A look into rhoticity and intra-speaker variation in Singapore English

This study looks at intra-speaker variation due to the ethnicity of the audience. It is particularly concerned with style shifting in the speech of Singaporean radio deejay and television personality Rosalyn Lee, or Rozz, a speaker of Singapore English (SgE). Her style shifting here is analysed on the basis of rhoticity featured in her speech. SgE is, thus far, known to be a non-rhotic variety of English, owing to its roots in British English (BrE) given Singapore’s colonial history. However, in recent years, some speakers of SgE have been observed to feature postvocalic /r/ in their speech, with Tan and Gupta (1992), among others, positing that its occurrence is socially stratified. They go on to suggest that postvocalic /r/ may be considered a prestige feature in SgE, given its distinctiveness as a feature of American English (AmE), hence indexing savviness with Western pop culture and an appreciation of idealised Americanness. Rozz is known to be a variably rhotic speaker of SgE and her speech and style shifting are analysed in this study by considering the ethnicity of her audience. The test materials here are number of YouTube videos, wherein she interviews both local speakers and Western foreigners. The data is analysed and explained using Bourdieu’s theory of the linguistic marketplace (1991) as well as Schilling- Estes’ theory of speaker design (2002), commenting on the way Rozz uses the indexicality of postvocalic /r/ to construct her professional identity onscreen.