Cover not available
Article published In:
English World-Wide
Vol. 38:3 (2017) ► pp.275–304

Are New Zealanders “rhotic”?

The dynamics of rhoticity in New Zealand’s small towns

| Massey University
Rhoticity is highly variable across English varieties. Traditionally, descriptions of English have distinguished between “rhotic” and “non-rhotic” varieties. However, Harris’s (2013) recent description of three core rhotic systems (R1, R2 and R3) demonstrates that this dichotomy is overly simplistic. The literature describes New Zealand English (NZE) as “non-rhotic”, with partial rhoticity in the lower South Island. This paper reports on data collected in two semi-rural towns in the North Island where young New Zealanders employ a “mixed” distribution of rhoticity. Alongside /r/ use which is traditionally associated with “non-rhotic” varieties (Harris’s R2 and R3), speakers also exhibit /r/ use which is associated with “rhotic” varieties (Harris’s R1). The findings suggest that dynamic rhoticity in NZE, which also persists historically in Englishes world-wide, can be represented more effectively by dispensing with the notions “rhotic” and “non-rhotic”, and by treating rhoticity as a continuum of /r/ use.
Keywords: New Zealand English, rhoticity, phonological variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Systemic variation in rhoticity
    • 1.2Intravarietal variation in rhoticity
    • 1.3Microvariation in rhoticity
  • 2.New Zealand English rhoticity
    • 2.1Background
    • 2.2Locations
    • 2.3Participants
    • 2.4Coding and analysis of /r/
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Preconsonantal /r/
    • 3.2Prevocalic /r/
    • 3.3Current trends in NZE rhoticity
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.38.3.02mar
References (57)
References
Ball, Martin J., and Joan Rahilly. 1999. Phonetics: The Science of Speech. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bartlett, Christopher. 1992. “Regional Variation in New Zealand English: The Case of Southland”. New Zealand English Newsletter 61: 5–15.Google Scholar
. 2003. “The Southland Variety of New Zealand English: Postvocalic /r/ and the BATH Vowel”. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Otago.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1984. “Linking /r/ in RP: Some Facts”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 141: 74–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. “English in New Zealand”. In Robert Burchfield, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 51: English in Britain and Overseas: Origins and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 382–429.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie, and Winifred Bauer. 2002. “Can We Watch Regional Dialects Developing in Colonial English? The Case of New Zealand”. English World Wide 231: 169–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie, and Paul Warren. 2004. “New Zealand English: Phonology”. In Edgar Schneider, Kate Burridge, Bernd Kortmann, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton, eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 580–602.Google Scholar
Becker, Kara. 2009. “/r/ and the Construction of Place Identity on New York City’s Lower East Side”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 131: 634–658. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “(r) we there yet? The Change to Rhoticity in New York City English”. Language Variation and Change 261: 141–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drager, Katie, and Jennifer Hay. 2012. “Exploiting Random Intercepts: Two Case Studies in Sociophonetics”. Language Variation and Change 241: 59–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
EDUCATION.govt.nz. 2015. Decile Ratings. <[URL]> (accessed June 30, 2015).
ERO (Education Review Office/Te Tari Arotake Mātauranga). <[URL]> (accessed May 30, 2007).
Foulkes, Paul. 1997. “English [r]-Sandhi – a Sociolinguistic Perspective”. Histoire Epistémologie Langage 191: 73–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Andy. 2005. “Non-Prevocalic /r/ in New Zealand Hip-Hop”. New Zealand English Journal 191: 5–12.Google Scholar
Gimson, A. C./Cruttenden Alan. 2008. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (7th ed.). London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Margaret A. Maclagan, and Jennifer Hay. 2007. “The ONZE Corpus”. In Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan, and Hermann Moisl, eds. Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora. Vol 2: Diachronic Databases. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 82–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury, and Peter Trudgill. 2004. New Zealand English: Its Origins and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, and Peter Trudgill. 1999. “Shades of Things to Come: Embryonic Variants in New Zealand English Sound Changes”. English World-Wide 201: 111–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2009. Statistics for Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, John. 2013. “Wide-Domain r-Effects in English”. Journal of Linguistics 491: 329–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, and Alhana Clendon. 2012. “(Non)-Rhoticity: Lessons from New Zealand English”. In Terttu Nevalainen, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, eds. The Oxford Handbook of The History of English. New York: Oxford University Press, 761–772.Google Scholar
