In the United States today, “r-lessness” in words like car, father, and park are considered features of non-standard speech. In Britain, however, “r-lessness” is characteristic of Received Pronunciation, the standard prestige dialect. This illustrates that:

Question

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In examining how r-lessness in American English (car, father, park) vs. British Received Pronunciation is treated, we can explore what this reveals about language and prestige.
Option 1: 'There is an arbitrary relationship between linguistic features and prestige' — This is the correct interpretive takeaway. The same phonetic feature (r-lessness) is valued differently across communities: non-standard in the U.S. but part of the prestige in Britain. This demonstrates that prestige is not an inherent property of a feature itself but is socially constructed and contingent on cultural context. The relationship between a speech feature and its social prestige can be arbitrary across settings and groups.
Option 2: 'Pronunciation of ‘r’ is more difficult in some countries than others' — While pronunciation can vary in ease or difficulty, the core point of the question is about social valuation (prestige) rather than production difficulty. This statement misframes the issue as a matter of articulatory effort rather than social meaning.
Option 3: 'Prestige is associated with clear, properly pronounced speech' — This is a common stereotype but does not capture the core lesson here. Prestige is not universally tied to what counts as 'clear' or 'proper' pronunciation; it depends on the dialect community and social norms, which can crown features (like r-lessness in Received Pronunciation) that others might stigmatize.
Option 4: 'British English is more proper than American English' — This is a value judgment about propriety or superiority that the linguistic example does not support. The point is not about which variety is 'more proper' but about how prestige attaches to features differently across communities.
Option 5: 'All of the above' — Since options 2, 3, and 4 are not accurate representations of the central lesson, this blanket choice is incorrect. The question aims to show contextual and social contingency of prestige, not universal claims about difficulty, propriety, or national superiority.
Overall, the core idea is that social prestige attached to linguistic features can vary across speech communities, making the relationship between features and prestige essentially arbitrary across contexts.

LING 200 A Final Exam

In the United States today, “r-lessness” in words like car, father, and park are considered features of non-standard speech. In Britain, however, “r-lessness” is characteristic of Received Pronunciation, the standard prestige dialect. This illustrates that:

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LING 200 A Final Exam

In the United States today, “r-lessness” in words like car, father, and park are considered features of non-standard speech. In Britain, however, “r-lessness” is characteristic of Received Pronunciation, the standard prestige dialect. This illustrates that:

View Explanation

Log in for full answers

Similar Questions

True or false: There is no way to linguistically determine which dialect is "better" or "worse".

idiolect is a term for a single person’s way of speaking

Which of the following is NOT an example of style-shifting?

Which of the following is *NOT* an example of an extralinguistic factor that can define a speech community and the linguistic variation used by groups of speakers?

Dialects vary in how proper or good they are - some dialects are better than others.

Sociolinguistics is the study of the systematic relationship between language variation and social structures that exist within and across speech communities.

At a job interview for a prestigious law firm, the applicant — a native speaker of the r-less New York dialect — decides to speak Standard American English. Her reasons for this could be said to be due to [ Select ] jargon hypercorrection slang covert prestige dialect leveling overt prestige .

More Practical Tools for Students Powered by AI Study Helper

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Which of the following is NOT an example of an extralinguistic factor that can define a speech community and the linguistic variation used by groups of speakers?