印度英语中的元音合并现象研究——基于印度电影的文化视角与声学分析

Vowel Merger in Indian English—Cultural Perspective and Acoustic Analysis Based on Indian Films

摘要: 在全球英语多样化的背景下，印度英语作为典型“外圈英语”变体，呈现出显著的本土化语音特征，其中/æ/与/ɛ/的元音合并现象尤为引人关注。本研究以宝莱坞电影《三傻大闹宝莱坞》中英语对白为语料，借助Praat声学分析工具提取包含目标元音的共振峰数据，并结合角色的社会身份与教育背景进行综合分析。声学结果表明，语料中/æ/与/ɛ/在F1、F2分布上高度重叠，两者的均值差异在统计检验中均未达到显著水平，证实了明显的音位合并现象。同时，影片中不同角色的发音差异与其社会阶层、教育程度及语言使用情境密切相关，体现出元音变异背后隐含的社会身份建构与文化资本差异。研究从声学与社会文化双重视角对印度英语元音合并现象进行阐释，为非母语英语变体的音系研究、影视语言分析及英语教学提供了新的实证资料和理论参考。

Abstract: Against the backdrop of global English diversification, Indian English—as a representative “Outer Circle” variety—exhibits salient localized phonetic features, among which the merger between the vowels /æ/ and /ɛ/ has drawn particular scholarly interest. This study analyzes English dialogues from the Bollywood film “3 Idiots”, using Praat to extract F1 and F2 formant values of tokens containing the target vowels. Acoustic findings reveal a high degree of overlap between /æ/ and /ɛ/ in the vowel space, with mean differences in both F1 and F2 failing to reach statistical significance, thereby confirming a clear phonemic merger within the dataset. Moreover, variation across characters correlates closely with their social class, educational background, and linguistic contexts, reflecting how vowel realization indexes social identity and underlying distributions of cultural capital. By integrating acoustic evidence with sociolinguistic interpretation, this study offers new empirical insights into vowel merger patterns in Indian English and contributes to research on non-native English phonologies, film language analysis, and English pronunciation pedagogy.