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Part of
Advances in Sociophonetics
Edited by Chiara Celata and Silvia Calamai
[Studies in Language Variation 15] 2014
► pp. 59–96

Derhoticisation in Scottish English

A sociophonetic journey

| English Language | Glasgow University Laboratory of Phonetics, University of Glasgow
| CASL Research Centre, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh
| CASL Research Centre, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh

This paper presents the rewards of a sociophonetic journey by focusing on fine-grained variation in Scottish English coda /r/. We synthesize the results of some 15 years of research and provide a sociophonological account of variation and change in this feature. We summarize observations on coda /r/ in Scottish English across the twentieth century, which reveal a socially-constrained, long-term process of derhoticisation in working-class speech, alongside strengthening of /r/ in middle-class speakers. We then consider the linguistic and social factors involved, information from studies based on listener responses, the acoustics of derhoticisation, and insights gained from a socio-articulatory ultrasound corpus collected. These different views of coda /r/ force us to consider carefully the complex relationships between auditory, acoustic, and articulatory descriptions of (socially structured) speech. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for mental representations of speech and social information for speaker-hearers in this community.

Published online: 12 June 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.15.03stu
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 april 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.

audio

6a. farm - tap

6b. car - trill

6c. far - weak approximant

6d. card - pharyngealized vowel

6e. car - plain vowel

6f. far - weak approximant

13a. far - sound

video

9. car - covert gesture

11a. par - tip up

11b. far - front up

11c. far - front bunched

11d. bar - mid bunched

12a. hurt - own pronunciation

12b. hurt - stimulus

12c. hurt - mimicked

13b. far - ultrasound