? Difficulties with the auditory coding of weak /r/ variants, including ambiguous auditory percepts (Stuart-Smith 2007; Lennon 2024), were resolved by articulatory phonetic analysis, which reveal both tongue shape and timing of tongue gesture as factors in weaker/stronger /r/ variants, and their acoustic correlates (Lawson et al 2011; Lawson et al 2018; Lawson and Stuart-Smith 2021).

• When did /r/-weakening begin, what was the trigger and then the accelerating factors which helped it to spread over the course of the 20th century? Scottish soldiers recorded during the First World War already show weak /r/ (Stuart-Smith and Lawson 2017), which coincides with a change in voice quality around the same period (Sóskuthy and Stuart-Smith 2020); the change took off and was accelerated by sociolinguistic polarisation and TV influence (Stuart-Smith et al 2014).

• How does Glasgow /r/ compare with /r/ more generally? Scaling up the analysis of /r/, over larger numbers of speakers/tokens, allows us to zoom out from local closeups of Glaswegian, to a perspective of postvocalic /r/ within a common acoustic space across Scottish and English dialects. Finally, automated methods also facilitate comparison of Scottish /r/ variation with languages other than English, which are also showing /r/ weakening, specifically Quebec French.

‘Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers’ project event with Edge Hill’s Nineteenth Century Research Centre – 29 Feb 2024 at 6 pm

On the 29th February 2024, we co-hosted an event with Edge Hill’s Nineteenth Century Research Centre focusing on the ‘Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers’ project and about Hamilton’s life and work, as well as what goes into creating online digital resources. For more details and to book, head to: https://sites.edgehill.ac.uk/ehu19/events/

Dr Beth Malory – ‘A lexicon of relics: Tracing the diachronic evolution of diagnostic terminology in obstetrics and gynaecology’ – 22 Feb 2024 at 3 pm (online via Teams)

The Edge Hill Linguistics Research Seminar Series held an online session on the 22nd February 2024 at 3 pm with speaker Dr Beth Malory (University College London) with a talk entitled: ‘A lexicon of relics: Tracing the diachronic evolution of diagnostic terminology in obstetrics and gynaecology’. To register, click here: https://store.edgehill.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/conferences/events/ehu-linguistics-research-seminar-series-thursday-22nd-february-2024