Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T11:20:35.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Do you hear what I hear? Experimental measurement of the perceptual salience of acoustically manipulated vowel variants by Southern speakers in Memphis, TN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2004

Valerie Fridland
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Kathryn Bartlett
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Roger Kreuz
Affiliation:
University of Memphis

Abstract

For the past twenty-five years, the results of most sociolinguistic research suggest productive changes serve as social indices, uniting and dividing groups of speakers by gender, class, ethnicity, and so forth (Eckert, 1988, 2000; Labov, 1994, 2000; Milroy, 1980; Trudgill, 1974). Although the reoccurrence of patterned use of linguistic variants by different groups within communities appears to suggest a paralinguistic social function for variation, the effect of low-level phonetic variation on the perception of social traits is still relatively unexplored. To this end, the current article is an attempt to study speakers' perceptual awareness and social evaluation of specific vowel variants using acoustically manipulated speech samples. For the study, guises of the same speaker were manipulated according to Southern and Northern regional shifts to determine whether such differences function as perceptual cues for listeners. Although experimental in design, this study provides a method of measuring speakers' sensitivity to slight changes in formant position and attempts to determine whether such subtle phonetic changes are indeed used as socially salient categorization cues by speakers.This research has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Linguistics Program BCS #0132145.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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 J. Arnold et al. (eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory and analysis; selected papers from NWAV 23 at Stanford. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. 325.
Assmann, P., Nearey, T., & Hogan, J. (1982). Vowel identification: Orthographic, perceptual, and acoustic aspects. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 71:975989.Google Scholar
Clarke, Sandra, Elms, Ford, & Amani, Youssef. (1995). The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence. Language Variation and Change 7:209228.Google Scholar
Clopper, Cynthia, & Pisoni, David. (2001). Some acoustic cues for categorizing American regional English dialects. Paper presented to the New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference 30, Raleigh, NC.
Eckert, Penelope. (1988). Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 1:183207.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
Evans, Betsy. (2001). Dialect contact and the Northern Cities Shift in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University.
Feagin, Crawford. (1986). More evidence for vowel change in the South. In David Sankoff (ed.), Diversity and diachrony. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 8395.
Fridland, Valerie. (2000). The Southern Vowel Shift in Memphis, TN. Language Variation and Change 11:267285.Google Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2001). Social factors in the Southern Shift: Gender, age and class. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(2):233253.Google Scholar
Fridland, Valerie. (2003). Network strength and the realization of the Southern Vowel Shift among African-Americans in Memphis, TN. American Speech 78:330.Google Scholar
Gay, T. (1968). The effect of speaking rate on diphthong formant movements. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 34:15701573.Google Scholar
Gordon, Matthew. (1997). Urban sound change beyond city limits: The spread of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.
Graff, David, Labov, William, & Harris, Wendell. (1986). Testing listeners' reactions to phonological markers of ethnic identity. In David Sankoff (ed.), Diversity and diachrony. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 4553.
Kent, Ray, & Read, Charles. (2002). The acoustic analysis of speech. Albany, NY: Delmar.
Labov, William. (1991). The three dialects of English. In Penelope Eckert (ed.), New ways of analyzing variation. New York: Academic. 144.
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William. (2000). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William, & Ash, Sharon. (1997). Understanding Birmingham. In C. Bernstein, T. Nunnally, & R. Sabino (eds.), Language variety in the South revisited. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 508573.
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (1999). The first continental map of North American phonology (TELSUR Project). Poster presented to the New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference 28, Toronto, Canada.
Labov, William, Yeager, Malcah, & Steiner, Richard. (1972). A quantitative study of sound change in progress. Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.
Ladefoged, Peter, & Broadbent, D. E. (1957). Information conveyed by vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 29:98104.Google Scholar
Milroy, Leslie. (1980). Language and social networks. Baltimore: University Park Press.
Niedzielski, Nancy. (1999). The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18:6285.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis. (1989). Perceptual dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris.
Preston, Dennis. (1993). Folk dialectology. In Dennis Preston (ed.), American dialect research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 333378.
Thomas, Erik. (1989). The implications of /o/ fronting in Wilmington, North Carolina. American Speech 64:327333.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik. (1997a). A rural/metropolitan split in the speech of Texas Anglos. Language Variation and Change 9:309332.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik. (1997b). A compendium of vowel plots. (A publication of the North Carolina Language and Life Project.) Department of English, North Carolina State University. Raleigh, NC.
Thomas, Erik. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. American Dialect Society, publication 85. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Bezooijen, Renee, & Gooskens, Charlotte. (1999). Identification of language varieties: The contribution of different linguistic levels. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18:3148.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, Hazen, Kirk, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (1999). Dialect change and maintenance on the Outer Banks. American Dialect Society, publication 81. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.