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Chapter 8 - Internal Push, External Pull: The Reverse Short Front Vowel Shift in South African English

from II - Sociolinguistics, Globalisation and Multilingualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2019

By
Alida Chevalier
Edited by
Raymond Hickey
Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
Universität Duisburg–Essen
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Summary

This chapter outlines the recent development of short front vowel lowering in South African English as it is used in Cape Town by white speakers. Using the latest acoustic and statistical methods, the chapter shows how the KIT, DRESS and TRAP vowels are lowering and retracting in the speech of young speakers when compared to older speakers. The change that has had the most profound influence on the Reverse Vowel Shift is the extreme lowering and retraction of TRAP, which causes the lowering of DRESS in a pull chain. The FOOT vowel is well established as a centralised vowel which, because of its unrounded nature in South African English, overlaps with certain retracted KIT allophones. This can be seen as the impetus for the lowering of KIT as evidenced in the chapter. The Reverse Vowel Shift is an externally motivated, prestige-driven change due to the virtual contact with particularly American Englishes.

Keywords

acoustic sociophoneticsSouth African Englishshort front vowel loweringvirtual language contactprestige-driven change
Type
Chapter
Information
English in Multilingual South Africa
The Linguistics of Contact and Change
 , pp. 151 - 175
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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