Eastern Kentucky English and Ideology

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Eastern Kentucky English and Ideology

• Rebecca Dayle Greene
• Stanford University
• Dissertation Proposal Talk
• February 26, 2009

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• Rural Mountain Southerners are among the poorest
  Americans (Gaventa 1980, Billings and Blee 2000)

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• Economic and cultural marginalization often go
  hand in hand, so it is no surprise that...
• the hillbilly figures prominently in American
  popular discourse

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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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• The portrayals employ and stereotype many of the
  distinctive speech features of the Mountain (or
  Inland) South

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• To what extent are standard American English,
  and its symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977),
  shaping language there?

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• Hazen and Hamilton (2008) find West Virginia
  speakers abandoning many traditional dialect
  features in favor of standard variants...
• but also find several returned migrants deploying
  certain local features as a symbol of solidarity

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• ...for some variables, such as consonant
  cluster reduction, migrants and non-migrants show
  similar patterns of variation...by using the
  vernacular variants associated with home at
  higher frequencies, migrants can express feelings
  of solidarity when they return to the home
  community. (Hazen and Hamilton 2008 19)

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• This dissertation proposes to analyze language
  use and change in Elliott County, Kentucky

Kentucky
Eliiott County
The Appalachian Region
Elliott County
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Southern Mountain English

• General Southern features
• Southern Vowel Shift

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• pin/pen merger
• Vowel breaking
• Double modals (might could)
• yall
• fixin to
• (Bailey and Tillery 1996)

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• /?/-raising
• a-prefixing (He was a-running.)
• Scotch-Irish verb agreement (people goes)
• Nonstandard verb past tense (she growed)
• Participle for past tense (I come here
  yesterday.)
• Nonstandard reflexives (hisself)
• Nonstandard contractions (I hadnt?Id not)
• (Wolfram and Christian 1976, Montgomery and Hall
  2004)

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• Eastern Kentucky in particular reported to be
  linguistically diverse and home to many
  nonstandard verb forms
• (Kurath, as cited in McDavid, Jr. and McDavid
  1986)
• Fought?fit
• Heard?hearn
• Raised?riz
• Sweat (past)?sweated
• Taken?tuck, take, taked, takened
• Threw?throwed

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• Features associated with the Midlands
• Cot/caught merger
• Card/cord merger
• Positive anymore
• Needs X-ed
• (http//wapedia.mobi/en/Midland_American_English,
• http//www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/
  NationalMap.
• htmlHeading13)

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Rebecca Queen (int. by J.S. Hall) (Swain County,
North Carolina) Age 70 when interviewed in 1939
3rd- or 4th-grade education, farm housewife
(http//www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/)

• I don't know nothing about South Carolina.  I
  never could recollect, just can barely recollect,
  heared about my father moving from there to
  Transylvania.  And we lived there till in the
  time of the Confederate War, the last year of the
  Confederate War, and I remember that, the war.  I
  come to Jackson County and I've been in Jackson
  County ever since, and it's changed a bit till
  now, but I'm still here yet.  Now iffen you folks
  now knows anything about when the Confederate War
  ended, why you can tell just how long I've been
  in Jackson County and in Swain.Tell about how
  you got Well, I, I don't know, but I guess
  we've been a-livin' on Indian Creek about fifty
  year.  I never knowed nothing, only just work
  hard and live hard all the time.  But we tried to
  live honest.  Well, that's about the best place
  ever I did live until I lived on Indian Creek and
  Tell about farmin' up there.Well uh, we
  raised cattle and corn and made lots of stuff
  while we lived up there.Tell about them
  families that lived up there, what they
  done.Well, they done just like the rest of us
  did.  They worked hard and tried to live, and
  they's severalxx families, they was about, they
  was about thirty-three families that lived up
  there.
• Was about thirty-three families that lived
  there on Indian Creek when we lived up there, and
  they all worked and tried to make a living by
  hard work, the way we tried to live, and had a
  good time. Well, tell us
• They never had no fellowship there.  They didn't
  have frolickin' up in there much.  Sometimes
  they'd gather up a crowd of them and have a
  little praise.  They never had time to have
  frolic.  They just had to work too hard.

