Joining the Western Region: Sociophonetic Shift in Victoria

Abstract

The literature on Canadian English provides evidence of distinct dialect regions. Within this landscape, the province of British Columbia is set apart as a sub-region in the west, yet information concerning “local” English is notably skewed toward a single urban setting, Vancouver. To assess and extend the generalizability of prior observations, this paper targets the city of Victoria and situates the results from a large-scale sociolinguistic investigation within the model of the typical (western) Canadian city presented in Boberg (2008, 2010). We consider vocalic features characterized as either General Canadian or distinctively Western Canadian. We also consider “yod” (i.e., the presence of an onglide in student, tune, and the like), a conservative feature that is obsolescing across the nation. Our results support Boberg’s (2008, 2010) observations while positioning Victoria as both innovative—participating in national changes—and conservative—joining certain changes relatively recently and retaining older dialect features. Such results enable us to trace leveling to national and more local dialect patterns, while also reminding us of sociohistorical forces in the formation of dialects.

A Closer Look at the Short Front Vowel Shift in Canada

“…Since their paper appeared, the Canadian Shift has come to be the most widely described phonetic feature of Canadian English, apart from "Canadian Raising." Further studies of this shift in several Canadian locations are reported in De Decker and Mackenzie (2000), Boberg (2005Boberg ( , 2008Boberg ( , 2010Boberg ( , 2011, D'Arcy (2005), Hagiwara (2006), Sadlier-Brown and Tamminga (2008), Hoffman (2010), Roeder and Jarmasz (2010), Sadlier-Brown (2010), Roeder (2012), Swan (2016aSwan ( , 2016b, and Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy (2018). Whereas the restriction of their main sample to university students prevented Clarke, Elms, and Youssef (1995) from drawing any firm conclusion about whether the Canadian Shift was really a change in progress or a static feature of Canadian English, Boberg (2005) and Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006:220-221) subsequently analyzed apparent-time data that do suggest an on-going change, putting aside the usual question of whether generational differences represent generational change or age-grading.…”

1. Introduction

“…This volume is far from the first to propose that the short front vowel shifts happening across North American varieties are likely the same phenomenon. A growing list of works has made this observation (Gordon 2004b;Durian 2012;Fridland, Kendall, and Farrington 2013, 2;Roeder and Gardner 2013, 169;Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy 2018), and all note the co-occurrence of the Low Back Merger and its likely role as a triggering event. But regardless of a scholar's position on the scope of the LBMS or its cause, a remarkable and growing list of studies is providing evidence of it across North America.…”

“…These findings led to a suggestion that the LBMS was not a chain shift but a parallel shift, where the motivation for shift is analogy, such that bet and bit mimic bat's movement. Still other studies, primarily in Canada, found shift movement in both dimensions (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006;Sadlier-Brown and Tamminga 2008;Roeder and Jarmasz 2009;Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy 2018). Some of these scholars argue that the limited trajectories introduced for the original chain shift fail to capture the variability that would naturally arise across an enormous region like Canada (Sadlier-Brown and Tamminga 2008, 12).…”

“…As in California, the Canadian scholarship has been robust. Over the decades, scholars have documented the presence of the LBMS across Canada, expanding its geographic coverage from coast to coast, from St. John's in Newfoundland (D'Arcy 2005) to Victoria in British Columbia (Roeder, Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy 2018). 5 A central theme of the conversation about the Canadian Vowel Shift concerns whether or not a particular data set conforms to the traditional expectations of a chain shift; in particular, the direction of each vowel's movement has been the subject of much discussion.…”

“…This volume seeks to separate the LBMS from contemporaneous sound changes that, to date, cannot be shown to be structurally related. However, a common phenomenon that co-occurs with the LBMS in North American speech communities is Back Vowel Fronting (i.e., the fronting of the nuclei of the back vowels boot and boat and often put and but), a robust and widespread sound change occurring in areas like California and Canada where the LBMS is most extensively described (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006;Roeder, Onosson, and D'Arcy 2018). Many publications on California English have presented all the distinctive features of the region's speech, including Back Vowel Fronting, as part of the California Vowel Shift.…”