Most distinctive features of American English pronunciation

Vowels. American English is commonly described as having lax vowels, tense vowels, and wide diphthongs. Lax vowels are lower and made with less oral tension; they do not usually end syllables. Vowel length in American English is generally considered to be conditional by phonological environment, so the long/short distinction in BBC English is not usually present, though they have retained the length mark on the tense vowels [i: ɑ: ɔ: ɜ: u:] in order to mark their relationship lo the English long vowels. Since the diphthongal movement in [eı] and [oʊ] is small in American pronunciation, these are treated as tense vowels.

Vowels preceding /r/ are notably influenced by rhotic colouring. Word spellings such as bird, word, earth, jerk, which now rhyme with [ɝ] in American English, at one time in history had differing vowels. The retroflexed vowels [ɝ] and [ɚ], stressed and unstressed, are among those features that noticeably distinguish American English from BBC English. All vowels occurring before [r] within a syllable are likely to become "r-coloured" to some extent.

• lax vowels: ı e æ ʌ ʊ ə

• tense vowels: i: ɑ: ɔ: ɜ: u: eı oʊ

• wide diphthongs: aʊ aı ɔı

• retroflexed vowels ("r-coloured") ɚ ɝ

There is an issue in the symbolization of the diphthong in the word home. This has for many years been represented as [əʊ]. [oʊ] is the preferred transcription for the American English diphthong, though it can be argued that the latter symbolization would be suitable for both.

The American [æ] vowel is somewhat closer than BBC [æ], and seems to be evolving into an even closer vowel in many speakers. It is used in the same words as BBC [æ] and also in most of the words which in BBC have [ɑ:] when there is no letter “r” in the spelling, e.g. pass, ask. The quality of American [ɑ:] is similar to the BBC [ɑ:] vowel; it is used in some of the words which have [ɑ:] in BBC when there is no letter “r” in the spelling (e.g. father, calm). It also replaces the BBC short [ɒ] vowel in many words (e.g. hot, top, bother): bother rhymes with father.

American [ɔ:] is more open in quality than BBC [ɔ:]. It is used where BBC has [ɔ:] (e.g. cause, walk), and also replaces BBC short [ɒ] in many words, e.g. long, dog;. American [u:] is similar to BBC [u:], but is also used where BBC has [ju:] after alveolar consonants (e.g. new, duty).

Consonants. There are numerous phonetic and phonological differences between British and American English, as there are within regional and social varieties within the two political entities. Two differences receive sufficient attention and have attained sufficient generality within the two varieties. One is phonetic: the "flapped" medial [t] (as in butter) is transcribed as [t̬]. The other is phonological: the presence (in American English) of postvocalic [r] (as in farmer ['fɑ:r.mɚ]).

It should also be noted that the difference between "clear" and "dark" [l] is much less marked in American than in the BBC accent, so that even prevocalic [l] in American pronunciation sounds dark to English ears.

The accent used for British English is classed as non-rhotic - the phoneme [r] is not usually pronounced except when a vowel follows it. The American pronunciations, on the other hand, do show a rhotic accent, and in general in the accent described, [r] is pronounced where the letter “r” is found in the spelling.

Phonetic styles and their classification

Functional styles

Scholars distinguish a number of functional styles of the written language, such as belles-lettres style, publistic style, newspaper style, the style of official documents and that of scientific prose, which have clearly distinguishable lexical and syntactical peculiarities. Apart from a few scattered studies of oratorical and conversational styles, the styles of the spoken language are not as yet unanimously defined, though we are well aware of the phonetic differences between, say, a casual conversation and an official exchange of views.

A close examination of the speech characteristics of one and the same person easily reveals that each native speaker uses several varieties of the language. He uses one at home, another with his colleagues, a third when addressing an audience and so on.

At home he usually speaks rather carelessly, with colleagues his speech, though rapid at times, is less careless, and when addressing an audience his speech is more careful. Each of these varieties may differ in the usage of items of vocabulary and in grammatical structures, but by far the most striking distinctions are phonetical. At times these varieties differ only phonetically, nevertheless they are easily identified by all the native speakers. E.g. “Do you know her?” when pronounced as [d `n ә], or again “come here”, when pronounced [k'miә] are easily identified as belonging to informal conversation.

Phonostylistic

Variations in language can be studied on three levels: phonetic, lexical and grammatical. The first level is the area of phonostylistics.

So, phonostylistics studies the way phonetic means are used in this or that particular situation. The aim of phonostylistics is to analyse all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to classify them according to their function.

I) Extralinguistic situation.

The analysis shows that the ES can be defined by three components, i.e.

a) purpose

b) participants

c) setting

A) Firstly, a situation in connected with the purpose and the topic of communication. Such purposes can be general activity types (working, teaching, conducting a meeting, playing a game, chatting, etc.) and in terms of the activity type + specific subject matter.

B) Another component of the situation is participants.

