A socio-phonetic study of four received pronunciation (rp) vowels among fante speakers of English in Ghana

Abstract

The need for the codification of Ghanaian English has become increasingly more important than ever. In attesting to this need, this study sought to provide a sociophonetic description of vowels as articulated by Fante speakers of English in Ghana. More specifically, the study examines the pronunciation patterns of four vowels of English - the KIT /ɪ/, the FLEECE /iː/, the DRESS /e/ and the NURSE /ɜː/ among Fante speakers of English in Ghana, along the lines of gender and age. A total of 48 respondents (24 males and 24 females) were sampled for the study, using the quota sampling technique. A sociophonetic analysis conducted on the tape-recordings from the data showed that speakers fronted the vowels in KIT, DRESS, and NURSE, raised the vowel in KIT and NURSE, and demonstrated a consistent overlap of the vowels in DRESS and NURSE. Second, the analysis showed statistically-significant differences in the duration of the vowels among the old and young speakers. The older Fante speakers of English had shorter vowel lengths while the younger speakers had longer vowel lengths, a phenomenon that this study ascribes to history and age grading. Thirdly, the analysis found gender differences regarding the duration and articulation of the four vowels. This study makes significant contributions to Schneider’s Dynamic Model of the Evolution of World Englishes, pedagogy, and scholarships on the codification of the English spoken in Ghana.