Sociophonetics & Translation: the social meaning of loanword pronunciati
1. Sociophonetics & Translation: the social meaning of loanword pronunciation Lauren Hall-Lew Wolfson Resarch Fellow & Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics & English
2. Translation & Pronunciation In translation, how are source language names & culturally-specific concepts pronounced? Is the source language phonology retained, or is it nativized? Phonetic Nativization the process of adapting a loan word to the phonology of the target language
27. Pakistan*Older loan words have an /ey/ vowel, leading to, e.g. potato: /pətejtoʊ/ v. /pətatoʊ/
28. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Dictionary Analysis (Boberg 1997) 10,000+ English words are foreign-(a) if historical loan words are included British & American English agree on 72% of nativizations Among the remaining 28%: British English generally favors /æ/ American English is more variable
31. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Language Attitudes Survey (Boberg 1999) 59 undergraduates at Penn Questions: Which vowel would you use in each of the following words? Which do you think is correct? Which sounds more “educated” or “sophisticated”? Would the following pronunciations likely come from a native speaker of American English?
32. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Language Attitudes Survey: Results The indexical meanings of the /ɑ/ ‘correct’ ‘educated’ or ‘sophisticated’ ‘more nativized’ The indexical meanings of the /æ/ incorrect, uneducated, less nativized
33. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Why? “The use of /ɑ/ attracts overt social comment in words like aunt, rather, and vase. Americans invest this use of /ɑ/ with the stereotypical social attributes of speakers of dialects in which it does occur, most notably British Received Pronunciation and the speech of Boston “Brahmins.” This ascribed social symbolism of /ɑ/ may account for its superior evaluation as a nativization of foreign (a).”
35. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Language Attitudes (Hall-Lew et al. in press) Iraq with /ɑ/ in the second vowel seems to be perceived as more correct than Iraq with /æ/ Online blogs, etc., are evidence of these different social meanings: “Having lived in the Middle east for six-plus years and been a Middle eastern Studies graduate student to boot, i can assure you it is pronounced ear-ROCK, not eye-RACK, ear-RACK, or any other way. Listen to Cheney say it, with the emphasis on the RACK, and you know he is deliberately mispronouncing it just to be the prick we all know he is.” [http://keyissues.mu.nu/archives/051679.php, Nov. 7, 2005]
36. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Production Experiment (Hall-Lew et al. in press) The U.S. House of Representatives 435 members Speeches about the ‘surge’ given in 2007 259 speakers, of the 304 who gave speeches (152 Democrats, 107 Republicans) every utterance of Iraq coded for vowel production Hypothesis: Democrats favor /ɑ/, Republicans favor /æ/
37. The ‘foreign-(a)’ Variable Example productions an /ɑ/speaker:Nancy Pelosi an /æ/speaker:Tom Tancredo a flip-flopper: Ron Paul
42. The /a/ in ‘Iraq’ & Social Meaning U.S. House of Representatives (2007) /æ/ /ɑ/
43. The /a/ in ‘Iraq’ & Social Meaning U.S. House of Representatives (2007) Mostly Republicans, also some Democrats Mostly Democrats
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45. Translation The overall point: This is not just about loan words… Every pronunciation of every word in any language carries social meaning in the way that it’s pronounced Different social meanings hold different prestige values for different communities Affects perceived trustworthiness, etc. The issue for translation is how much, i.e., what levels, of meaning get translated?
