8 ms·
I took a linguistics class years ago that talked about this! The hypothesis was that upper class women pronounced the "r" as in "Fourth", but lower class women
by geoduck14 4y ago
I took a linguistics class years ago that talked about this!
The hypothesis was that upper class women pronounced the "r" as in "Fourth", but lower class women "rolled the r" so "Fourth" became "fowth".
The researchers entered department stores with high and low end customers and asked for a product that was "on the Fourth floor", then they counted the number of times the "r" was pronounced or "rolled"
- lvxferre 4y agoI know which study you're talking about. I don't recall if Labov addressed gender differences in that specific study but, if he did: in that situation, lower class men would be even less likely to use the rhotic (with /ɹ/) pronunciation than lower class women, and prefer the non-rhotic (without /ɹ/) one instead.