Joining the Western Region: Sociophonetic Shift in Victoria

Abstract

The literature on Canadian English provides evidence of distinct dialect regions. Within this landscape, the province of British Columbia is set apart as a sub-region in the west, yet information concerning “local” English is notably skewed toward a single urban setting, Vancouver. To assess and extend the generalizability of prior observations, this paper targets the city of Victoria and situates the results from a large-scale sociolinguistic investigation within the model of the typical (western) Canadian city presented in Boberg (2008, 2010). We consider vocalic features characterized as either General Canadian or distinctively Western Canadian. We also consider “yod” (i.e., the presence of an onglide in student, tune, and the like), a conservative feature that is obsolescing across the nation. Our results support Boberg’s (2008, 2010) observations while positioning Victoria as both innovative—participating in national changes—and conservative—joining certain changes relatively recently and retaining older dialect features. Such results enable us to trace leveling to national and more local dialect patterns, while also reminding us of sociohistorical forces in the formation of dialects.