Focusing and diffusion in 'Cape Flats English': a sociophonetic study of three vowels

This research contributes to the wider fields of sociophonetics and the social dialectology of English in South Africa. The study looks at three vowel sets; GOOSE, BATH and KIT taken from Wells (1982). The study was designed to identify and attempt to explain potential differences in pronunciation amongst speakers in an English-speaking community living in Cape Town and classified as 'Coloured' during apartheid. The community in question has used English as their first language for several generations and has enjoyed some of the economic advantages attached to this while at the same time being the victims (historically) of discrimination and marginalization. The study looks at the speech of twenty speakers. Using the methods of variationist sociolinguistics, it aims to investigate what correlations can be drawn between these speakers. It examines whether the speech of the informants can be correlated along lines of social class, education, personal background and occupation. In addition, the study looks (albeit briefly) at issues of language usage and social identity with regard to these twenty speakers.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Linguistics

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Justin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mesthrie, Rajend

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12078

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12078