Hay, Jen, and Margaret Maclagan. 2010. “Social and Phonetic Conditioners on the Frequency and Degree of ‘Intrusive /r/’ in New Zealand English”. In Dennis R. Preston, and Nancy Niedzielski, eds. A Reader in Sociophonetics. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 41–69.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Margaret Maclagan, and Elizabeth Gordon. 2008. New Zealand English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, and Andrea Sudbury. 2005. “How Rhoticity Became /r/-Sandhi”. Language 811: 799–823. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heselwood, Barry. 2009. “R Vocalisation, Linking R and Intrusive R: Accounting for Final Schwa in RP English”. Transactions of the Philological Society 1071: 66–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heselwood, Barry, and Leendert Plug. 2011. “The Role of F2 and F3 in the Perception of Rhoticity: Evidence from Listening Experiments”. Proceedings of the XVII International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 867–870. Available at: <[URL]>.
Hickey, Raymond. 2010. “Language Contact: Reconsideration and Reassessment”. In Raymond Hickey, ed. The Handbook of Language Contact. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Patricia, and Naomi Nagy. 2007. “Bostonians /r/ Speaking: A Quantitative Look at R in Boston”. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics: Papers from NWAV35 131: 135–147.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Marianna. 2006. “Variation in the Pronunciation of English by New Zealand School Children”. M.A. Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Eleanor, James M. Scobbie, and Jane Stuart-Smith. 2011. “The Social Stratification of Tongue Shape for Postvocalic /r/ in Scottish English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 151: 256–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marsden, Sharon. Forthcoming. “Globalisation and Localisation in Small Town New Zealand”.
Mather, Patrick-André. 2012. “The Social Stratification of /r/ in New York City: Labov’s Department Store Study Revisited”. Journal of English Linguistics 401: 338–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myhill, John. 1988. “Postvocalic /r/ as an Index of Integration into the BEV Speech Community”. American Speech 631: 203–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robb, Michael P., Margaret Maclagan, and Chen Yang. 2004. “Speaking Rates of American and New Zealand Varieties of English”. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 181: 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. 2003. “The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth.” Language 791: 233–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007. Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scobbie, James M. 2006. “(R) as a Variable”. In Keith Brown, ed. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 101 (2nd ed). London: Elsevier, 337–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spoonley, Paul, and Richard Bedford. 2012. Welcome to our World? Immigration and the Reshaping of New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore Publishing.Google Scholar
Statistics New Zealand: <[URL]> (accessed June 28, 2017).
Stuart-Smith, Jane. 2007. “A Sociophonetic Investigation of Postvocalic /r/ in Glaswegian Adolescents.” In Jürgen Trouvain, and William J. Barry, eds. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: ICPhS XVI. Saarbrücken, Germany: Universität des Saarlandes, 1449–1452.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Eleanor Lawson, and James M. Scobbie. 2014. “Derhoticisation in Scottish English: A Sociophonetic Journey”. In Chiara Celata, and Silvia Calamai, eds. Advances in Sociophonetics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 59–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szakay, Anita. 2008. Ethnic Dialect Identification in New Zealand: The Role of Prosodic Cues. Saarbrücken: VDM.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2006. Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2007. “Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English”. Language and Linguistics Compass 11: 450–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2004. New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter, and Elizabeth Gordon. 2006. “Predicting the Past: Dialect Archaeology and Australian English Rhoticity”. English World-Wide 271: 235–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 2010. “Towards Post-Multiculturalism? Changing Communities, Conditions and Contexts of Diversity”. International Social Science Journal 611: 83–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vine, Bernadette and Sharon Marsden. 2016. “EH at Work: The Indexicality of a New Zealand English Pragmatic Marker”. Intercultural Pragmatics 131: 383–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. 2007. “Sociolinguistic Folklore in the Study of African American English”. Language and Linguistic Compass 11: 292–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Gibson, Andy
2024. Pop Song English as a supralocal norm. Language in Society 53:3 ► pp. 471 ff. DOI logo
Turton, Danielle & Robert Lennon
2023. An acoustic analysis of rhoticity in Lancashire, England. Journal of Phonetics 101 ► pp. 101280 ff. DOI logo
Fischer, Ondřej & Pavel Šturm
2022. Consistency in the Rhoticity of Czech Speakers of English. In Theoretical and Practical Developments in English Speech Assessment, Research, and Training [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. References. In Sounds of English Worldwide, ► pp. 354 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.