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Elliott County

• Population 6748, down from 10,387 in 1900
  (http//www.city-data.com/county/Elliott_County-KY
  .html)
• County seat Sandy Hook, pop. 678

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• Average household income 25,129
• Kentucky average 40,267
• Residents below poverty line 25.9
• Kentucky average 15.8
• Unemployment rate of 7.1,
• Kentucky average 5.6
• (http//www.city-data.com/county/Elliott_County-KY
  .html)

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Elliott County a regional pole of rurality

• Pre-industrialized, no railways or major roads
• Economy based on other small farming (mostly
  cattle), manual labor in surrounding regions
• In 2003, only 845 jobs (http//www.city-data.com/c
  ounty/Elliott_County-KY.html)
• Longest commute of any county in the United
  States, at 48.7 minutes (http//www.epodunk.com/cg
  i-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex3941)

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• The surrounding counties, Lawrence, Carter,
  Rowan, and Morgan, are industrialized and have
  major roadways.
• All have grown in population since 1970, but
  Elliott County has not significantly increased in
  population since then (http//www.city-data.com/co
  unty/Elliott_County-KY.html)
• Persons per square mile (2000)
• Elliott County 28.8
• Kentucky 101.7

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(http//www.ecanned.com/KY/Elliott_County.shtml)
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• Sense of bleakness, no jobs here
• Awareness that we are looked down on by others,
  including residents of surrounding counties
• Some express oppositional identity (Ogbu 2004),
  regarding the rest of the world, which is
  iconized as similar to the North and the big
  city

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• It does irk me when I go to Grayson, and you
  write them a check, and theyre like, Sandy
  Hook, wheres that? And youre like, Well,
  you know what? Just give it back. Um, that
  really bothers me. They dont know where Sandy
  Hook is?! Sometimes they dont. Or they dont
  want to act like they do. And that really
  irritates me, because...so I always try to buy as
  much as I can in the county. (Beth, 31, postal
  worker)

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Despite poverty,

• Elliott County has traditionally had low crime
  rate
• 0 arrests in 2000 (http//www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/
  genInfo.php?locIndex3941)
• Residents idealize Elliott County as rural, safe,
  peaceful
• Also as family-oriented

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• Ideologies about Elliott County (both
  negative and positive) align and play out
  recursively
• Safe --- Dangerous
• Family-oriented --- Cold/distant
• Peaceful --- Scary/intimidating
• Hick/country speech --- Proper speech
• Elliott County --- Surrounding counties
• Eastern Kentucky --- The rest of Kentucky
• South --- North
• Rural --- Urban

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Social change slowly arriving

• Most men work far away
• Farming becoming not profitable
• Road improvements currently in progress
• New state prison
• First McDonalds just opened
• Influx of retirees from other parts of the
  country
• Recent arrival of first non-White residents (99
  White http//www.city-data.com/county/Elliott_Cou
  nty-KY.html)
• Wide popularity of satellite television, internet
  access
• Dire drug problem

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• Elliott County is one particularly rural Mountain
  South community not yet affected by significant
  in-migration or industrialization
• We can observe people here just as their
  community begins to undergo changes that threaten
  their idealized notion of their home

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• Language here is strongly ideologically
  implicated in wider hierarchies of dominance and
  resistance (NorthSouth, urbanrural)
• Residents bluntly confronted with marginalized
  status when they leave, encounter outsiders who
  comment quickly and freely on their speech
• ...which is particularly distinctive, due in part
  to the communitys relative homogeneity

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Carrie(middle age group, non-degree)

• Did you ever feel like embarrassed to kinda be
  from, from this area, or from Elliott County,
  Eastern Kentucky, kind of a, a poor area?
• Mmm, I dont, I dont really know if I, like,
  from here, but I know have with the way I talked
  and stuff
• Thats where people notice it xxx
• Uh-huh, right, right, they would, you know,
  that, that might have been, maybe I did, but, but
  it was mainly because of the way I talked that I
  felt intimidated by other people...

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Amelia (oldest age group, degree)

• Well, the last time that someone was guessing
  where I was from, we were on the plane and I was
  co-, we were, we got into a conversation, and
  they said, Where are you from? I think they
  were going to Pennsylvania, Im not sure, Im not
  sure where they were, I think they were from the
  Northeast somewhere. I said, Im from
  Kentucky, and he said, Kintucky?! I said,
  well, yes, Kentucky, but I must have said
  Kintucky, because he, he laughed, he said,
  Kintucky. Uh, well, and then we were coming
  back from we were in New York at the airport
  coming back from overseas one time and this guy
  was in front and I said, I thought they said for
  us to get in line, and his little wife got all
  excited and he said, Oh, dont listen to her,
  shes from Georgia or somewhere.

