When speakers of different dialects interact, their specific dialect features are changed. The motivation for the change in dialect feature can be due to many interrelated factors such as developmental, linguistic and social... [ view full abstract ]
When speakers of different dialects interact, their specific dialect features are changed. The motivation for the change in dialect feature can be due to many interrelated factors such as developmental, linguistic and social effects.
Previous studies of dialect contact largely fall into two categories: migrations of multiple dialect speakers to a new single region and migrations of people from a rural to an urban area. However, there has been little research on speakers moving from an urban to a rural setting. Thus, the goal of this study is to fill the gap by investigating dialect contact situations that people from Seoul, which is the capital city of South Korea, moved to Gyeongsang province, which is a relatively small province in South Korea. More specifically, the current study is to examine how linguistic and social factors affect the acquisition of new dialect features by Seoul dialect speakers in Gyeongsang province. In particular, this study is concerned with what linguistic and social factors predict variation in diphthong /wɑ/ and the realization of the Gyeongsang dialect lexical tone among mobile adults who had acquired their native Seoul dialect and later moved to Gyeongsang province. This gap needs to be filled because in most cases where speakers from a rural region move to an urban area, those speakers are typically adopting the urban, prestigious dialect. This motivated me to investigate the situation that are created by people from an urban to a rural setting to see whether these speakers are adopting or resisting the rural, non-prestigious variety.
A total of 38 informants participated in the study. Participants included 18 men and 20 women, and they ranged in age from 20 to 64 years. Participants divided into three groups by the length of stay in Gyeongsang province — under 10 years, 10-20 years, over 20 years. All participants were born in Seoul and resided there for at least eighteen years before relocating to Gyeongsang province.
