Phonological variation in American and British pop music

Abstract

[eng] The study of phonological variation between American and British varieties of English is one of the most researched fields in English linguistics. This research project aims to analyse through songs the following phonological features with different realisations in the pronunciation of British and American Englishes, as reported by Wells (1982): (i) rhoticity in postvocalic contexts; (ii) /t/ realisation; (iii) realisation of the diphthong in GOAT1; and (iv) realisation of the open-back rounded vowel. For this study, ten songs were selected and analysed manually. The two artists chosen for this project are the American band Twenty One Pilots, and the British band Bastille. To fulfil this study, studies of phonological differences by scholars such as Dimitrova (2010) or Gómez (2009), and phonological performance in music by linguists such as Trudgill (1983) or Gerwin (2017) have been taken into consideration. The results of the analysis prove that the main peculiarities of each accent, are also realized in the performative art of music.