Pasifika English in New Zealand:The Case of bro’Town

Andy Gibson & Allan Bell

Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication, AUT University, Auckland, NZ

NWAV, Columbus Ohio, USANovember 2006

bro’Town

Adventures of 5 fourteen year-old boys in inner-city Auckland (4 Pasifika, 1 Maori)

Conceived of and voiced by a Samoan comedy group, the Naked Samoans

This presentation covers an analysis of three of the characters. These three characters are all Samoan and each is played by a different actor

– Pepelo father– Valea son, 14– Vale son, 14

Why bro’Town?

Interest in performed varieties of language

Interest in the aspects of pronunciation used to mark NZ Pasifika identities– Little prior research on Pasifika varieties of NZE

NZ-born vs. Samoa-born

Wave of immigration to NZ from Pacific Islands in 1970s

As at 2001: NZ-born Samoans in NZ:

– 40% over 15 years old

Samoa-born Samoans in NZ:– 89% over 15 years old(Statistics New Zealand)

Aims of Study

Investigate consonantal variables in the NZ-born characters (Valea, Vale) which may be associated with NZ Pasifika Youth Culture English and in the Samoan-born character (Pepelo) which may be affected by having Samoan as his first language.

Investigate instances of ‘double voicing’(Performance from within already performed voice)

The Characters

Pepelo

Sound1

Valea

Sound2

Vale

Sound3

The Variables

/p/ aspiration - pub, precious

(DH) - these, their, them, their

(TH) - something, thanks, three

Linking /r/

/p/ aspiration

Stops unaspirated in Samoan

Non-aspiration of /t/ has been noted as a feature of Maori English, though less so in younger speakers (Holmes, 1997; Bell, 2000)

Starks et al (fc.) found unaspiration of /p t k/ in Niuean NZE

/p/ aspiration

All /p/s in syllable-initial position in stressed syllables were analysed

Length of aspiration was measured, from release burst to onset of second formant

/p/ aspiration

Average Length of /p/-aspiration

05

1015202530354045

Pepelo (N=36) Valea (N=37) Vale (N=18)

Character

Le

ng

th (

ms

)

Sound4

/p/ aspiration

Pepelo has much less aspiration of /p/ than the boys

This may be a substratal effect from Samoan, Pepelo’s portrayed 1st language

Non-aspiration of /p/ does not seem to have been taken up as part of the youth ethnolect

/p/ aspiration – Double Voicing

Pepelo: Length of /p/ aspiration according to speaker footing

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Normal (N=36) Performing Gollum: "precious"(N=4)

Footing

Len

gth

(m

s)

Sound5

(DH) & (TH)

No dental fricatives in Samoan

(DH) and (TH) affrication in Maori English (Bell, 2000)

TH-fronting in young Pakeha NZE (Campbell & Gordon, 1996)

NZ Pasifika English: – DH-stopping (DH /d/) – TH-fronting (TH /f/) – TH-fronting more common in word-final position

(Starks and Reffell, 2006)

(DH)

All word-initial instances of (DH) analysed

Auditory analysis

Coded as dh (for dental fricative) or d (for alveolar stop)

d category also includes a few dental affricates

(DH)

% DH realised as /d/

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Pepelo (N=76) Valea (N=103) Vale (N=69)Sound6

(TH)

All instances of TH (in all word positions) were analysed

Most tokens realised as either [th], [f] or [v]

5 tokens (out of 79) realised as stops (removed from analysis below)

(TH)

% TH realised as /f/ or /v/

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Pepelo (N=17) Valea (N=30) Vale (N=13)

Character

% /f

/ or

/v/

Sound7

(TH) – Double voicing

Valea: % TH realised as /f/ according to speaker footing

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Normal (N=30) Performing Genius (N=13)

Footing

% /f

/

Sound8

(TH)

/th/ /f/ /v/ Total

Pepelo 1 7 9 17

Vale 7 7 0 14

Valea 18 24 1 43

Total 26 38 10 74

Realisations of TH by character

6 of 10 [v] occurrences are in the word (with)

(TH)

Realisations of TH by word position

Word Initial

Word Medial

Word Final Total

/th/ 19 1 6 26

/f/ and /v/ 15 14 19 48

Total 34 15 25 74

(DH) & (TH)

Pepelo has very high rates of both DH-stopping and TH-fronting - again, probably a substratal effect.

