Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1273

Part of Session 155: Changing linguistic norms in the audiovisual media (Other abstracts in this session)

Leaving Home: the de-europeanization of post-colonial language varieties

Authors: Bell, Allan
Submitted by: Bell, Allan Graham (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand)

The past four decades have witnessed considerable shifts in media technologies and configurations and in the orientation and distribution of language resources in the media. Such changes have affected Europe, but also those major sectors of the world which were once colonies of Europe. This paper examines vernacularization in post-colonial language and media in New Zealand, interpreted through a lens of ‘de-europeanization’ of a standard (Bell 1983). The contention is that in increasingly mediatized and digitalized societies, the circulation of languages, styles and genres through media can shape language change at a macro level, with repercussions through to the micro level of specific pronunciations.

Until the 1980s New Zealand had arguably colonialistic attitudes towards language, especially in the media, which I both instantiated and challenged in a 1982 article entitled ‘This isn’t the BBC’. This included practices such as employment of mostly British-born announcers to be the voices on New Zealand national media, and re-broadcast of BBC World Service news. I take New Zealand as a case study in real-time linguistic change, resampling four radio stations first recorded nearly 40 years ago (Bell 1988).

The study is underpinned by consideration of sociocultural and political changes in New Zealand since the 1980s. These include:

· - broad shifts in sociopolitical ideologies and practices such as market liberalization, state divestment and globalisation

· - institutional shifts affecting media organizations such as privatization or commercialization of once-public broadcasting channels

· - technological developments – proliferation of outlets, availability of traditional media through new online platforms, increase of interactive capabilities

· - genre developments – often derived from the technological developments, e.g. the ready ability to do live interviews, the embedding of video or audio clips on internet newspaper sites, the creation of new genres such as blogs and chatrooms.

The investigation quantified one linguistic variable, determiner deletion in naming expressions, yielding real-time confirmation of three predictions I had made in the 1980s. The variable has gone from near-absence on all stations in 1974 to almost categorical presence in locally and youth oriented stations in 2011, while maintaining its near-absence on the prestige stations, the BBC and Radio NZ National. Secondly and more broadly, in 2011 the youth station shows a striking degree of conversationalisation across its phonology, syntax, discourse and lexicon. I theorize the first shift as a re-standardisation of NZ news language away from a European and towards an American norm. The second set of shifts are in part also a re-standardisation, but towards a NZ vernacular. They are also in part a de-standardisation away from the formality of the prestige stations and towards a colloquial norm.

References

Bell, Allan, 1982. ‘This isn’t the BBC: colonialism in New Zealand English.’ Applied Linguistics 3/3: 246‑58.

Bell, Allan, 1983. ‘Broadcast news as a language standard.’ In Gerhard Leitner (ed.), Language and Mass Media (International Journal of the Sociology of Language 40). Amsterdam: Mouton. 29‑42.

Bell, Allan, 1988. ‘The British base and the American connection in New Zealand media English.’ American Speech 63/4: 326‑44.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Leaving Home: the de-europeanization of post-colonial language varieties