A SOCIO-LINGUSITIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE VARIATION IN THE ENGLISH SPOKEN IN GHANA: A CASE STUDY OF SOME SELECTED CONSONANTS

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ABSTRACT

This research is a tentative sociolinguistic study of language variation in the English spoken in Ghana. The purpose is to identify consonantal variations in the realization of the affricates and the fricatives that contribute to the unique pronunciations Ghanaians exhibit and describe them. Thus, the study identifies and describes the alternative pronunciations of the affricates and the fricatives by some Ghanaian students and teachers at the primary, Junior and Senior High Schools which are very pivotal in the study of the English language in Ghana, using Wells‟ (1982) Synchronic Analysis Approach which examines existing accents as they are.

These alternative realizations by the students at each level are then compared to find out whether the individual‟s educational level is responsible for these variations and for that matter the selection of a particular variant.

It again, compares the realization of these students at each level to that of their respective teachers to determine if the variations exhibited or found in the students‟ speeches are influenced by their teachers.

The study seeks to answer the following questions:

  • What are the alternative realizations of the affricates and the fricatives in the English spoken inGhana?
  • Does educational level correlate with a variant choice?
  • To what extent do differences in educational levels affect variant choices in Ghanaian English?
  • What are the motivations for the alternative realization of consonant sounds in the English spoken in Ghana?

The study identifies the mode of teaching as one of the major factors responsible for the way English is spoken in Ghana. It also confirms the general perception that the language of the schools is the language of the teacher.

CONTENTS 
Declarationi
Dedicationii
Acknowledgementsiii
Abstractiv
Chapter One: Introduction   1.1 The Background to the Study    …    …    1 
1.1.1 How Distinctive is Ghanaian English? 6
  1.2 Aims of the Study  …  …  12
1.3 Significance of the Study12
1.4 Research Questions13
1.5 Limitations of the Study14
1.6 Organization of the Study15
Chapter Two 
2.1 Literature Review16
2.2 Theoretical Framework30
Chapter Three 
3.1 Methodology… 33
3.1.1 Selection of Educational Level… 33
3.1.2 Selection of Phonetic Variables (Sounds)… 34
3.1.3 Selection of Schools35
3.1.4 Selection of Respondents36
3.1.5 Description of Respondents37
3.2 Data Collection39
3.2.1 Procedure39
3.2.2 Consent Form40
3.2.3 Questionnaires40
3.2.4 Reading Material41
3.3 Transcription and Analysis41
Chapter Four 
4.1 The RP Consonants43
4.2 The Study Variables44
4.3 Findings45
4.3.1 The Affricates45
4.3.2 The Fricatives62
Chapter Five 
5.1 Discussion77
5.1.1 Educational Levels Comparison77
5.1.2 The affricates77
5.1.3 The voiceless alveopalatal affricate77
5.1.4 The voiced alveopalatal affricate79
5.2 Summary on the affricates… 80
5.3 The fricatives… 81
5.3.1 The voiceless inter-dental fricative… 81
  5.3.2 The voiced inter-dental fricative  …  …  82
5.3.3 The voiced alveopalatal fricative84
5.3.4 The voiceless alveolar fricative85
5.3.5 The voiced alveolar fricative86
Chapter Six   
6.1 Comparison of the Primary, JHS and SHS   
Respondents‟ realizations to that of their teachers87
6.2 The voiceless alveopalatal affricate87
6.3 The voiced alveopalatal affricate89
6.4 The voiceless inter-dental fricative91
6.5 The voiced inter-dental fricative93
6.6 The voiced alveopalatal fricative95
6.7 The voiceless alveolar fricative97
6.8 The voiced alveolar fricative98
Chapter Seven   7.1 Summary and Conclusion    …    …    99
7.1.1 The affricates99
7.1.2 The fricatives100
7.1.3 Suggestions for Further Research104

Appendixes

AppendixA105
AppendixB 1109
AppendixB 2110
AppendixC111
AppendixD113

Bibliography                                                                                                          …     …    134

