Cross

Lay observers and linguists have claimed that ongoing phonological and lexical changes in Singapore English may be attributed to increased exposure to American English via media consumption (Poedjosoedarmo 2000; Deterding 2007; Leow 2011). Little is known, however, regarding Singaporeans’ explicit knowledge of the dialect features of other regions, and how this knowledge is shaped by social and parasocial contact. The present study investigates a well-known difference among regional English dialects: the realization of vowels in the bath and trap lexical sets. 1167 Singaporeans are surveyed regarding their own pronunciation of bath and trap words, as well as their perceptions of how these words are pronounced in California and London. While Singaporeans are found to generally retain a conservative bath-trap distinction, media consumption and travel experience, as well as gender and education level, have significant impacts on reported use. Explicit knowledge of the US bath-trap merger is found to be poor relative to the high US media consumption rate, illustrating the limits of media as a source of sociolinguistic knowledge. Contrasting sharply with the rise of postvocalic rhoticity, reluctance to adopt the bath-trap merger is argued to stem from both functional and ideological factors; conservatism in this feature complicates proposals of a wholesale Americanization of Singapore English