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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 465

Part of Session 101: Sociophonetic research in emerging varieties (Other abstracts in this session)

Same City, Different World: The Emergence of a Black English Speech Community in Toronto

Authors: Baxter, Laura; Peters, Jacqueline
Submitted by: Baxter, Laura (York University, Canada)

This paper presents a study of (t/d) deletion (TD) in Black Toronto English, a speech community which has not previously been investigated. Hoffman and Walker (2010) examined (TD) in the speech of Torontonians from a number of ethnic groups and found that, while first generation Chinese- and Italian-Canadian speakers showed evidence of language transfer, second generation speakers of both groups showed the same conditioning of (t/d) deletion as speakers of British descent, suggesting these speakers were all members of the same speech community. Our study, on the other hand, finds that second generation Black Canadians do not share certain constraint rankings found by Hoffman and Walker, suggesting that Black speakers in Toronto speak a different variety of English and have not assimilated to the larger speech community in the same way that speakers of the other ethnic groups have.

In particular, preceding phonological context, the most significant linguistic constraint on (TD) for all ethnolects in Toronto, shows a different direction of effect in the speech of the Black community, one that is similar to the constraint ranking found in Patrick (1999)’s study of Jamaican Creole, one of the substrate languages of Toronto’s Black immigrant population. We suggest the existence of (TD) in varieties of a substrate language as a possible explanation for the persistence of language transfer into the second generation of speakers in Toronto.

Furthermore, preliminary evidence suggests that this variety of English is not limited to speakers of Jamaican heritage, but that Black speakers of different linguistic heritages have formed one speech community in Toronto. As Black speakers tend to be isolated both geographically and socially from the larger Toronto speech community, we suggest that other Black speakers have assimilated to the Jamaican community due to its status as the largest and most established Black community in Toronto.