33.2603, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Boberg (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2603. Fri Aug 26 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2603, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Boberg (2021)

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Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2022 01:46:14
From: Mateusz Urban [mateusz.urban at uj.edu.pl]
Subject: Accent in North American Film and Television

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36823737


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-285.html

AUTHOR: Charles  Boberg
TITLE: Accent in North American Film and Television
SUBTITLE: A Sociophonetic Analysis
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Mateusz Urban, Jagiellonian University

SUMMARY

With the increasing role of entertainment media, the interconnection between
media language and its real-world equivalent may be expected only to grow
closer. The book under review is a sociophonetic analysis of accent variation
in film and TV performances by North American actors from the 1930s up until
now and the relationship of this variation to real-world language change in
North American English (NAE). As such, it is the conclusion of the author’s
research project that earlier produced two articles (Boberg 2018; Boberg
2020). The book is divided into eight chapters followed by appendices. 

At the beginning of Chapter 1 the general aims of the study are discussed,
namely: (1) to derive new acoustic data on NAE from recordings of on-screen
speech spanning 80 years sound film and thus facilitate the study of language
change in real time and language variation conditioned by sex, region and
ethnicity; (2) to compare the tendencies observed in the on-screen data to
trends in off-screen speech reported in previous literature; (3) to attempt to
determine the extent to which media speech reflects real-life speech and vice
versa. Boberg then provides a succinct introduction to the dialectological,
sociolinguistic and sociophonetic traditions in North America, including the
notion of chain shifts that define the currently accepted traditional regional
divisions of NAE. He also briefly describes the types of independent variables
that will be included in the study pertaining to real-time change in General
North American English (GNAE), as well as regional, sex and ethnic variation
in NAE; and he formulates the following detailed research questions to be
explored in the book: (a) What have been the main language change trends in
actors’ speech over the last 80 years? (b) Do they correspond to apparent-time
developments in non-actors’ speech reported in previous research? (c) What are
the phonetic/phonological features of GNAE as currently heard on screen? (d)
Do film and TV data confirm the claim that women lead sound change? and (e)
How much of real-life regional and ethnic variation in NAE is reflected in
on-screen speech? These considerations are followed by a discussion of the
extent to which linguistic variation in the media is an accurate
representation of real-life variation. While Boberg is well aware that film
and TV speech is not vernacular speech, as would be preferred by traditional
sociolinguistic practice, he defends his choice of research data by arguing
that, e.g. through their emotional involvement or unawareness of being
recorded for academic purposes, the actor’s performance in front of a camera
may in some ways parallel Labov’s sociolinguistic interview in terms of
mitigating the observer’s paradox. Furthermore, the author demonstrates the
extent of stylistic, regional and social variation found in media language and
discusses earlier research into how speech in cinema and TV reflects and
influences that of their audiences. Finally and most importantly, Boberg
argues that film and TV archives provide access to data that are unique both
in quantity and in kind, as a diachronic record of speech throughout the
entire history of sound film, which enables the researcher to study language
change in real rather than apparent time. The notion of on-screen accent
(in)accuracy is explored in a long and fascinating final section of the first
chapter. Several factors may impact the authenticity of speech in film and TV,
including the actor’s own default accent, any speech and voice instruction
they may have received as part of their acting training, and the character’s
geographical and social background, which shapes the audience’s expectations
about the variety they might hear, and which may or may not be comparable to
that of the actor’s. Linguistic authenticity is further affected by the
scripted nature of dialogue, the unnatural context in which the actors
perform, and their awareness that their performance is being observed and
recorded by the other members of the film crew and will be later shown to an
audience. The complex interplay of all these elements (and the fact that it
has not always been taken into consideration by the filmmaking industry) has
often resulted in striking mismatches between a character’s accent and their
back story, which Boberg comprehensively illustrates and describes as the
Wisconsin Syndrome in recognition of the fact that this state features
prominently among his examples. In order to alleviate all these difficulties,
the author decides to focus his attention on phonetics and phonology (rather
than morphosyntactic and lexical features, which are largely determined by the
film script) in performances that represent each actor’s usual on-screen
accent (rather than imitation of an accents not native to them).

