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Title

Asian Canadian Voices in Vancouver: Exploring the Front Vowel Space in BC English

Abstract

This study investigates the English vowel space of second-generation Cantonese and Korean heritage speakers in British Columbia using the comparative method. The features of the raising of /忙/ allophones and the merger of /忙g, 蓻g, e瑟g/ were studied.

This research explores how Asian Canadians participate in regional sound changes: What are the phonetic variations between Asian and White speakers in BC? Why so, are heritage language background and ethnic identity contributing factors? Acoustic and metalinguistic data were collected from 19 speakers, and mean F1 and F2 values of each token were taken and analyzed.

Results show that Asian speakers produce /忙/ lower than White speakers, with Cantonese speakers more closely aligning with local dialectal patterns. While some evidence of the merger was observed, the local merging pattern was rare among these speakers. These findings offer insights into how Asian Canadians were situated in the evolving landscape of Canadian English.

About the student

Nicole Chan received an HBA in English and Linguistics from the University of Toronto in 2022. She will soon be returning to U of T to join the PhD program.

Nicole says of her upcoming PhD pursuits, 鈥淚 will be working with on topics related to Language Variation and Change, especially projects related to Canadian English. The work I plan to focus on in my PhD is a continuation and extension of the research I have been doing during my MA at SFU, where I focused on studying the English vowel space of Asian Canadians and how these speakers participate in regional dialectal features. I'm excited to expand the scope of my current project geographically and linguistically, from Vancouver to Toronto, and by including speakers with various heritage language backgrounds in the Asian Canadian community on a wider spectrum. My research aims to answer the questions of how different heritage languages influence phonetic patterns, and how identity contributes to speech variation.鈥� 

Exam committee

Dr. C茅cile Vigouroux, Acting GPC
Dr. Panos Pappas, Supervisor
Dr. Yue Wang, Committee member
Dr. Julia Swan, External Examiner, Assistant Professor, San Jos茅 State University