Why Regional Prosodic Variation is Worth Studying: An Example from Russian
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15845/bells.v7i0.1138Keywords:
Russian, prosody, speech, sociopphonetics, social meaningAbstract
The prosodic features of speech — e.g. stress, rhythm and intonation — carry both linguistic and non-linguistic, including social, meanings: an “accent” triggers stereotypes that are associated with a certain social group or region. In Danish, a language with little regional variation, prosodic differences are a vital cue to dialect discrimination. Does the same phenomenon apply to Russian? This article discusses objectively measurable (prosodic and other) regional differences in regionally coloured Russian urban speech, as well as their social meaning: Do Russians pay attention to them? And what are the social consequences of having a regional “accent” in a country with a strong standard language ideology?
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