R-lessness refers to dropping /r/ after a vowel, often at the end of a word. For instance, people might pronounce "park" like "paahk," or "father" like "fathah." R-lessness is a well known feature of Eastern New England (ENE) English, particularly in the Boston area (Kurath, 1939; Labov, Ash & Boberg, 2006; Nagy & Irwin, 2010; Kim, et al., 2019). It has often been associated with white, working class identity for folks from the South Boston neighborhood (Browne & Stanford, 2018; Sipple, et al., 2015).
R-lessness is also a common feature in African American Language (AAL), especially in the South (Rickford, 1999; Thomas, 2007), although there is a lot of variation in whether /r/ is dropped or not among AAL speakers nationwide (Jones, 2020). In New York City, which was also historically r-less, African American speakers now tend to be r-less while white speakers are becoming more r-ful (Labov, 1966; Blake, 2014).
However, Browne and Stanford (2018) found that Black Bostonians are actually less likely to be r-less. This finding shows there is in fact a lot of diversity within regional varieties of AAL.

The majority of our speakers from the Black Boston community (n=45) were the least r-less, dropping /r/ from below 17.85% of the time up to 33% of the time. Even our most r-less speakers (n=3) still only dropped /r/ just over 56% of the time. This is in contrast to the high rates of r-lessness we see in AAL in New York City; here in Boston, the Black speakers in our sample are not as r-less.

- Blake (2014:157)
- Browne & Stanford (2018:20-21)
- Jones (2020:21)
- Kim, et al., (2019:169-170)
- Kurath (1939)
- Labov (1966)
- Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:226)
- Nagy & Irwin (2010)
- Rickford (1999:5)
- Sipple, et al. (2015)
- Thomas (2007:453)