Term for phonological elements of a dialect

Question

A dialect encompasses various traits of a group, including vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology). Is there a common term specifically for the phonological elements of a dialect? I’d like to ask another question about those, and I’m wondering whether there is a more succinct way to refer to them.

The specific context I’m thinking of is the way people typically have a different “dialect” when they sing, but generally only pronunciation-wise. I’d like a way to refer to that kind of “dialect” without using scare quotes and then explaining at length exactly what I’m talking about.

For a related example, people often change their vocabulary to suit the occasion, and we call that kind of “dialect” a register. I’m wondering whether there’s an analogous term for phonology.

Answer 1

I might just use the word accent. It sounds like you wish to say that people shift their accents when they sing. This is a very noticeable phenomenon, although it seems less prominent amongst "folksingers" than polished performers. So, I'm not certain if it is subconscious or consciously affected.

If you needed more scientific terminology you would just refer to the (sub)set of phonemes.

Compare that with diaphonemes which, as I understand them, are phonemes that are realized differently by dialects, but are considered the same by speakers. (A set of all the different ways that a particular speech sound is pronounced in all the dialects of a language, or a member of this set.)

With regard to the singing question, it would be a shift of phonemes or diaphonemes. But, accent is probably a more accessible term for this.

Answer 2

I'm assuming that the objective in your question is to have a colloquial or conversational way to discuss the difference between speaking and singing dialects (which is what you say in your second paragraph).

Professional singers will often adopt a different dialect for singing than the one they speak with. This is discussed in the article Why Do British Singers Sound American?, for instance.

That article discusses at least one technical term that is used as a measure of dialect modification between singing an speaking. That term is rhoticity, which is a measure of how R's are pronounced under different circumstances.

But rhoticity is just one aspect, and there are probably a multiplicity of others. And all of them would fail to meet the objective of having a conversational expression of what this is all about.

In that case, you might consider the term vocal dialect. This is used in ornithology for describing the regional differences in the singing voices of birds of the same species. (ref)

Your simplest choice might be to use the terms speaking dialects and vocal dialects, which, when used together in this context, are almost self explanatory. Throw in a rhoticity and talk about the Beatles if you must, to get your point across.

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Another word that comes to mind, and it's also very colloquial is articulation. When it comes to singing, this is a common word used by vocal critics. (I learned this from watching Simon Cowell, who, despite his quirks, has a very astute and technical ear.) Articulation sometimes changes when switching from speaking to singing. For a much more detailed review of the topic, you might have a look at this article: Articulatory Phonetics. If you want to get more technical when talking about it, just about every buzz word on the subject is covered in that article.

Answer 3

I believe it is code-switching.

Both in popular usage and in sociolinguistic study, the name code-switching is sometimes used to refer to switching among dialects, styles or registers, as practiced by speakers of African American Vernacular English as they move from less formal to more formal settings.

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code-switching [mass noun] Linguistics The practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation

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There is also a more specific type called situational code-switching

Situational code-switching refers to the tendency in a bilingual or multilingual community to use different languages or language varieties in different social situations, or to switch varieties in order to mark a change in situation.

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So in summary, code-switching can be a shift in speech within the same language also.