VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
clear speech. Implicitly, such a top-down analysis assumes that with an increasing
informality of the situation, speakers gradually approach the rest position. This would
further imply that in an informal speech situation, articulators are moved with less effort
and removed from the neutral position as little as possible. Therefore, with an increasing
informality of the speech situation, more and more processes which ease articulation
(assimilations, reduction, deletions) are applied, reflecting the speaker’s wish to
economize the movements of his or her articulators as often and as much as possible.
However, what would happen if a speaker “strained” him- or herself in a cosy get-
together with friends and spoke as if he or she had to take an exam or to apply for a job?
This person would be laughed at, i.e. the speech behaviour of this person would be
sanctioned. Therefore, a casual speech situation does not evoke processes which ease
articulation (less economy or cost), but it evokes “casual speech processes”, i.e.,
processes that are expected and defined as adequate in a casual speech situation.
Speakers know very well how to behave in diverse speech situations, and, in case they
don’t, e.g. if they are confronted with a situation they are not acquainted with, they feel
insecure and mix up processes (e.g. politicians demonstrating the common touch.).
Therefore, in a casual speech situation, a person speaks the way it is expected from her
or the way she thinks it is expected from her, but not according to a principle of least
effort. Speech behaviour, in any situation, is highly regulated by mostly unwritten
norms.
The top-down approach is reflected in phonetic and phonological theories which
assume that speech behaviour is an activity which has to balance the needs of the
speaker and the needs of the listener. In this concept of balancing, however, the needs of
the speaker are implicitly or explicitly 4 defined as trying to exert as little effort as
4 Lindblom (1983, 1990) compares the activity of speaking with the activity of cleaning a
window. However, the difference is evident for any sociolinguist: speaking is a direct
social activity, whereas window cleaning is not (there is no social interaction between the
cleaner and the window). Therefore, the act of speaking is conducted by other principles
than the act of cleaning a window.
4