Prestige and Change

Historical Linguistics and Language Families 1 gave "social prestige" as a cause of language change and cited the loss of the /r/ in Received Pronunciation. It did not say how prestige works. This chapter does, using the best-documented case in the field: what happened to /r/ in English on both sides of the Atlantic.

Overt and Covert Prestige

Which varieties count as prestigious depends on audience and context. Prestige varieties are usually the standard form, though exceptions exist: the source notes that Egyptian Arabic is widely used in mass media, while Literary Arabic is more prestigious. Prestige rests on literary heritage, degree of modernisation, international standing and the prestige of speakers; Latin's prestige came from the churchmen, lawyers and scholars who used it.

Studies that show it

Two of these pull in different directions for gender: in Norwich women used more of the standard dialect, and in Angle and Hesse-Biber's diglossic societies poorer men used more of the prestige language. Chapter 3's warning applies: gender patterns are not universal.

Hypercorrection

In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is "the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule" of prescriptive usage (Wikipedia, Hypercorrection). Speakers usually believe their form is more correct or formal, but the rule is applied where it does not belong.

• Labov, New York City (1960s): speakers tended to pronounce the "r" in words like hard more often when speaking carefully. Lower-middle-class speakers used more rhotic pronunciation than upper-middle-class speakers, apparently trying to imitate them but overproducing the noticeable r-sound. The prestige article describes the word-list version of the study: lower-class speakers, who were monitoring their speech, added /r/ to words that had none.
• Other examples given: "he gave it to you and I" (Jack Lynch's example, where "you and me" is correct); octopi as the plural of octopus; feels badly for feels bad; affect and effect confusion; habanero pronounced as if spelled "habañero" (hyperforeignism).

The source gives no statistics for hypercorrection; it describes Labov's findings qualitatively.

Worked Case: What Happened to /r/ in English

England

• Loss of /r/ first appeared in the early 15th century, before coronals such as /s/ (ass, bass).
• It became sporadic in the mid-15th century, but such spellings stayed uncommon and mostly appeared in private documents, especially by women.
• In 1640 Ben Jonson wrote that /r/ was "sounded firme in the beginning of words, and more liquid in the middle, and ends".
• By the 1770s, pre-consonantal /r/-less pronunciation was becoming common around London, even in formal educated speech.
• By the early 19th century, the southern British standard was fully non-rhotic, though some variation persisted into the 1870s.
• In Britain, non-rhoticity became the prestige form. The page says it "exerts a steady pressure toward non-rhoticity".

The United States

• In the 18th century, some eastern and southern US port cities with British ties (New York, Boston, Charleston) became non-rhotic among the upper class.
• Non-rhoticity stayed prestigious in the US until the 1860s Civil War shifted power to rhotic areas.
• Rhoticity then gained prestige nationwide, most decisively after World War II, citing Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006). The page does not say Labov found this specifically in New York.
• Today, non-rhotic accents in US eastern and southern cities are often seen as working-class or immigrant, while rhotic accents are seen as "General American". Non-rhoticity persists among African American speakers and in parts of the South, New York City and eastern New England, though it is declining.
• The prestige article adds that New York's dropped /r/ had origins in "posh British speech", but that after WWII, r-less British speech stopped being seen as prestigious.

This is why Phonetics and the IPA 7 listed RP as non-rhotic and General American as rhotic: each reflects what its society treated as prestigious.

Linking and intrusive R

Non-rhotic speakers often pronounce a final written r when the next word begins with a vowel: linking R, as in water ice. Many also insert an epenthetic /r/ between vowels: intrusive R, as in drawring for drawing. The source says this is stigmatised, but many RP speakers use it, for example the idea-r-of it; RP speakers and some rhotic speakers more often use a glottal stop instead.

Prestige and Language Contact

• Contact between languages of unequal prestige can cause borrowing, language shift (speakers moving to the higher-prestige variety), convergence, or death.
• In diglossia, the prestige language resists change, while the vernacular changes normally. A prestige language in free contact with vernaculars may undergo vernacularisation, as Sanskrit did.

Try It Yourself