Rhoticity in Yunnan English

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a study of the pronunciation of English by speakers from Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Eight non‐English major undergraduate students participated in three tasks: an informal interview, reading a text, and a dialectological‐style questionnaire. The degree of rhoticity was assessed based on auditory analysis, with an inter‐rater agreement of 97 per cent. The results revealed significant inter‐speaker variation: two informants were virtually non‐rhotic whereas the remaining six were rhotic to a considerable degree. Intra‐speaker variation among these six was furthermore systematic: the degree of rhoticity was lowest in the interview, intermediate in reading, and highest in the questionnaire. These results are discussed with reference to several factors, including the level of formality and attention to speech triggered by the tasks, potentially emerging norms for rhoticity, and the stage of development of a local form of ‘Yunnan English’.