Sociophonetics of [r] in Akan

The study interrogates what has hitherto been called ‘free variation’ in Akan (cf. Schachter and Fromkin (1968), Dolphyne (1988), and Abakah (2004)), i.e., the alternation of [r], [l] and [d] in intervocalic position (V_V) and the alternation of [r] and [l] at the second consonant (C2) position of a CCV syllable structure in various dialects of the language. The study follows the quantitative sociolinguistic approach pioneered by Labov (1966) to investigate the extent to which the choice of one rather than the other of these sounds is not free but is dependent on the social backgrounds of speakers (described in terms of their age, gender, educational background and what dialect of Akan they speak). Interview and picture elicitation were the primary instruments of collecting data from 120 respondents (60 speakers of Asante and Fante respectively). The study did not uncover any major dialectal difference in the alternation between [r] and [l] but finds that [d] is decidedly an Asante variant that competes with the other two sounds in the speech of adults. The data however shows that the social variables age, level of education, and gender do influence the choice of [r] versus [l] in both Asante and Fante. Young, educated speakers, especially female speakers, demonstrated a higher tendency of using the [r] variant, which seems to have emerged as the most prestigious of the three variants.