SETTING NEW STANDARDS: SOUND CHANGES AND GENDER IN NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH

Authors

  • Janet Holmes

Keywords:

Social dialects, gender, language change, New Zealand English

Abstract

Social dialect data demonstrates that women tend to lead linguistic change in New Zealand English over a range of linguistic variables. This paper describes current sound changes in New Zealand English, discusses their potential sources and suggests possible mechanisms by which the percolate through the system Women’s role in language change is a controversial area. The final section examines a range of explanations which have been proposed to account for the patterns identified by researchers and assesses their relevance to the New Zealand data.

Author Biography

Janet Holmes

School of Linguistics Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington New Zealand janet.holnies@vuw.ac.nz

Issue

Section

Artículos