Phonetic variations produced by the main characters in Slumdog Millionaire

ABSTRACT

In this study, the researcher focuses on the phonetic variations of expressions of the main characters in Slumdog Millionaire. Phonetics is the study of sound. Most of the speakers of the same language may have different pronunciations. Indian- English is certain language societies which have special way in delivering their speech. It leads the happening of distinctive phonetics between them. Then, this research answers the problem of what phonetic variations produced by the main characters.

This research uses a descriptive qualitative design in which the data are taken from the utterances expressed by the main characters in Slumdog Millionaire. In order to obtain the valid data, the researcher applies an observation instrument through watching the film, listening and finding the script of Slumdog Millionaire, and then the researcher chooses the part of the dialogues which are used to be identified. Besides, the process of analyzing the data by identifying the sound produced, classifying the particular phonetic variations, and formulating the similarities and differences of phonetic variations among the main characters.

After analyzing 63 words, the researcher found the variety of phonetics raised by three reasons, the influence of vernacular sound, for example in vowel: Many hindi-words do not natively possess a separate phoneme /æ/. Thus, many main characters do not differentiate between the vowel sounds /e/ as in "dress" and /æ/ as in cat . Another example is in the consonant sound, the voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ have an aspiration sound in most of their articulation. Such as : <play > pronounced [p leI], <tell> as [t el], and <kill> as [k Il]. The sound changes because of the influence of the following sound, and there is mutual influence of the sounds upon each other.

There are some future researches that are suggested by the researcher, they are: investigating the suprasegmental features of the same object to this research, doing these kinds of research in different variation, such as variation in grammatical and lexical from the sociolinguistics areas.