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• They look down on you...They were like, You
  have the thickest accent I ever heard. I was
  like, Leave me alone! Cause theyll pick on
  you, cause they think youre like, a hillbilly,
  like you have no teeth, and you go barefooted
  everywhere you go. And I was like, I got shoes
  on! (Amanda, 21, college student)

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Alice (middle age group, degree)

• Every time I go to Florida, Where are you from?

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• Ive had bottles of pop threw at me, Ive had
  people make fun of my accent, Ive gotten a lot,
  you know, just Say something again, hillbilly
  girl. (Amanda, 21, college student)

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Methodology

• Interviews (60 min. each) with 30 female Elliott
  County long-term residents
• Must have lived in Elliott County most of their
  lives, except for college
• Stratified by age 18-24, 30-45, 55-70
• Stratified by education level 2-year college
  degree v. anything less

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Methodology, cont.

• First half of the interview questions about
  life and culture in Elliott County
• Second half questions about language in Elliott
  County and elsewhere
• The innovative partnormally avoided because
  attention paid to speech is undesirable if you
  are trying to capture the vernacular
• But allows me to understand better the meaning of
  variation (e.g. a vs. aint), as well as
  speakers individual ideological positionings

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Variables under study
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/ay/ Methods

• 2155 unreduced tokens, with at least 38 tokens
  from each speaker
• Excluded I, my
• Analyzed perceptually, categorically as
  monophthong or diphthong

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Data coded for whether

• following C was
• liquid
• nasal
• voiced
• voiceless
• velar
• lexical item was discourse-particle-/verb-
• /preposition-like

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Previous research on /ay/

• Monophthongization may have begun the Southern
  Shift (Labov, Ash, Boberg 2006)
• a for /ay/ is one of most salient features
  distinguishing White Southern from Northern
  speech (Bernstein 2006)
• a before voiceless C is a marker of rural,
  lower-prestige Southern dialects (Bernstein 2006,
  Wells 1982)
• Greater sonority of the following segment tends
  to favor monophthongs (Hazen 2006, Feagin 1986,
  Wells 1982, Wolfram and Christian 1976)
• -voi C

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• Irons (2007) found mixture of diphthongal, fully
  monophthongal, and split systems in Eastern
  Kentucky, but did not look at Elliott County in
  particular
• Hazen (2006) found a tendency toward the
  pre-voiceless diphthongizing pattern in West
  Virginia

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• In Texas, a before voiceless C is common among
  all ages and classes (LAGS) and not stigmatized
  (Gregory and Bernstein 1993)
• But in Alabama, it is associated with class, age,
  education, etc. (LAGS), and stigmatized (Feagin
  2000, Gregory and Bernstein 1993)

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/ay/ Results

• Despite overt stigma, this is generally a
  monophthong-izing dialect, like some other
  Appalachian and Texan varieties, (Irons 2007
  Bernstein 2006 Hazen 2006, 2002 Bailey and
  Thomas 1998)
• Only 271/2155 (13) tokens diphthongal
• 16 of 30 interviewees used monophthongal /ay/
  exclusively
• Only 5 of the thirteen diphthong users exhibited
  the diphthongal variant with any regularity (more
  than 10 of their tokens)

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• Youngest group more likely to use diphthong than
  two older age groups (p0.000)
• Diphthong is beginning to occur in the speech of
  some younger, more educated speakers
• ...but not really in the speech of older, more
  educated speakers or younger, less educated
  speakers

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Enormous individual differences

• For Alice (middle age group, degree), Selena
  (youngest age group, degree), and Hannah
  (youngest age group, non-degree), a following
  voiceless C promotes diphthongization, found in
  some other Southern communities (Hazen 2002,
  Feagin 2000, Wells 1982, Wolfram and Christian
  1976)
• For Hannah (youngest age group, non-degree),
  discourse-particle-like favors diphthongs, as
  noted by Hazen (2006)
• For Irene (middle age group, degree), a following
  voiced C promotes diphthongization, a pattern
  found nowhere else
• For Nell (oldest age group, degree) uses
  diphthongs only and always with the word Ohio
• Lisa (youngest age group, degree) and Tammy
  (middle age group, non-degree) use diphthongs
  frequently in every context

