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A rural/metropolitan split in the speech of Texas Anglos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

Erik R. Thomas
Erik R. Thomas
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
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Abstract

The migration of people to the Sunbelt in the United States constitutes a major demographic shift, but has received little attention from language variationists. In Texas, this migration has led to a split of the Anglo population of the state into two dialects, a rural dialect and a metropolitan dialect. Evidence from a random-sample survey of Texas and from a systematic set of surveys of high schools in the state shows that young rural Anglos preserve two stereotypical features of the Texas accent, monophthongal /ai/, as in night, and lowered onsets of /e/, as in day, while young Anglos from metropolitan centers lack these features. This difference, which is absent among middle-aged and older native Texan Anglos, appears to have resulted from the fact that in-migration from other parts of the country is concentrated in metropolitan centers, especially suburbs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1997 , pp. 309 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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