The Modern RP Page
Anne H. Fabricius
Associate Professor of English Language
Department of Culture and Identity (CUID)
Roskilde University
Denmark
RESEARCH
I trained as a linguist in Australia and
Denmark. For an introduction to the field of Linguistics, see the Linguistic
Society of America’s homepage here. My own
primary research area is Quantitative Sociolinguistics, where I work on
describing and explaining sociophonetic variation and change processes (both from subjective and objective
perspectives) in modern RP in the UK. I also have a keen interest in developing
methodology for sociophonetic studies, in cooperation with Dominic Watt at the
University of York in the UK and Daniel Ezra Johnson and Tyler Kendall
(University of Oregon) in the US.
I am also a member of the CALPIU Research Centre and its Steering
Committee, based at Roskilde University, where I work on project management,
data collection, storing and analysis procedures, as well as on empirical and
theoretical aspects of the process of internationalisation of Danish
universities and the sociolinguistic challenges arising from it. The CALPIU Research Centre has been established with
the financial support of the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, FKK (Forskningsråd for Kultur og Kommunikation), and runs
until 1st November 2012.
RESEARCH
COMMUNICATION/KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
My
updated publications list can be found here on RUCforsk. I frequently give lectures at conferences and
for groups of PhD students. If you are interested in contacting me about a
proposed lecture, please email me (my contact details are on RUC’s homepage
under ‘Søg person/Find person’).
TEACHING
at Roskilde University
I teach within the areas of
sociolinguistics, phonetics, and advanced English for Academic Purposes.
Autumn 2009: MA Phonetics,
Spring 2010: English Text and Writing, BA
English Linguistic Analysis
Autumn 2010: MA Phonetics, Text and Sign (HIB),
Basis I and Basis II for GradEast
ADMINISTRATION
I am presently Director of Studies for the
English programme (BA and MA) at
Roskilde University. I am also presently the Director of Grad East (Forskerskole
Øst i Sprogvidenskab),
the PhD research programme in Linguistics for Eastern Denmark.
ON
QUANTITATIVE SOCIOPHONETICS
The research paradigm that I work in is sometimes labelled “Language
Variation and Change”, “Quantitative sociolinguistics” or even “Labovian Sociolinguistics” as a reference to its central
figure, William Labov. Its
fascination for many people is the chance to observe and analyse the different
ways in which different individuals speak. My own work looks at accentual
(pronunciation) variation and explores its consequences within wider issues
such as ongoing processes of language change, individual identity construction,
and the social ramifications of linguistic variation. This page will provide
material for people interested in accents, in quantitative sociolinguistics,
and especially those who are curious to delve a little more into the
sociolinguistics of Modern RP as a changing speech variety. The following list contains some
general academic resources on Modern RP and quantitative sociolinguistics:
Ø
Some expert phonetics and
sociolinguistics resources:
Ø The University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Here is a superb site on
accent and dialect variation in the UK, hosted by the British Library
Here are some audio samples
you are free to use for teaching purposes:
Ø
Interview speech: (female born 1976) (male born 1973. Both recorded in 1997/8
Ø
Reading Passage speech: example 1, 2, 3, 4. All recorded in 2008
Various papers and conference
presentations
Ø
Essex 2005 Guest lecture,
Essex University, UK, 2005
Ø
SS15 Conference
Presentation,
Ø
Methods 12 Conference
Presentation,
Ø
BAAP 2006 Poster,
Edinburgh, 2007
Ø
SS16
Conference Presentation,
Ø
Handout from SS16
in 2006
Ø
Vokalforandring
i ‘virkelig tid’ (a talk in Danish given to the SCALPS research
group at
Ø
My poster presentation at ICPhS Saarbrücken in August 2007
on the short vowel system of Modern RP and diachronic change
Ø
My NWAV36 paper from October
2007 is here. This
paper has appeared in Acta Linguistica Hafniensis.
Ø
A paper
given at the Sociolinguistics Circle of Copenhagen, September 2008, on normalisation.
Ø
Guest lectures given at University of York, 13 November 2008 and
University of Cambridge, 2nd December
2008, on modern RP in real
time
Ø
My paper from ICLaVE#5 in
Copenhagen, June 2009
Ø
Workshop paper for NWAV38 in
Ottawa (without animations; if you would like the animated version, please
email me)
Ø
SS18:
Beyond Averages paper,
co-authored with Dominic Watt (powerpoint)
Ø
SS18:
Standard Language
Ideologies paper, co-authored with Janus Mortensen (powerpoint)
On sociophonetic normalisation methodology: Why do we normalize vowel formant data?
Because individual people’s heads have
different sizes, as well as different proportions between the oral and
pharyngeal cavities (the size of the mouth and the size of the throat). Thus,
the acoustic properties of the sound wave an individual person produces when
speaking aren’t really directly comparable with any another individual’s speech
unless some form of mathematical normalisation takes place.
We all do a type of daily normalisation in our
heads as well, for example, when we can understand children and adults saying
the same words, even though their voices sound very different.
Sociolinguists are interested in language
change, for instances in differences between
the pronunciation of older and younger speakers. Normalisation is one of the
key procedures you need when you study vowel change, because you have to make
sure that the differences you see between say, older men’s and younger women’s
speech patterns, are really due to generational changes (that is, the younger
generation speaks differently) and not just the fact that men’s and women’s
heads are different sizes.
Read more about normalisation procedures and
use the Watt and Fabricius S-centroid procedure, as well as others on this
important and highly useful site by Eric Thomas and Tyler Kendall: NORM Suite of Normalization
Methods
I also have a research interest in
sociolinguistic/sociophonetic methodology:
The original
paper by Dominic Watt and myself from 2002 on the S-centroid-procedure, a
sociophonetic vowel normalisation procedure.
A Conference Paper
presented at BAAP 2008 by Anne Fabricius, Dom Watt and Jillian Yurkova on initial evaluations of the Watt and Fabricius
normalization procedure in comparison with other speaker intrinsic, vowel extrinsic,
formant intrinsic methods (Lobanov and Nearey)
The above paper developed into a
publication with Dom Watt and Daniel Ezra Johnson in Language Variation and Change in
2009:
Anne Fabricius, Dominic Watt and
Daniel Ezra Johnson. 2009. A comparison of three speaker-intrinsic vowel
formant frequency normalization algorithms for sociophonetics. Language Variation and Change, 21,3:1-23.
Dom Watt, Tyler Kendall and
myself have written a chapter on Plotting and Normalization for a forthcoming
book (Routledge) called Sociophonetics: A student’s guide, edited by Marianna di Paolo and Malcah Yaeger-Dror.
See here for files related to
the S-centroid anchor method (presented in our (Fabricius and Watt) SS18 Beyond
Averages paper, above): the
R script, the
chart template
Links to relevant current and recent
past conference websites
BAAP Colloquium, Sheffield,
March 30 to April 2, 2008
American Acoustics Society
Conference, ASA08/Eurospeech, Paris, June 30 to
July 4, 2008
CALPIU 08, Roskilde,
December 2008
ICLAVE5,
Copenhagen, June 2009
NWAV38, Ottawa October 2009
Professionalising Multilingualism in Higher Education,
Luxembourg, February 4-6, 2010
Sociolinguistics Symposium 18, Southhampton, 1-4 September 2010
Anne Fabricius,
Associate Professor of English
Language, Roskilde University, Denmark
Published: 30 August 2010
*** CALPIU transcription
test segments are here: ENGLISH,
GERMAN, DANISH