Speech varies with participants in many ways. It is a marker of various characteristics of the individual speakers as well as of relationships between participants. Characteristics of individuals may characterize the individual as an individual and as a member of a social group.

The social roles we play may be occupational roles (teacher, doctor, manager, etc.)

Besides, age of participants is also an important category for social interaction. Thus, old people speak and are spoken to in a different way from young people. For instance, an elderly person usually speaks in a high-pitched voice (like Mrs. Marple in the well-known film); people use higher pitch-levels speaking to younger children.

Another factor is the sex of the speaker. Sex differences in pronunciation are much more numerous than differences in grammar. Women produce more standard pronunciation.

The emotional state of the speaker at the moment of speech production is also of great interest to phoneticians, but the problem is waiting for its researcher.

C) The last component is setting or scene. The setting is defined by several features. The lot of them is physical orientation of participants. In a lecture, the speaker stands at some distance from the addressees and in a private chat they are situated face-to-face.

Settings may be public or private, personal - impersonal, polite - casual, high – cultured - low-cultured and many other value scales. All of them traditionally fall into formal and informal. Formal (or high) forms of language are characterized by elaboration of syntax, and lexicon, phonological precision and rhythmicality; while informal (or low) forms are characterized by ellipsis, repetition, speed and slurring.

Different ways of pronunciation, caused by extra linguistic factors and characterized by definite phonetic features, are called phonetic styles, or styles of pronunciation.

The notion of styles of pronunciation was introduced by M. Lomonosov in the 18th century. Since then it has attracted many linguists. Though the difference in the styles of pronunciation are recognized by all, there is no generally accepted classification of styles of pronunciation as yet.

L. Scherba, one of the first linguists to make a study of the styles of pronunciation, distinguishes two styles: the full style and the colloquial style.

The full styles is the pronunciation used in deliberately careful speech, while the colloquial style of pronunciation, as he defines it, is the pronunciation used in ordinary conversation. “Александр Александрович” and “Альсан Саныч” or “Сан Саныч”. L.Scherba notes that the colloquial style embraces different varieties of pronunciation which, as he says, are not easily differentiated one from another.

Most of the phoneticians who deal with Russian pronunciation distinguish 3 styles of pronunciation:

a) the full style or elevated style (used when speaking officially, reciting and reading aloud to a large audience)

b) the neutral style (used when lecturing, broadcasting)

c) colloquial style (used in rapid & careless speech)

English phoneticians distinguish a greater number of styles of pronunciation. Thus, D.Jones distinguishes 5 styles of pronunciation:

a) The rapid familiar style,

b) The slower colloquial style,

c) The natural style used in addressing an audience,

d) The acquired style of the stage,

e) The acquired style used in singing.

J.Kenyon distinguishes 4 principal styles of “Good Spoken English”:

a) Familiar colloquial,

b) Formal colloquial,

c) public-speaking style,

d) public-reading style.

All the classifications mentioned above differ not only in the number of styles which they are singled out. The main distinction between them is that they are based on different principles: the degree of carefulness (L.Scherba’s & R.Avanesov’s classification of styles of pronunciation), the extent of formality (J.Kenyon’s classification), and the rate of speech (D.Jone’s classification), the social situations (D.Crystal & D.Davy).

There is evidently a correlation between phonetic and the ‘speech styles’. ‘Speech styles’, just as phonetic styles, are conditioned by the circumstances of reality in which language functions, by the kind of situation the speaker happens to be in & by the aims of the speech situations. They may be a great variety of situations, aims & circumstances (the situation may be private or public, the speaker may be informing, entertaining, persuading, advertising, he may be excited, friendly etc.).

The question remains open whether there are just as many phonetic styles as there are speech styles. Phonetic investigations of some of the speech styles have shown that there also exists definite phonetic distinction between lecturing, reading aloud, responding in an interview, casual conversation, official talk & other speech styles.

Some attempts have been made to classify all the numerous varieties of speech forms on account of their phonetic features and other linguistic characteristics. Thus, D. Abercrombie classes them into:

a) Reading aloud (which includes most radio speech & recitation by heart,

b) Monologue (it includes lectures, radio commentaries, etc),

c) Conversation.

But this classification is not consistent, as both “monologue” & “conversation” are spontaneous speech, they differ in the extent of spontaneity & the nature of interchange, whereas “reading aloud” is a different type of speech activity.

Some scholars distinguish between:

a) Phonetic styles of spontaneous speech (conversation, spontaneous monologue, etc), b) phonetic styles of prepared speech (lectures, speeches, etc),

c) Phonetic styles of reading aloud.

In their turn, the phonetic styles of spontaneous speech should be classified into: a) official style,

b) Informal style or the style of everyday-life discourse,

c) Familiar (careless) style.

Each of these subgroups includes numerous varieties which are modified by extra linguistic factors. This classification of phonetic styles was worked out by S.Gaiduchik.