markus heuger's
beabliography

Beabliography

Abstract 0290

Trudgill, Peter (1997), "Acts of conflicting identity. The sociolinguistics of British pop-song pronunciation." In: Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski (eds.), Sociolinguistics. A reader. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, 251-265.

R. B. Le Page's (1978) theory that a speaker's linguistic behavior may change to conform to the speech behavior of a group or groups with which the speaker wishes to identify is applied to the pronunciation used by British pop musicians. The phonological patterns adopted tend to imitate those found in American speech, Black southern speech in particular. Attention is given to the insertion of non-prevocalic /r/ into words where it is missing in British pop musicians. How the Beatles switched from /ae/ to /a:/ pronunciation in words like "can't" and "half" from 1963 to 1969 is linked to a shift away from rock'n'roll to more contemplative works. A lack of phonological Americanization in punk rock songs is attributed to the songs' associations with British working-class youth.