Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Our discussion of the foreign /a:/ potentially sounding pretentious made me think of this issue... A cause of confusion and debate among hipsters and indie music listeners has been the pronunciation of Justin Vernon's musical project, Bon Iver. I have always pronounced it /bɒn aɪvər/* to avoid sounding pretentious and made fun of my boyfriend when he pronounced it in the more correct way, /bəʊn i:veər/*. It turns out that the band's creator doesn't mind it either way! Could the pronunciation of this band name tell us something about the speaker? It may not be as political as "Iraq", but I think it's worth discussing. *Please forgive any IPA errors, I'm still getting the hang of it. [Published on 02-13-2012]