variants of speech, Elliott (2000) observes the decade-on—decade decrease in the occurrence of non-rhotic speech (i.e. r-less speech) in American film speech from the 1930s to the 1970s to conclude that the decrease results from a shift away from a prestige norm of r-less speech towards a prestige norm of rhotic speech. While this analysis primarily treats the changing norms of rhoticity as a language phenomenon that is not artistically manipulated, it does examine some of the effects of: sociolinguistic accommodation to the pronunciation of a co-star, pronunciation modification towards the prestige norm by male speakers when addressing female co-stars, and the use of different pronunciations to portray a character’s status, moral qualities, and, in a few cases, regional origin. (Elliott 2000: v) Elliott’s analysis charts the change of prestige norm in the movies against the development of a rhoticized prestige variety of ‘General American’ speech at the same time in the US. While there is reference to the way that language in the movies reflects a change in language attitudes within the general culture, there is also some attention given to the way that language variety can be used to portray attitudes towards the character.