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/?/-raising

• Feature of Mountain (?) South speech (Barrett,
  p.c.)
• Rebecca Queen (Age 70, 1939, North Carolina)
• lots of stuff
• (http//www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/)

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/?/ Methods

• 19 speakers
• Using Praat, hand-measured F1 and F2 of /?/ and
  /iy/ at midpoint
• At least 12 tokens per speaker (as of yet)
• Plotted absolute formant values using Norm

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Results raised-/?/ favored by older, less
educated speakers
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F1 range also variable
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(No Transcript)
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Problems with how to measure, understand
/?/-raising

• Absolute F1 seems more important than relative/
  normalized F1
• Hard to even find a way to normalize, no stable
  anchors
• Range of F1 also important

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Grammatical, lexical, marked phonological
nonstandard features

• Methods
• Tagged every marked non-phonetic nonstandard
  feature that I noticed throughout the course of
  listening to each interview (29 speakers so far)
• Qualitative analysis of the scope of variation

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ResultsNumber of TYPES of marked non-phonetic
nonstandardisms Education matters, age doesnt
outlier
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The range of non-phonetic nonstandardisms some
more locally-marked (a-prefixing, Scotch-Irish
verb agrmt) than others (negative concord, aint)
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• Speakers associate marked NPNS with low levels
  of education
• Young, less educated speakers use just as many
  marked NPNS as old less educated speakers
• Relatively stable situation
• Although it seems like there used to be a lot
  more, looking at old recordings and Bridget

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Discussion

• Local-ness seems to be changing how it is
  signaled
• Not as many marked NPNS as heritage language
• Mountain South, hick-sounding raised-/?/ dying
  out, but...
• General Southern a still acceptable/normative
  in the most standard Elliott County speech

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Resistant use of a?

• My roommates from Louisville, and she thinks
  shes like, on a higher level cause she can say,
  like, right rait, and Im like, rat...and
  she makes fun of the way you say ice...cause
  its like, shes like, Youre not saying it,
  and Im like, Yes I am!...Some guy at Arbys,
  theyre like, Yeah, you say that one more time,
  Im a come over that counter and punch you, I
  was like I didnt say it! (Amanda, youngest
  age group, college student)

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• Krista (youngest age group, college student)
• Uses very standard grammar, lexicon, low /?/
• Currently living in urban Lexington
• Father is superintendent of schools
• Mother is elementary school teacher
• Works in a bookstore
• Wants to join the Air Force, travel the world,
  become a dentist
• Enjoys literature, photography, sushi
• BUT...uses 57/57 a

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• What you hear when youre growing up, thats,
  what you, thats you learn to pronounce a
  instead of ay, and Ive always said a.
• Note that she has also heard a great range of
  other, more stigmatized features growing up, but
  she does not use those

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• a allows Elliott Countians to maintain local
  identity (which is desired by all my speakers)
  without sounding hick or uneducated
• If people dont like my dialect, thats too bad,
  I use correct grammar. (Amelia, oldest age
  group, degree)

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• Interviewees are not attempting to sound like
  Northerners, despite many accommodations to
  standard speech norms (as found in other studies
  in the South, e.g. (Hazen and Hamilton 2008,
  Bailey and Tillery 1996, Feagin 1986 )
• Standard language ideology (Lippi-Green 1997)
  isshaping language change here
• But not entirely hegemonic 
• Elliott Countians both internalize and reject
  negative evaluations of themselves and their
  local dialect
• Reflected in speech that is rendered less hick,
  but remains Southern

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• Language is the locus of significant
  poverty-related angst for Elliott Countians who
  leave
• Supports the claim that standard language
  ideology is oppressive (Lippi-Green 1997)
• Compromise solution relatively nonstandard
  phonetics combined with relatively standard
  features at other levels

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Left to do

• Finish plotting /?/ for the rest of the speakers
• Quantitative analysis of Scotch-Irish Verb
  Agreement
• Systematic critical analysis of speakers
  discourse
• Themes, variations on them, instantiations of
  them
• Analyze each speaker in terms of
• Socioeconomic class
• Ideological positioning
• Life trajectory
• Correlate these with speech