DiSUm, a.a.

2019–20, Scienze e lingue per la comunicazione (L20)

Lingua e comunicazione inglese 1, prof. Iain Halliday
Lezione giovedì 14 novembre 2019 (13 di 27), aula A1, ore 08:00–10:00

with a plum in your mouth?

(pronunciation, phonetics and phonology)

The following comes, obviously, because you’re used to the graphics by now,
from the OED:

plum, n. and adj.2

Phrases

1. In similative and figurative phrases, with reference to the idea

that indistinct or mannered speech suggests that one’s mouth is
full of plums; (in later use) spec. indicating a mode of speech
associated with the British upper classes; cf. plummy adj.2 3b).
Hence plum-in-the-mouth adj. (colloq.).

The expression used in the title has many connotations, largely negative, in
British English, though it does fall into that category of expressions that
educated Anglophones throughout the world should recognize, and should
recognize as having a particularly British significance. The connotations relate
to the social status of a speaker with such a voice – usually very high class,
probably even aristocratic.

The observations made above about the expression “to speak with a plum in
one’s mouth” and the accent associated with it, fall into the context of the
study of phonology, i.e. the significance – linguistic and social – of
particular ways of pronouncing and speaking a language.

Perhaps we can begin consideration of phonetics with a joke:

Q: What’s the definition of a crèche? [/krɛʃ/ /kreɪʃ/]

A: It’s a collision between two motor vehicles in Kensington.

This joke depends for its effect on knowledge of the fact that a crèche (a word
English has obviously borrowed from French) is a nursery school and the fact
that some upper-class British speakers of English (British inhabitants of the
London Borough of Kensington are quite likely to be of the upper classes)
often pronounce the “a” in crash as if it were an “e”. “Crash” is normally
pronounced /kræʃ/

Our consideration of the joke means that we begin to pay attention to the way
in which particular sounds are pronounced, in this case the particular ways in
which a particular speaker pronounces a certain vowel sound. The attention
leads us to provide a phonetic rendition of the vowel sounds and we could go
into even more detail regarding the ways in which the vowel sounds are
produced – position of the tongue, shape of the mouth and so on. This
is phonetics, while phonology is more concerned with the larger context,
the way the phonemes fit together, that the sounds of language inhabit.

The phonetic renditions of the vowel sounds in the joke depend on an

instrument that is fundamental to the study of both phonetics and phonology:
the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), whose symbols are used by the
OED in its pronunciation guide to each entry. English Language contains two
separate IPA tables – one for consonants and one for vowels – on pages 22
and 26 respectively. These tables appear, understandably, in Chapter 2, which
is dedicated to phonetics. The book also contains an appendix in which the
IPA chart is presented in all its detailed complexity (625).

Here is a brief quotation from Kevin Watson’s introduction to Chapter 2:

One of the first things we human beings do when we are born is make noise,
and we rarely stop. As soon as we begin to master our native languge, we turn
our gurgles and cries into meaningful utterances and begin to talk. It is fitting,
then, that we begin this book about the English language by exploring the
primary medium through which humans communicate: speech. The study of
speech belongs in the branch of linguistics called phonetics. (11)

Chapter 3, on the other hand, is by Sam Kirkham and Claire Nance and
carries the title, “Phonology”. They have this to say in the first two paragraphs
of their introduction:
This chapter concerns the study of phonology: how speech sounds are
organised and structured in language. In the previous chapter we looked at
how speech is produced and can be described using the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA). Here, we look instead at how systems of sound function within
English and how sounds are contrasted with one another to enable people to
understand each other. There is clearly a lot of overlap between the fields of
phonetics and phonology, since both study speech sounds, but there are also
some important differences. For example, a phonetic study might consider how
a particular vowel is produced, whereas a phonological study might consider
how that vowel is integrated into the system of a particular language or
languages.

When people speak and listen to each other there is a large amount of variation
within the speech signal. For example, there might be physical differences
between speakers, which would contribute to individuals sounding different
from one another. Men typically have a longer vocal tract than women so this
is one reason why men typically have a deeper voice than women. There are
also social and dialectal differences between speakers. The variety of English
spoken in Glasgow is very different from the variety spoken in Birmingham,
demonstrating dialectal differences. Similarly, older speakers usually do not
sound the same as younger generations, demonstrating a social (and partly
biological) difference. Another source of variation in speech is the phonetic
context of a particular sound. For example, stressed and unstressed vowels
usually sound different. Despite all of this variation, we still (mostly) manage to
understand one another. (29)

There is also a rich variety of resources available on the internet regarding

phonetics and phonology.

The table below, for example, comes from this website:

http://1esoe1011.wordpress.com/tag/dictionary/ (November, 2019)

This English-language learning site:

http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm (December, 2018)

provides not only a comprehensive table of the IPA for the English language,
but also audio files that give examples of pronunciation, with some distinction
made between American and British modes.

Here is a link to another, recent, resource regarding phonetics and phonology:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/apps/learnenglish-sounds-right (November, 2019)

This LearnEnglish Sounds Right app is not by any means the only
smartphone app now available that makes use of the IPA in teaching students
how to become familiar with the symbols and sounds of English
pronunciation. It is, however, an app that I have used and studied and can
vouch for in terms of accuracy and reliability. You may find many others,
some of which may also be accurate and reliable, but be careful. We’ll return
to look at this British Council app in a future lesson, probably after the
Christmas break. In the interim you can perhaps start using it.

Pronunciation is obviously an important part of your learning of English. One

exercise that many students neglect to engage in (or simply don’t think of
pursuing) is to record their own voices speaking in English and to listen to the
recordings. You could then listen to your own voice and compare it with the
voice of a native speaker reading the same text. This site:

http://librivox.org/ (November, 2019)

provides audio recordings of out-of-copyright works of literature, the texts of

which you will also be able to find easily on the internet. I’m not suggesteding
that you record yourselves reading, say, an entire Charles Dickens novel, but a
paragraph of some text every now and then would help you with your
pronunciation of individual words and your intonation and tempo, your stress
– all those elements that the authors concerned with phonetics and
phonology in English Language explain are part of “suprasegmental
phonology” or “prosodics”. Whatever we choose to call the effect of these
elements together, the fact is that an awareness of how they work together
and an awareness of how we sound when we speak can only improve the
effectiveness of our discourse.