Chapter 2 provides the methodological framework of the study. After briefly
discussing differences in the lexical incidence of phonemes, Boberg introduces
main two types of variation between accents to be investigated in the study:
systemic (phonemes, allophones, mergers, splits) and realizational (vowel
quality, vowel systems, vowel shifts). An overview of acoustic phonetics
follows, with particular emphasis on vowel acoustics and the correspondence of
F1 and F2 to vowel height and backness. The sample selection criteria are also
summarized, which – as Boberg emphasizes – are primarily linguistic and not
aesthetic. Still, the core of the sample focuses on well-known actors in
famous and influential roles. To ensure diachronic representativeness, the
sample includes examples of such performances from each of the eight decades
(1930s–2010s), supplemented by lesser known performances or actors to include
representatives of a wider range of regional and ethnic backgrounds. Overall,
the sample features a total of 180 roles in 83 films and 37 TV shows performed
by native speakers of NAE, mostly with clearly defined regional origins,
although some actors with mixed regional backgrounds are also included to
reflect the current social mobility. The author chooses 1965 as a demarcation
point between two periods, early and late, citing important sociolinguistic,
historical and cultural changes that were taking place in the US and Canada in
the 1960s. He then discusses his selection of phonetic/phonological variables.
Apart from a single consonantal variable (rhoticity), the study targets a
whole range of vocalic features covering all the major areas of systemic and
realizational variation relevant for current NAE. The scope is fine grained:
the majority of Wells’ lexical sets are included and in relevant places
further distinction is made between prenasal, preliquid, prefortis allophones
of a given vowel phoneme. This comprehensive treatment enables Boberg to
analyse the components of the Northern Cities Shift (NCS), the Southern Vowel
Shift (SVS), the Low-Back Merger Shift (LBMS) as well as smaller-scale
developments in more restricted regions of the vowel space (e.g. various
TRAP/BATH patterns), all of which define the modern dialects. The author then
discusses his analytical procedure in great detail. Auditory-impressionistic
coding was used for PRICE monophthongization and rhoticity as well as a few
other consonantal variables, but only the former two were analysed, since the
others did not have sufficient representation in the sample. The remaining
vocalic variables were analysed acoustically, very much in the tradition of
Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006) (ANAE): single-point F1 and F2 measurements were
subjected to a slightly modified version of the ANAE vowel normalization
procedure and then to statistical modeling.

The following five chapters present various aspects of the analysis: Chapter 3
is a diachronic study of change from the early period to the late period;
Chapter 4 discusses sex-based variation and change in the sample; Chapters 5
and 6 focus on variation by region; and Chapter 7 explores ethnolects. 

In Chapter 3 Boberg studies the evolution of several phonetic variables in
GNAE and their correlation with performance year. The main trends follow the
patterns established by the ANAE and other recent studies of off-screen
speech: development of postvocalic rhoticity from highly variable to almost
categorical constriction; ongoing merger of LOT and THOUGHT; gradual
replacement of the older Mid-Atlantic split short-a system by a nasal system
(i.e. a merger of TRAP and BATH with allophonic raising before nasals);
raising and fronting of prevelar TRAP/BATH; retraction of the basic allophones
of DRESS and TRAP/BATH (also observed in some versions of the Low-Back Merger
Shift) and simultaneous fronting of GOOSE, MOUTH and GOAT; Canadian Raising
(CR) of PRICE (but not MOUTH); spreading of the MARY-MARRY-MERRY merger and
prelateral retraction (especially of DRESS). Boberg then uses five of these
variables to calculate a GNAE Phonetic Innovation Index for each speaker to
quantify how conservative or innovative they are. This allows the author to
observe that the film and TV data display a commonly observed tendency for
women to lead phonetic change and that while GNAE is spreading geographically,
the East Coast is the most conservative region. These issues are explored in
more detail in the chapters that follow.

Chapter 4, focusing on variation in GNAE correlated with sex, confirms further
that women are leaders of phonetic change. The dimensions along which
late-period females appear to be most innovative compared to late-period males
include GOOSE fronting, DRESS lowering (also in prelateral context), prevelar
TRAP/BATH fronting, and lowering and retraction of the elsewhere allophone of
TRAP/BATH. Due to insufficient representation in the sample, LGBT speech is
only given a cursory examination based on case studies of two male actors.

Chapters 5–7 on regiolects and ethnolects are roughly parallel in terms of
structure. Each analysis begins by introducing the group in question, its
representation on screen and previous research on the variety they speak. This
is followed by a discussion of the differences between that variety and modern
GNAE and how these are reflected in the sample. Then, a regional/ethnic index
is computed for individual speakers based on selected features in question in
order to further explore the main trends. The discussion concludes with case
studies of selected speakers illustrating the respective varieties. 

Chapter 5 on New York City (NYC) actors considers three traditional NYC
features that distinguish that variety from GNAE: non-rhoticity, separation
between TRAP and a raised BATH, and parallel distinction between LOT and a
raised THOUGHT. These are combined to calculate the NYC index. Overall,
early-period actors are shown to adhere to traditional NYC English, whereas in
the late period females show a strong tendency to depart from it in favour of
GNAE, while males retain or even emphasize more conservative pronunciations. 

