Today: Accents and Dialects of US English

1
Today Accents and Dialects of US English

• This hour
• What is a dialect? An accent?
• What contributes to a listener's perception of
  accented speech?
• From lexical to phonological atlases American
  dialectology
• What phonological differences may be observed
  between dialects of US English?

Key term Isogloss a graphical representation
marking the distributional limits of lexical
items or linguistic forms (sometimes the area
associated with a linguistic form)
2
What is a dialect?an accent?
Dialect--a local form of "a language often
associated with a particular region (regional
dialect) or subsection of a larger language
community (sociolect). --regionally or socially
distinctive--vary in relatively minor aspects
of their pronunciation (accent), vocabulary and
grammar (how words are combined into
sentences) Similar techniques for diagnosing
dialects may be used for all languages
3
American Regional Dialects
How many dialects are there, and Why do dialect
differences arise? Why is it that people in all
parts of the country do not speak in the same
way? 1. English, as is true of all languages, is
constantly changing. 2. Not all changes take
place in all parts of the country, and 3. Not
all changes take place at the same time. Often,
the spread of changes is stopped short by
barriers to communication between groups of
speakers. 1. Geographical isolation 2. Temporal
dislocation (separation over time) 3. Social
isolation
4
Types of Groups into which Society is Organized

• Large-scale groupings
• 1. Regional dialects
• 2. Social dialects, or Sociolects
• -- social classes -- educational groupings
• -- genders -- ethnicities
• -- age cohorts
• Small-scale groupings
• 3. Social networks, e.g.
• -- immigrant communities
• -- neighborhoods and recreation groups

5
Traditional Dialectology

• Aims
• Provide a historical record of the language
• Show areal distribution of unique linguistic
  features
• Not concerned with representing the speech of the
  community

6
Traditional Dialectology

• Method
• Administer a dialect survey targeting specific
  lexical items, pronunciations (diagnostic forms)
• Collect data from representative community
  members, called NORMs
• Typically, sampling was done by relying on
  population density
• Lines indicating the distributional limits of
  lexical items or linguistic forms are called
  isoglosses.
• Focus
• Lexical
• Grammatical
• Phonological
• Two recent subfields of sociolinguistics in which
  dialect descriptions are now accomplished
• Sociophonetics -- Instrumental phonetics
  supplements auditory phonetic and phonological
  analysis
• Urban Dialectology -- Utilizes updated
  lexical-cartographic methods (TELSUR)

7
Traditional Dialectology

• Cartographic dialectology
• LAMSAS software
• http//hyde.park.uga.edu
• Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic
  States (LAMSAS)
• Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE)
• Kurath and McDavid (1961) The Pronunciation of
  English in the United States

8
Traditional Dialectology
Dictionary of American Regional English
(DARE) Cassidy, F.G. (1985xxix), fig. 7)
9
Where are they from?
U
I
o
u

A
i
10
Map of US Dialects
Karen
Susie
Margaret
Michele
Lisa
Nancy
Peggy
11
Diagnosing Dialect Differences
Phonological differences. For the most part, the
features that distinguish us from people in other
parts of the country are our vowels! -- Vowels
(a, e, i, o, u, ai, oi, ei, au) -- Consonants (r,
t, d, th)
12
Diagnosing Dialect Differences
13
Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts
(Labov, 1991)
u?
i?
(uw) boot
(iy) beat
I
(i) bit
U
(u) book
o?
(ow) boat
e?
US NORTH
(ey) beat
v
(uh) but
E
(e) bet
ç
(oh) ball, caught
Q
(ae) bat
a
(o) bottle, father

• key characteristics fronting of (a), tensing
  and raising of (ae), backing of short (e,i),
  lowering of (oh) in W New England, N PA, N OH,
  IN, IL, MI, WI (Buffalo, Chicago)
• traditionally tense (long) vowels and /U/ are
  unaffected
• lax subsystem is moving
• ordering of elements via push and drag chains
  somewhat controversial

14
Northern Cities and Southern Cities Vowel Shifts
(Labov, 1991)
u?
i?
(uw) boot
(iy) beat
I
(i) bit
U
(u) book
o?
(ow) boat
e?
US SOUTH
(ey) beat
v
(uh) but
E
(e) bet
ç
(oh) ball, caught
Q
(ae) bat
a
(o) bottle, father

• key characteristics fronting of long back
  vowels (uw), (ow), upward rotation and
  development of inglides in short (e,i) while long
  (ey,iy) rotate back and downward in all of the US
  South
• both shifts are viewed as related (and separate
  from a third pattern, associated with the merger
  of (oh-a) ).

15
In the recent news...
Detroit vowels http//www.stanford.edu/eckert/vo
wels.html
Buffalo (Donald Herbert story) http//www.npr.org
/templates/story/story.php?storyId5227036ft1f
1001 Don (a)-fronting father(a)-fronting
New Orleans Dislocated family resettling in
Seattle http//www.publicbroadcasting.net/kplu/ne
ws.newsmain?actionarticleARTICLE_ID881425 othe
r (th)-stopping crying (ay) chicken, fish
short-(i)
16
Where are they from?
17
Traditional Sociolinguistics

• Aims
• Represent the language of the speech community
• -- traditional and innovative forms
• -- variation between and within speakers
• 2. Provide a historical record of the language
• --direct observation of change in the speech
  community
• 3. Understand the social mechanisms that enable
  variation and change in the speech of the
  community
• 4. Understand the manner in which speakers use
  variation in the language for signaling a wide
  variety of social meanings (Blom and Gumperz)

18
The new attention to phonologyRepresenting
Dialect Speech

• Method
• 1. International phonetic alphabet (IPA)
  Traditional dialectology
• 2. Auditory analysis Traditional dialectology
  and Sociolinguistics
• 3. Instrumental analysis Sociophonetics

19
Representing Dialect Speech

• Method
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• 1. Low-central /a/ (non-centralized) 4. /å/
• 2. Raised /a/ /a/ 5. Raised /å/ /å/
• 3. Lowered /å/ /å/ 6. and finally, schwa
  //
• R-colored vowels
• purr /p/ heard /hd/ sir /s/