CHAPTER ONE

  1. INTRODUCTION
  • THE BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

English is a second language in Ghana just as other non- native Englishes in the outer circle (Kachru 1983) which used to be seen as deviations from the standard British English pronunciation and usage due to their distinctive nature.These new Englishes have gained currency in recent times and they are now recognized as autonomous entities that must  be studied and described in their own right. Koranteng (2006:2) intimates that as people come into contact with other speech communities, elements of one language are introduced into another and vice versa. This extension of language [eg English] through space and time allows for quite fundamental differences to emerge and exist side by side within the whole (Montgomery2006). These differences may bring about variations in the second language learner‟s usage of that particular language. Linguistic and social variables are pivotal to this kind of variation in any Language. Hudson (1996: 169) defines a linguistic variable as a collection of alternatives which have something in common from which individuals can select. These linguistic variables include phonetic, phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic variables. Different people, depending on their social or philosophical orientation, will realize these variables differently, which may bring about variations in any language. Even though the different realizations do not represent different meanings, there are occasions when they affect the meaning of an utterance. The most obvious form of variation that emerges in the speech of second language learners is phonological or phonetic variation. This occurs where a phonological pattern has different phonetic realizations. This could be as a result of individual‟s linguistic or ideolectal differences, spelling pronunciation, gender, age, educational level among others.

The Critical Period Hypothesis propounded by Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts (1959)

on „Speech and Brain Mechanisms‟ and popularized by Lenneberg (1967) on „Biological Foundations of Language‟ states that

„there is no conclusive evidence that after the critical age one cannot acquire another language and speak it proficiently since there are a lot of people who have acquired another language after the critical age……the only conclusive evidence for the Critical Period Hypothesis is phonology…….that learners who have shown great ability to acquire L2 have not been able to overcome their foreign accents‟.

Yule (1997:191) corroborates this by observing that “those whose L2 experience is primarily a learning one tend not to develop the proficiency of those who have had an acquiring experience”. He emphasizes that “even in ideal situations, very few adults seem to reach native-like proficiency in using a second Language” and that “there are individuals who can achieve great expertise in writing, but not in speaking‟. He concludes that „although it continues to be a matter of some debate, this type of observation is sometimes taken as evidence that, after the critical period has passed…, it becomes very difficult to acquire another language fully(ibid191).

This may largely account for the distinctive nature of the English spoken in Ghana as well as other and non- native varieties of English.

Wolfram and Schilling – Estes (2000) also define a linguistic variable as a varying linguistic structure……… which may correlate with social factors such as region or status or with linguistic factors such as the linguistic environment. They argue that the linguistic environment can greatly affect linguistic choice and bring about variations. For example, the linguistic environment of a phoneme or a sound determines how a particular sound should be realized. Some of these realizations are intuitive to the native speaker whereas a Ghanaian will have to

learn them before s/he can realize them. Some of these underpinnings are likely to cause a variation in the spoken English of Ghanaians. Thus, a particular phonetic realization may have alternative pronunciations or variants in Ghanaian English and elsewhere. This usually occurs for the following reasons.

  1. Certain phonological realizations in English do not exist in the L1 of Ghanaian speakers. There is therefore the tendency for the L2 learner to substitute the local variants for the standard variants. For instance, the phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ do not exist in most Ghanaian languages. There is therefore, the tendency for Ghanaians to approximate the sounds and choose the one nearest to them, which happens to be /d/ for /ð/ and /t/ (or sometimes /f/) for /θ/. For instance, thick [θɪk], path [pӕθ], they [ðeɪ] etc are usually realized as [tik], [pat] or [paf], and [dei] respectively.
  2. Some of these variations may also be prosodic and since the L2 speaker is not a native speaker, there is the tendency to use certain features such as tone, found in Ghanaian languages, in their English which may be the source of the variation. For example, Adjei (2005:241) observes that „….tone languages use pitch as an inherent part of the syllable while English, which is an intonational language, uses pitch as a property of the whole utterance. She adds that

..it would be expected that the pitch patterns of Ghanaian L1s would be transferred to the pronunciation of English. High pitch would thus be used for accented syllables and low pitch or tone for unaccented ones.

