Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:58:18.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regional differences in perceiving vowel tokens on Southerness, education, and pleasantness ratings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2008

Valerie Fridland
Valerie Fridland
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates the role of regional dialect experience on the social awareness of synthesized vowel tokens to regional in-group and out-group members. For the study, speakers from Reno, NV, were given the same perception test used in a previous study in Memphis, TN. Comparing the Reno results to those found in Memphis, the study examines whether differences in regional vowel norms affect how Westerners rate Southern-shifted and non-Southern-shifted vowel variants on Southernness, education, and pleasantness scales. The study also looks at how Reno raters interpreted shifted back vowel variants, found productively in their local community, compared to front vowel shifts found exclusively in the South. Finally, the paper explores how the results suggest that regional dialect exposure attunes listeners to attend to different aspects of vowel quality than those outside the region. In examining how regional dialect experience affects listener recognition and evaluation of local and nonlocal vowel norms, the paper begins to explore how much the production/perception relationship is mediated by speakers' participation in locally constructed and defined speech communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 67 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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

REFERENCES

Ash, Sharon. (1996). Freedom of movement: /uw/-fronting in the Midwest. In Arnold, J. et al. (eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory and analysis: Selected papers from NWAV 23 at Stanford. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 3–25.Google Scholar
Clarke, Sandra, Elms, Ford, & Amani, Youssef. (1995). The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence. Language Variation and Change 7:209–228.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., & Pisoni, D. B.. (2004). Some acoustic cues for the perceptual categorization of American English regional dialects. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 111–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dipaolo, Marianna, & Faber, Alice. (1990). Phonation differences and the phonetic content of the tense-lax contrast in Utah English. Language Variation and Change 2:155–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dipaolo, Marianna, & Faber, Alice. (1995). The discriminability of nearly merged sounds. Language Variation and Change 7:35–78.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (1988). Adolescent social structures and the spread of linguistic change. Language in Society 17:183–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2000). Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Malden, MA & Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Evans, Betsy. (2001). Dialect contact and the Northern Cities Shift in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Dissertation: Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Feagin, Crawford. (1986). More evidence for vowel change in the South. In David, Sankoff (ed.), Diversity and Diachrony. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 83–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (1998). The Southern Vowel Shift: Linguistic and social factors. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2000). The Southern Vowel Shift in Memphis, TN. Language Variation and Change 11:267–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2001). Social factors in the Southern Shift: Gender, age and class. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5:233–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2003a). Network strength and the realization of the Southern Vowel Shift among African-Americans in Memphis, TN. American Speech 78:3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2003b). Tide, tied and tight: The expansion of /ai/ monopthongization in African-American and European-American speech in Memphis, TN. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:279–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2004). The spread of the cot/caught merger in the speech of Memphians: An ethnolinguistic marker? Paper presented at LAVIS III (Language and Variation in the South II) Conference.Tuscaloosa, ALOctober 10–13, 2004(NWAV).Google Scholar
Fridland, Valerie, & Bartlett, Kathryn. (2006). The social and linguistic conditioning of back vowel fronting across ethnic groups in Memphis, TN. English Language and Linguistics 10:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie, Bartlett, Kathryn, & Kreuz, Roger. (2004). Do you hear what I hear? Experimental measurement of the perceptual salience of acoustically manipulated vowel variants by Southern speakers in Memphis, TN. Language Variation and Change 16:1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, Valerie, Bartlett, Kathryn, & Kreuz, Roger. (2005). Making sense of variation: Pleasantness and education ratings of regional vowel variants. American Speech 80:366–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Matthew. (1997). Urban Sound Change Beyond City Limits: The Spread of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Hagiwara, R.. (1997). Dialect variation and formant frequency: The American English vowels revisited. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102:655–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janson, Tore. (1986). Sound change in perception: An experiment. In John, Ohala and Jeri, Jaeger (eds.), Experimental Phonology. Orlando: Academic Press. 253–260.Google Scholar
Kent, Ray, & Charles, Read. (2002). The Acoustic Analysis of Speech. Canada: Delmar.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1991). The three dialects of English. In Penelope, Eckert (ed.), New Ways of Analyzing Variation. New York: Academic Press. 1–44.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2000). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William and Sharon, Ash. (1997). Understanding Birmingham. In Cynthia, Bernstein, Thomas, Nunnally and Robin, Sabino (eds.), Language Variety in the South Revisited. Tuscalossa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. 508–573.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (2006). Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter, & Broadbent, D. E.. (1957). Information conveyed by vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 29:98–104.Google Scholar
Luthin, Herbert. (1987). The story of California (ow): The coming-of-age of English in California. In Denning, K. M. et al. (eds.), Variation in language: NWAV-XV at Stanford (Proceedings of the 15 Annual New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference).Stanford: Department of Linguistics, Stanford University. 312–324.Google Scholar
Massaro, Dominic W.. (1987). Speech perception by ear and eye: A paradigm for psychological inquiry. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.Google Scholar
Niedzielski, Nancy. (1999). The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18:62–85.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik. (1997). A Compendium of vowel plots. A publication of the North Carolina Language and Life Project. Raleigh, NC: Department of English, North Carolina State University.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publication of the American Dialect Society 85Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik. (2002). Sociophonetic applications of speech perception experiments. Americn Speech 77:115–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willis, Clodius. (1972). Perception of vowel phonemes in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, and Buffalo, New York: An application of synthetic vowel categorization tests to dialectology. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 15:246–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed