TY - JOUR
T1 - An intonational change in progress in Australian English
AU - Guy, Gregory
AU - Horvath, Barbara
AU - Vonwiller, Julia
AU - Daisley, Elaine
AU - Rogers, Inge
N1 - Funding Information:
1. The research on which this paper is based was supported by the Australian Research Grants Committee through several different grants to the first two named authors, particularly grant number A181/15292. We wish to express our deep appreciation to the committee for their support. We also would like to thank a number of colleagues for their assistance, advice, comments, and constructive criticism, especially Michael Halliday, James Martin, Jafta Kooma, and Tony Kroch. 2. There are several references in the literature to other dialects of English which use rising tones in declaratives, some of which are mentioned later in this paper. However, none of these other usages are, to our knowledge, identical to AQI in all respects including phonetic form (a high rise equivalent to that used in polar questions), meaning (seeking verification of listener's comprehension), and interactive use (normally to construct an extended turn at talk for speaker). 3. We are using the term "Anglo-Celtic" to include all native speakers of Australian English whose ancestry derives from the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, including the English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish. We do not thereby wish to deny the existence of national and ethnic differences among these peoples, but rather to emphasize the relative linguistic and cultural unity that, in the Australian context, differentiates them collectively from people of other national and ethnic origins, such as the Italians and Greeks. 4. Certain other factors were also investigated and found to be insignificant, such as the sex, nationality, and individual identity of the interviewer and the identity of the data coder. We have also collected but not yet analyzed information on such things as whether the interviewer produced an audible response to the AQI, whether the speaker paused after producing it, and whether the AQI occurred in isolation or as part of a chain of such intonations, as in text (3). 5. We do not wish to suggest that opinions are necessarily, as a genre, lacking in complexity. However, most of the texts we are identifying as opinions were structurally simple, consisting mainly of evaluative and affective comments.
PY - 1986/3
Y1 - 1986/3
N2 - Many speakers the current Australian English often use a high-rising intonation in statements. This usage, which has been termed Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI), has a nonpropositional, interactive meaning (checking for listener comprehension) and interacts with the turn-taking mechanism the conversation. A quantitative study the the use the AQI in Sydney reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic the a language change in progress: higher rates the usage among working-class speakers, teenagers, and women. Real time data confirm this, showing that the form was almost nonexistent in this speech community two decades earlier. The social motivations the this innovation are examined in terms the local identity and the entry the new ethnic groups into the community, and possible linguistic sources are discussed. The utility the quantitative methods in studying meaningful linguistic variables is demonstrated. (Australian English, language change in progress, intonation, sociolinguistic variation, social class, social motivation).
AB - Many speakers the current Australian English often use a high-rising intonation in statements. This usage, which has been termed Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI), has a nonpropositional, interactive meaning (checking for listener comprehension) and interacts with the turn-taking mechanism the conversation. A quantitative study the the use the AQI in Sydney reveals that it has the social distribution characteristic the a language change in progress: higher rates the usage among working-class speakers, teenagers, and women. Real time data confirm this, showing that the form was almost nonexistent in this speech community two decades earlier. The social motivations the this innovation are examined in terms the local identity and the entry the new ethnic groups into the community, and possible linguistic sources are discussed. The utility the quantitative methods in studying meaningful linguistic variables is demonstrated. (Australian English, language change in progress, intonation, sociolinguistic variation, social class, social motivation).
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U2 - 10.1017/S0047404500011635
DO - 10.1017/S0047404500011635
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84974489247
SN - 0047-4045
VL - 15
SP - 23
EP - 51
JO - Language in Society
JF - Language in Society
IS - 1
ER -