She quotes Wells (1982:643-44) as observing that, in African Englishes, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and wh-words are commonly stressed which is equivalent to being given high pitch. She concludes that Ghanaians use variable pitch patterns with English words, depending on the position of those words in an utterance and the overall intonational pattern of the whole utterance.

  1. Variation may also be triggered by some social factors such as age, gender, class and educational level, among others.
  2. How English is taught and learnt in Ghana may also be responsible for the variations in the nature of English spoken in Ghana. This is because almost all Ghanaians learn English in school. They have a different natural environment in which to learn the language, and the teachers themselves are products of the same system. The alternative that Ghanaians have, therefore, is to model their language on what the society accepts as the norm. The tendency to provide a model which is not standard is high and could be responsible, either wholly or partly, for the variation in the English spoken in Ghana.
  3. The different linguistic backgrounds of Ghanaians could also be responsible for this phenomenon since an individual‟s linguistic background can affect the way s/he speaks. There are over 50 languages in Ghana, Huber (2008), nine of which are written and studied in schools. This implies that almost every Ghanaian who speaks English has his/her own native Language. It must be conceded that this multilingual nature of Ghana will have an influence on the English spoken in Ghana. Therefore, it stands to reason that there are some linguistic variants in Ghanaian English that have evolved perhaps as a result of the influence of the mother tongue and how English is learnt in Ghana. These variants are the Standard British Accent, that is, the Received  Pronunciation  (RP),  in  its  „phonologically  realizable  form‟  and  the  Ghanaian

„nonstandard variants‟ which are used as alternative realizations of the same phoneme in the English spoken in Ghana. There are people who have no idea of what the standard variants sound like. They therefore choose non-standard variants that conform to the phonetic realization of sounds in their languages. There are yet other people, though very few, who know the standard variants but, as a result of their exposure to and long use of the non-standard variants, find it

difficult to choose the standard variants when necessary. They therefore switch from the non- standard to the standard and vice versa.

So in a second language situation, it is possible that lack of attention to phonetics and phonological variables are some of the causes of variations in the use of vowels and consonants in the English spoken in Ghana.

Allophones in a large number of cases are conditioned by their phonetic environment. Clark and Yallop (1990:131). However, this alternative enunciation of the consonants under consideration is not realized as a result of their phonetic environment. In fact, they are produced variously either as RP or as the non-standard Ghanaian variants and even the same speaker may use the different sounds interchangeably. The identification of free variants or freely fluctuating allophones of the same phoneme that account for random interchangeability in Ghanaian English which are ostensibly unconditioned by their environment, is what this research seeks to study. The essence is to find out the variations in the use of the fricatives as well as the affricates. [/q/, / ð /, /ʃ /, /ӡ /, /s/, /z/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /h/, /f/ and /v/ in the English spoken in Ghana.

  • HOW DISTINCTIVE IS GHANAIAN ENGLISH?

Language contact, anywhere in the world, generates certain characteristics that influence the languages in contact. Kachru (1983) and Crystal (1985) cited in Koranteng (2006:29) observe that any language away from its home undergoes changes in its pronunciation, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic systems, and the English language is not an exception.

There are different varieties of English spoken in the world today. These include those in the inner circle such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America as well as those in the outer circle such as Malasia, India, Nigeria, and Ghana among others Kachru (1983). Among those in the outer circle are those who have learnt the English language for purposes of business and communication to the outside word such as China as well as those who learnt the language as a result of colonialism such as Ghana. The English spoken by this group is certainly distinct from what is spoken by the native speakers, and are generally described based on the people who speak it. Thus, we have South African English, Nigerian English among others some of which are codified. The English in Ghana however, is yet if ever, to be codified.

The concept of Ghanaian English according to Huber (2008:89) dates back to Brown and Scragg (1948) when the term Gold Coast English was first used.

Koranteng (2006:29) observes that the “ interest in the variety of English spoken in Ghana has engaged the attention of language teachers and researchers for some time now…just as interest in different uses of language at the global level have”.