Cover not available
Part of
Language Variation – European Perspectives VIII: Selected papers from the Tenth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), Leeuwarden, June 2019
Edited by Hans Van de Velde, Nanna Haug Hilton and Remco Knooihuizen
[Studies in Language Variation 25] 2021
► pp. 291–314

Chapter 13
Ethnic variation in real time

Change in Australian English diphthongs

ORCID logo | University of Duisburg-Essen
ORCID logo | Australian National University
ORCID logo | Australian National University

Ethnic and ethnolectal variation in migrant communities have received much attention, but the manifestation and longevity of this variation is not yet well understood. Capitalising on Barbara Horvath’s foundational study of social variation in Australian English, and a comparable, recent corpus of sociolinguistic interviews (Sydney Speaks 2010s), we present a real-time test of ethnic variation in the speech of approximately 170 Australians over a 40-year period. We examine the speech of Anglo-, Italian- and Chinese-Australians, focusing on five diphthongs considered to be characteristic of Australian English. Analyses of over 20,000 tokens reveal no wholesale differences among ethnic groups, but they do reveal some differences in the progression and social conditioning of changes over time, which we argue are best understood in relation to the social nature of the changes undergone.

Keywords: ethnolects, ethnic variation, diphthongs, Australian English, language change, gender, socio-economic status
Article outline
  • 1.Ethnic and ethnolectal variation
  • 2.Variation in Australian English
  • 3.Changing ethnic diversity in Australia
  • 4.Data for the study of ethnic variation over time
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Speech data
  • 5.Australian English in real time
    • 5.1Ethnic variation in Young Adult Australians in the 2010s
    • 5.2Anglo-Australians over time
    • 5.3Anglo and Italians over time
    • 5.4Ethnic and gender variation in Young Adult Australians in the 2010s
  • 6.Migrants and the progression of change
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.25.13gra
References
Albin, Aaron
2014 PraatR: An architecture for controlling the phonetics software “Praat” with the R programming language. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 135(4). 2198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Australian Bureau of Statistics
1981 Census of Population and Housing. [URL] (25 September 2015).
1991 Census of Population and Housing. [URL] (25 September 2015).
2016 2016 Census QuickStats. [URL] (12 March 2019).
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker, Steve Walker, Rune Haubo Bojesen Christensen, Henrik Singmann, Bin Dai, Fabian Scheipl, Gabor Grothendieck, Peter Green, & John Fox
2019 lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using ‘Eigen’ and S4. R package, version 1.1–121.Google Scholar
Becker, Kara
2014 (r) we there yet? The change to rhoticity in New York City English. Language Variation and Change 26. 141–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benson, Phil & Anikó Hatoss
2019 Multingual Sydney: A city report. In Alice Chik, Phil Benson & Robin Moloney (eds.), Multilingual Sydney, 13–25. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bořil, Tomáš & Radek Skarnitzl
2016 Tools rPraat and mPraat. In Petr Sojka, Aleš Horák, Ivan Kopeček & Karel Pala (eds.), Text, speech, and dialogue, 367–374. Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, David & Maya Bradley
2001 Changing attitudes to Australian English. In David Blair & Peter Collins (eds.) English in Australia, 271–286. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Bejnamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butcher, Andrew
2012 Changes in the formant frequencies of vowels in the speech of South Australian females 1945–2010. In Felicity Cox, Katherine Demuth, Susan Lin, Kelly Miles, Sallyanne Palethorpe, Jason Shaw & Ivan Yuen (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 69–72. Sydney.Google Scholar
Callan, Victor J., Cynthia Gallois, & Paula A. Forbes
1983 Evaluative reactions to accented English: Ethnicity, sex role and context. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 14(4). 407–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Nortier Jacomine, & David Adger
2015 Emerging multiethnolects in Europe. Queen Mary’s OPAL [Occasional Papers Advancing Linguistics] 33.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, & Eivind Torgersen
2011 Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2). 151–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clothier, Josh
2019 A sociophonetic analysis of /l/ darkness and Lebanese Australian ethnic identity in Australian English. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 1888–1892. Melbourne, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.Google Scholar
Clothier, Josh & Debbie Loakes
2018 Coronal stop VOT in Australian English: Lebanese Australians and mainstream Australian English speakers. In Julien Epps, Joe Wolfe, John Smith & Caroline Jones (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 13–16. Sydney: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael
1991 Community languages: The Australian experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000 Lingua franca and ethnolects in Europe and beyond. Sociolinguistica 14. 83–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael, Edina Eisikovits, & Laura Tollfree
2001 Ethnic varieties of Australian English. In David Blair & Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 223–238. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002 Ethnolects as in-group varieties. In Anna Duszak (ed.), Us and others: Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures, 133–157. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cox, Felicity
1999 Vowel change in Australian English. Phonetica 56(1–2). 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cox, Felicity & Sallyanne Palethorpe
