Pronounced Leh-nurd Skih-nurd: Rhoticity and the South in American Rock Music

Abstract

Pronunciation in popular music is a subject rich in linguistic patterns, and it offers a useful perspective on the social environments that produce it. We investigated the patterning of the r phoneme in the lyrics of the American rock bands Journey and Lynyrd Skynyrd, as a window into the linguistic indexing of “the South” in contrast with the rest of the country. Drawing inspiration from Trudgill’s 1984 study on British rock, we gathered data on the frequency of dropping the ‘r’ phoneme on all songs from one album by each band, with information on phonological environment. Our results reversed our predicted patterns, but nonetheless yielded useful conclusions about the separate development of Southern rock from its sister genres.