Uptalk rises are socially salient intonation patterns that occur with declarative statements. Such declarative rises are found in varieties of English worldwide but are especially prolific in Australia and New Zealand. Yet although they are often associated with Australian English, their existence in the English spoken by Aboriginal Australians has not yet been confirmed. This dissertation investigates the roles of ethnolectal and stylistic variation on the realisation of uptalk in Sydney Australian English, as well as the urban variety of Aboriginal English spoken in Sydney. Specifically, it examines the frequency of use, f0 characteristics and timing of different types of declarative rises and shows how these characteristics of the rises vary across phonological categories, speaker groups and stylistic contexts.
The results confirm previous reports that uptalk is on the rise in Australia, while providing new evidence that this trend may be stabilising. The rises in this study conform to five broad phonological categories: three types of simple rises and two fall-rises. An acoustic phonetic investigation of the size of f0 excursions and heights of the peaks reveals that the rise types fall into two clear groups: low-range and high-range rises. However, in contrast to earlier findings, the high-onset high rise is shown to be lower than other high rises. Considering the high-onset high rise an uptalk rise while leaving out the high fall-rise is thus arguably not well justified on phonetic grounds. Secondly, an investigation of the effect of different speech styles provides new evidence that the phonetic form of the rises is subject to stylistic variation: various aspects of the relationship between conversational participants are found to co-vary with the height of the rises. Finally, comparisons between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal speakers do not indicate between-group differences in the frequency of use or phonological form of uptalk rises. However, robust differences are found at the phonetic level where non-Aboriginal speakers consistently produce higher rises than Aboriginal speakers. I therefore argue that uptalk rises may be used as markers of Aboriginal identities.
This dissertation provides novel evidence of the characteristics of the Australian uptalk rise, how it behaves in different speech styles, and whether it may be used as a marker of Aboriginal ethnicities. In doing so, it emphasises the need for sociophonetic studies to look beyond segmental variables and shows that uptalk rises can constitute a useful point of entry into the social life of intonation.