In a similar way traditional Southern States English is shown in Chapter 6 to
be recessive among females in the later period based on features such as PRICE
monophthongization, the PEN-PIN merger, or GOOSE fronting. On the other hand,
the analysis of Inland Northern speakers in the same chapter found the local
varieties to be poorly reflected in film and TV (e.g. weak traces of NCS). The
section on Canada in turn indicates that traditional features of this accent
(CR of PRICE and MOUTH; LBMS) are to be found in a number of performances in
the Canadian subsample.

Finally, Chapter 7 shows African American English to be relatively
conservative compared to GNAE (e.g. less rhoticity, distinct LOT and THOUGHT;
a TRAP vs. BATH split). Latino English, Asian NAE and Indigenous English only
receive a case-study treatment due to limitations of the sample. 

The book concludes with a summary of the results and conclusions (Chapter 8)
and appendices (including additional vowel plots).

EVALUATION

The book under review will be of great interest to linguists, in particular
sociophoneticians, sociolinguists, dialectologists, language historians and
the like. It is a very compelling read due to the wealth of data and
comprehensive treatment of the topic, which this review cannot do justice to.
Its appeal to non-linguists, which the author also hopes for, is conditioned
by the understanding of key concepts of articulatory and acoustic phonetics
and sociolinguistics. Boberg goes to great lengths to make these topics
accessible. For example, his synthesis of sociolinguistic and dialectological
tradition in Chapter 1 is very effective, and so is the summary of types of
variation in vowel quality in Chapter 2, although I am less certain of the
usefulness of respellings as an explanatory device, since their phonetic
interpretation depends to some extent on the the reader’s native accent. On
the other hand, acoustic phonetics does not lend itself easily to a
crash-course treatment, and it seems to me that the five pages devoted to this
topic might be somewhat overwhelming to the lay reader.

The structure of the book is carefully planned. The aims and research
questions are clearly stated and referenced on multiple occasions throughout,
so that it is easy to follow the argument and see that the author delivers on
his promises. The fact that subsequent chapters follow a roughly similar
structure facilitates comparison between different subsamples. Furthermore,
the use of methods largely derived from the ANAE makes it easier to compare
the results between the two studies.

While the sample analysed in the book is not perfectly balanced (as the author
acknowledges), especially when it comes to the representation of ethnolects,
it would be unrealistic to expect it to be in a study of this scale, which is
very broad, both diachronically and geographically. At the same time, the
underrepresentation of certain groups in the sample seems to correspond with
their, at least overt, underrepresentation in mainstream American cinema and
TV.

My only reservations concern some uses of statistics. While I am not a
statistician myself, it seems to me that p-values obtained in a t-test, as
shown in in Fig. 3.2 on p. 119, might not be a mathematically defensible
measure of the probability of merger between two phoneme categories (e.g.
Greenland et al. 2016). Furthermore, reliance on word class means in
statistical analyses obscures interesting information on the distribution and
extent of variation of individual values, although the decision is perfectly
understandable given the wide scope of the study.

However, none of the points raised in the preceding paragraph devalue the
author’s achievements. With its lucid style and well-thought-out structure,
Boberg’s new book provides illuminating insights into real-time developments
in NAE throughout the 20th century and into the 21st and lays a solid
foundation for multi-faceted exploration of its findings in the future, also
in other types of entertainment media, such as the radio. It further confirms
that media language is a valid and valuable source of data for sociophonetic
analysis with patterns of variation and change corresponding to those in
real-life speech.

REFERENCES

Boberg, Charles. 2018. New York City English in film: Phonological change in
reel time. American Speech 93(2). 153–185. doi:10.1215/00031283-6926135.
Boberg, Charles. 2020. Diva diction: Hollywood’s leading ladies and the rise
of General American English. American Speech 95(4). 441–484.
doi:10.1215/00031283-8221002.
Greenland, Sander, Stephen J. Senn, Kenneth J. Rothman, John B. Carlin,
Charles Poole, Steven N. Goodman & Douglas G. Altman. 2016. Statistical tests,
P values, confidence intervals, and power: a guide to misinterpretations.
European Journal of Epidemiology 31(4). 337–350.
doi:10.1007/s10654-016-0149-3.
Labov, William, Sharon Ash & Charles Boberg. 2006. The atlas of North American
English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
doi:10.1515/9783110167467.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mateusz Urban is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of English Studies
of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, Poland. He holds a PhD in
linguistics. His main areas of interest include the use of archive data for
sociophonetic research into variation and change in English and Polish, and
the phonetics and phonology of heritage languages.





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