2006 A preliminary acoustic phonetic examination of Lebanese Australian English. Australian Journal of Psychology 58 (Suppl. 1). 5. [Abstract]Google Scholar
2007 Illustrations of the IPA: Australian English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37(3). 341–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Standard Australian English: The sociostylistic broadness continuum. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Standards of English: Codified varieties around the world, 294–317. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dodsworth, Robin & Richard A. Benton
2017 Social network cohesion and the retreat from Southern vowels in Raleigh. Language in Society 46. 371–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2008 Where do ethnolects stop? International Journal of Bilingualism 12(1–2). 25–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fromont, Robert & Jennifer Hay
2012 LaBB-CAT: An annotation store. Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop, 113–117.Google Scholar
Grama, James, Catherine E. Travis, & Simon Gonzalez
2020 Ethnolectal and community change ov(er) time: Word-final (er) in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 40(3). 346–368. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gross, Johan, Sally Boyd, Therese Leinonen, & James A. Walker
2016 A tale of two cities (and one vowel): Sociolinguistic variation in Swedish. Language Variation and Change 28(2). 225–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R., Barbara M. Horvath, Julia Vonwiller, Elaine Daisley, & Inge Rogers
1986 An intonational change in progress in Australian English. Language in Society 15(1).23–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Michol F.
2010 The role of social factors in the Canadian Vowel Shift: Evidence from Toronto. American Speech 85(2). 121–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Michol F. & James A. Walker
2010 Ethnolects and the city: Ethnic orientation and linguistic variation in Toronto English. Language Variation and Change 22(1). 37–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Barbara
1985 Variation in Australian English: The sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1991 Finding a place in Sydney: Migrants and language change. In Suzanne Romaine (ed.), Language in Australia, 304–317. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Barbara & David Sankoff
1987 Delimiting the Sydney speech community. Language in Society 16(2). 179–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jupp, James
2001 The Australian people: An encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, Eivind Torgersen, & Susan Fox
2008 Reversing “drift”: Innovation and diffusion in the London diphthong system. Language Variation and Change 20(3). 451–491. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Khoo, Siew-Ean
2003 A greater diversity of origins. In Siew-Ean Khoo & Peter McDonald (eds.), The transformation of Australia’s population: 1970–2030, 158–184. Sydney: UNSW Press.Google Scholar
Kiesling, Scott Fabius
2001 Australian English and recent migrant groups. In David Blair & Peter Collins (eds.), English in Australia, 239–257. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Variation, stance and style: Word-final -er, high rising tone, and ethnicity in Australian English. English World-Wide 26(1). 1–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1966 The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
1972 Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
1984 Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In John Baugh & Joel Sherzer (eds.), Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics, 28–53. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
2008 Mysteries of the substrate. In Miriam Meyerhoff & Naomi Nagy (eds.), Social lives in language: Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities, 315–326. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lausberg, Hedda & Han Sloetjes
2009 Coding gestural behavior with the NEUROGES-ELAN system. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 41(3). 841–849. [URL]
Lee, Esther
2020 Quotatives over time: A study in ethnic variation. Honours thesis, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Lobanov, Boris M.
1971 Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speaker”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49. 606–608. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lüdecke, Daniel & Carsten Schwemmer
2018 sjPLot: Data visualization for statistics in social science. R package version 2.6.1. [URL]
Mitchell, A. G. & Arthur Delbridge
1965 The speech of Australian adolescents: A survey. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team
2019 R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, [URL]
Schneider, Edgar W.
2007 Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Travis, Catherine E., James Grama, & Simon Gonzalez
In Progress. Sydney Speaks Corpora. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University: [URL]
van Meel, Linda, Frans Hinskens, & Roeland van Hout
2014 Variation in the realization of /εi/ by Dutch youngsters: from local urban dialects to emerging ethnolects?. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 22(1). 46–74.Google Scholar
Wells, John C.
1982 Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wiese, Heike
2009 Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents. Lingua 119(5). 782–806. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wong, Amy Wing-mei & Lauren Hall-Lew
2014 Regional variability and ethnic identity: Chinese Americans in New York City and San Francisco. Language and Communication 35. 27–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Travis, Catherine E., James Grama & Benjamin Purser
2023. Stability and change in (ing). English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 44:3 ► pp. 435 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 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.