Relationship between the social variation of (r) in Thai and (r) in English in the speech of Bangkok Thai Speakers

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the social variation of (r) in Thai and (r) in English in the speech of Bangkok Thai speakers work in first-class hotels in Bangkok. The study also aims to investigate the relationship between the variation of (r) in Thai and that in English. Three social variables were selected for this study: sex, Job level and English language background. It is found that (r) in each language has four main variants, i.e. the tap [ſ], the approximant [Ј], the lateral [l] and r-lessness [ø]. The first three variants occur in both the prevocalic position and in clusters while the fourth variant occurs only in clusters. Among the four variants, [ſ] and [Ј] are prestigious variants of (r) in Thai and (r) in English, respectively, [l] and [ø] are stigmatized variants in both languages in the prevocalic position and in clusters, respectively. The subjects are 58 Bangkok Thai speakers purposely sampled from three first-class hotels in Bangkok. They were tape-recorded in a single interview with the researcher in Thai and with an English native speaker in English. The findings reveal that in Thai, [l] and [ø] occur extensively in the prevocalic position and in clusters, respectively, and can be regarded as the norm of (r) in Thai today. In English, [Ј] occurs most frequently in both positions of occurrence, followed by [l] in the prevocalic position and [ø] in clusters. The variant [ſ] is the least frequently used variant in both languages. The findings also reveal that there is a significant relation (p<0.01) between each social variable and (r) in Thai and (r) in English. Thai is, female speakers are likely to use more prestigious variants than male. Speakers of a higher job level are likely to use more prestigious variants than those of a lower job level. Speakers with more English language background are likely to use more prestigious variants than those with less English language background. However, when one social variable is under study with the other two controlled, some striking facts are revealed although most of the trends remain the same. With regard to the relationship between variation of (r) in Thai and (r) in English, a statistical analysis of the rank correlation shows that there are significant correlation (p<0.01) between the use of each variant of (r) in both languages of all subjects. The analysis shows that only some variants of (r) in English and in Thai of the social or social sub-groups of subjects are significantly correlated.