Fw: Teenage speak and beyond

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Both the lowering of /E/ and the backing of /ae/ are found in the California Shift and the Canadian Shift. People inclined to believe in chain shifting might chalk these movements up to the presence of the low-back merger (cot=caught) in both these regions. But, feel free to ignore such structuralist explanations and continue psychoanalyzing.

Self-promotion: http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/changin/

-Matt Gordon

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Michael H Covarrubias
Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 5:54 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: Fw: Teenage speak and beyond
 
Quoting Richard Vallis <rvallis at OPTONLINE.NET>:

>  In what appears to be an attempt at speech sophistication, the adolescent
> girl (and occasional guy) characteristically distorts the vowel sounds,
> especially  the  "e" as in the word best.  Best becomes "bast" or "bost" or
> "bus."  Better becomes "batter" as the mouth opens wide to accommodate this
> apparently classy way of enunciating.  Other vowel sounds are similarly
> affected by the sophisticatedly wide open mouth.  Bush becomes "bahsh" and on
> it goes, endlessly.  What's more daunting, is that the individual continues
> this distortion into post adolescence and beyond when a young person's
> apparent need for "fitting in" and peer pressure would seem to be
> diminished.
>
> Television personalities and actors have generally been purged of it, but it
> maddeningly rears itself, wide-mouthed, in commercials.  What's surprising is
> that most listeners don't seem to notice the bend in pronunciation until it's
> pointed out to them....
>
> Richard Vallis
>
---------------------

I wonder if this is related to the 'a' > 'ah' (think 'cat'>'cot') alternation
that I've noticed in a few commercials. One commercial is I believe for a
hotline for girls town (or some similar adolescent support group). One of the
girls in the commercial says (paraphrase) "I'd have to lose 10 pounds to fit
into that" -- the vowel in "that" is pretty close to [a].

In another commercial, this one for the Dirt Devil Kone vacuum cleaner, the
designer, Karim Rashid, pronounces "that" (in the phrase "that way" with [a]
instead of the "ash" vowel.

I hate to judge someone's intentions by pronunciation but the context of both
these passages allows me some comfort in claiming that they're attempts "at
speech sophistication." The girl is playing the part of the vain, body-conscious
superficial peer, and Karim is...well anyone who thinks a vacuum cleaner should
be a fashion statement is obvious trying a little too hard to be sophisticated.

Here's a url for the vacuum cleaner commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuJeT6aFBvs

Michael


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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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