Accent maintenance question

[Claire Bowern]

Hi all,
I'm trying to track down a paper for a student of mine who's working
on language contact. It's about research into fluent second language
speakers (particularly French speakers learning English) who
deliberately keep some L1 features in their English. The example I
remember is using [z] instead of [ð] (e.g. pronouncing 'the' as 'za').
The underlying reason seems to be so that 1) they
won't be taken as native English speakers and considered rude or
stupid if they make an error with an idiom or register, and 2) so that
they can signal some of their French identity in their English. That
is, the speakers in question are quite capable of producing
interdental fricatives, but they choose not to. This is highly
relevant for the linguistic outcomes of language contact and language
shift, which is why I'm posting here.
The source of this observation is escaping me so far.
Can anyone point me in the direction of work on this topic, or other
similar phenomena in other languages?
All the best,
Claire

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Claire Bowern
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Yale University
370 Temple St
New Haven, CT 06511
North American Dialects survey:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects/
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