Linguist Karen Burgos returns to the podcast for the November 2024 episode to discuss American and British dialects in popular song. She and Paul are joined by podcast co-producer and frequent guest Cameron Meier.
They play clips from songs ranging from the first decade of the 20th century to today, analyzing the singers’ dialects. In many instances, singers’ dialects don’t match their speaking voices, while, at other times, the singers use dialect to either make a cultural statement or embrace their own regional dialects.
Examples cited include older recordings of American singers, such as Billy Murray and Cole Porter, who used a Transatlantic dialect (learn more about that dialect on the July 2024 podcast); American singers who embraced their strong regional dialects (Robert Wilkins, Fats Domino, the Carter Family, Hank Williams); British singers who often employed an American sound (the Beatles, the Roling Stones, and many other groups from the 1970s); British singers who rebelled against the American sound and embraced their English roots (Herman’s Hermits, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols); British and American singers who embraced a soul, or American Southern, or African-American sound (CCR, Adele, Christina Aguilera); and a new wave of British singers who switch up their dialects (the Ting Tings, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa).
Karen previously appeared on podcast episode 70, from November 2023, to discuss the sound of Colonial American English. She is a freelance linguist, independent researcher, and founder of Ace Linguist, a truly valuable blog. Karen’s articles on “Indie Girl Voice,” “Colonial American English,” and “The PIN-PEN merger” have educated many netizens on the English sound changes of yesterday, today, and maybe even tomorrow. Her focus on historical linguistics, language in popular media, and sociolinguistics makes for insightful commentary on all matter of variation in the English language.
To read her complete Dialect Dissection: Founding Fathers blog, click here.
For more information about Cameron, who also serves as executive editor of the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA), visit MeierMovies.com.
Snippets of several songs are used in this episode, either by permission or under the copyright doctrine of fair use, strictly for dialect-analysis purposes. For the full songs, see the YouTube clips below. (And we’ve thrown in a couple of extra treats.)
Watch Florrie Forde on YouTube, from 1934.
For the Megan Boni Man in Finance TikTok clip, click here.
And here’s another great vodcast on this topic:
And check out this fascinating graphic from Peter Trudgill, suggested to us by Mark Dallas:
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) is courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