Valea uses high rates of both DH-stopping and TH-fronting, though not as much as Pepelo

Vale uses low rates of DH-stopping and moderate rates of TH-fronting

Linking /r/ - Background

Hay and Sudbury (2005):Study tracks decline of rhoticity in NZE. Linking /r/ continues to appear at high rates.

Starks and Reffell (2005):Low rates of linking /r/ in reading passages by Pasifika youth.

Linking /r/ - Methodology

All potential linking /r/s across word boundaries analyzed

Tokens at intonation phrase boundaries excluded, also excluded if hesitation between words

Coded as r or 0

Linking /r/ - Results

Realisations of linking /r/

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Pepelo (N=10) Valea (N=24) Vale (N=19)

Character

% P

ote

nti

al l

ink

ing

/r/ r

ea

lise

d

Sound9

Linking /r/ - Results

Linking /r/ by phonetic environment

Linking /r/ Glottal StopNo

Consonant Total

Pepelo 6 0 4 10

Valea 6 11 7 24

Vale 9 10 0 19

Total 21 21 11 53

Where do these variants come from?

Substratal influence?

But some of these are also common in other vernacular varieties of English…

Influence of hip-hop?

A question of ethnicity?

How to define this style of speech in terms of social factors?

This is not just NZ Samoan English

This variety of NZ English is associated with being young, Polynesian, interested in hip-hop culture, living in South-Auckland… ???

Conclusions

Very high levels of /p/ non-aspiration, DH-stopping and TH-fronting in Samoa-born NZ Samoan English. Some of these features may be caused by a substratal influence

DH-stopping, TH-fronting and low rates of linking /r/ in NZ-born NZ Samoan English

These features are not just ethnic identity markers, they are related to an emerging sub-culture which needs to be defined through more detailed ethnographic study.

The use of these features is manipulated to project different personas from within already performed voices

References

Bell, Allan. 1990. Audience and referee design in New Zealand media language. In Bell and Holmes (eds): 165-194. Bell, Allan. 1992. Hit and miss: referee design in the dialects of New Zealand television advertisements. Language and

Communication 12.3-4: 1-14. Bell, Allan. 2000. Maori and Pakeha English: a case study. In Bell and Kuiper (eds) New Zealand English: 221-248 Wellington:

Victoria University Press. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Campbell, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Gordon. 1996. ‘What do you fink?’ Is New Zealand English losing its ‘th’? New Zealand

English Journal 10: 40-46. Coupland, Nikolas. 1985. 'Hark, hark, the Lark': Social Motivations for Phonological Style-Shifting. Language & Communication

5(3):151-171. Foulkes, Paul. 1997. Rule inversion in a British English dialect - a sociolinguistic investigation of [r]-sandhi in Newcastle upon

Tyne. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(1) - A Selection of Papers from NWAVE 25. 259-270. Hay, Jennifer and Andrea Sudbury (2005).    How rhoticity became /r/-sandhi.  In Language 81.4, pp 799-823. Holmes, Janet. 1997. Maori and Pakeha English: some New Zealand social dialect data. Language in Society 26(1): 65-101 Lippi-Green, R. 1997. Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. London:Routledge. Starks, Donna and Hayley Reffell. 2006. Reading ‘TH’: Vernacular variants in Pasifika Englishes in South Auckland. Journal of

Sociolinguistics 10(3): 382-392. Starks, Donna and Hayley Reffell. 2005. “Pronouncing your Rs in New Zealand English: A study of Pasifika and Maori students”.

New Zealand English Journal 19: 36-48. Starks, Donna, Jane Christie and Laura Thompson (in press). Niuean English: initial insights into an emerging variety. To

appear in English Worldwide. http://www.stats.govt.nz/analytical-reports/pacific-profiles/samoan/population.htm. Retrieved on 1/11/06