Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T04:48:47.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Subliminal accent”: Reactions to the rise of Wisconsin English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2016

Danielle Schuld ,
Joseph Salmons ,
Thomas Purnell  and
Eric Raimy
Danielle Schuld
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Joseph Salmons*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Thomas Purnell
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Eric Raimy
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
*
*Address for correspondence: Joseph Salmons, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, 404-405 University Club, 432 East Campus Mall, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, Phone: 608.262.8180, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Distinctive regional varieties of English have only recently emerged in parts of North America, including Wisconsin, where differences appear to be increasing today. We present an experiment in which listeners heard two short samples each from three Wisconsin regions and three other dialect areas. For each area, one sample was recorded pre-1970 and another recorded post-2010. Regional stereotypes were excluded. In a situation of new and still-emerging regional varieties, we expected listeners to be able to more accurately identify recent speech samples versus old samples from Wisconsin. Listeners proved better at recognizing speakers from Wisconsin in newer over older recordings. This complicates previous discussions of dialect awareness, in particular ‘enregisterment,’ with our listeners able to identify Wisconsin speech even in the absence of salient, known dialect features.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistic Geography , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agha, Asif. 2003. The social life of a cultural value. Language & Communication 23(3/4). 231-273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Harold B. 1973–1976. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest. 3 vols. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Wendy, Eddington, David and Nay, Lyndsey. 2009. Dialect identification: The effects of region of origin and amount of experience. American Speech 84(1). 48-71.Google Scholar
Benson, Erica, Fox, Michael and Balkman, Jared. 2011. The bag that Scott bought: The low vowels in northwest Wisconsin. American Speech 86(3). 271-311.Google Scholar
Bauer, Matt and Parker, Frank. 2008. /æ/-raising in Wisconsin English. American Speech 83(4). 403-431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, David. 2000. The effect of geographic mobility on the retention of a local dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania dissertation.Google Scholar
Clopper, Cynthia G. and Pisoni, David B.. 2004. Homebodies and army brats: Some effects of early linguistic experience and residential history on dialect categorization. Language Variation and Change 16(1). 31-48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dahan, Delphine, Drucker, Sarah J. and Scarborough, Rebecca A.. 2008. Talker adaptation in speech perception: Adjusting the signal or the representations? Cognition 108(3). 710-718.Google Scholar
Frey, Benjamin. 2013. Towards a general theory of language shift: A case study in Wisconsin German and North Carolina Cherokee. Madison: University of Wisconsin – Madison dissertation.Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, Henry. 1966. A proposal for the study of folk-linguistics. In William Bright (ed.), Sociolinguistics, 16-26. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Jacewicz, Ewa and Fox, Robert D.. 2012. The effects of cross-generational and cross-dialectal variation on vowel identification and classification. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131. 1413-1433.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnstone, Barbara. 2013. Speaking Pittsburghese: The story of a dialect. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Andrus, Jennifer and Danielson, Andrew. 2006. Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’. Journal of English Linguistics 34(2). 77-104.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2002. Koineization and accommodation. In J.K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 669-702. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul and Trudgill, Peter. 2005. The birth of new dialects. In Peter Auer, Fans Hinskens and Paul Kerswill (eds.), Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. 196-220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William and Ash, Sharon. 1997. Understanding Birmingham. In Cynthia Bernstein, Thomas Nunnally and Robin Sabino (eds.), Language variety in the South revisited, 508-573. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon and Boberg, Charles. 2006. Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Macmillan, Neil A. and Creelman, C. Douglas. 1991. Detection theory: A user’s guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1996. The Founder Principle in creole genesis. Diachronica 13(1). 83-134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy and Preston, Dennis R.. 1999. Folk linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 1981. Perceptual dialectology: Mental maps of United States dialects from a Hawaiian perspective. In H.J. Warkentin (ed.), Methods/Méthodes IV: Papers from the 4th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 192-198. Victoria: University of Victoria.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 1999. Introduction. In Dennis R. Preston (ed.), Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, vol. 1, xxiii-xl. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 2002. Perceptual Dialectology. In Jan Berns and Jaap van Marle (eds.), Present-Day Dialectology, 57-104. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis R. 2003. Presidential address: Where are American dialects at anyhow? American Speech 78(3). 235-254.Google Scholar
Purnell, Thomas. 2010. Phonetic detail in the perception of ethnic varieties of US English. In Dennis R. Preston and Nancy Niedzielski (eds.), A Reader in Sociophonetics, 289-326. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Purnell, Thomas, Raimy, Eric and Salmons, Joseph. (eds.) 2013. Wisconsin talk: Linguistic diversity in the Badger State. University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Purnell, Thomas, Raimy, Eric and Salmons, Joe. Forthcoming. Upper Midwestern English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Listening to the past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rankinen, Wil and Albin, Aaron. 2015. Monophthongal /o/ as a lingering substrate effect in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula English. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Toronto, Ontario, October 23, 2015.Google Scholar
Remlinger, Kathryn, von Schneidemesser, Luanne and Salmons, Joseph. 2009. Revised perceptions: Changing dialect awareness in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. American Speech 84(2). 177-191.Google Scholar
Rose, Mary. 2006. Language, place and identity in later life. Palo Alto: Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
Salmons, Joseph and Purnell, Thomas. 2010. Contact and the development of American English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Handbook of Language Contact, 455-477. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stanislaw, Harold and Todorov, Natasha. 1999. Calculation of signal detection theory measures. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 31(1). 137-149.Google Scholar
Sumner, Meghan and Samuel, Arthur G.. 2009. The effect of experience on the perception and representation of dialect variants. Journal of Memory and Language 60. 487-501.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. 2001. An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2010. Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Miranda and Salmons, Joseph. 2008. ‘Good old immigrants of yesteryear’ who didn’t learn English: Germans in Wisconsin. American Speech 83(3). 259-283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilkerson, Miranda and Salmons, Joseph. 2012. Linguistic marginalities: Becoming American without learning English. Journal of Transnational American Studies 4(2). acgcc_jtas_7115. http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5vn092kk (Accessed 5 October 2016).Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Miranda, Livengood, Mark and Salmons, Joseph. 2014. The sociohistorical context of imposition in substrate effects. Journal of English Linguistics 42(4). 1-23.Google Scholar
Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1973. The cultural geography of the United States. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar