Transcript Regional Dialects

Regional Dialects
Wolfram & Schilling-Estes
Chapter 5
5.1 Eliciting Regional Dialect Forms
• Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (1928)
• Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States
– http://us.english.uga.edu
• Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE)
• The Atlas of North American English
based on TELSUR
5.2 Mapping Regional Variants
• A Word Geography of the Eastern United
States (1949) Kurath: text p. 139
• Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South
Atlantic States: computerized mapping—
Kretzschmar, Univ. of Georgia: text p. 140
• Comparison of conventional and
computerized map from DARE: text p. 141
5.3 The Distribution of Dialect Forms
• GROUP-EXCLUSIVE pattern
– Isogloss
• TRANSITIONAL ZONES
• ISOGLOSS BUNDLES setting off regional
areas (p. 142)
• ISOLGLOSSAL LAYERING (text: pp. 1435, Figure 5.7)
Shift from lexicon to phonology
• Labov’s TELSUR work:
– NORTHERN CITIES VOWEL SHIFT (a vowel
rotation pattern)—chart on page 148
– SOUTHERN VOWEL SHIFT—chart on page
149
– LOW BACK MERGER (traditional Midland +
West)—map on p. 147
Northern Cities Shift and Southern Shift
/i/ (beet)
/u/ (boot)
/ʊ/ (put)
/ɪ/ (bit)
/e/ (bait)
/ɛ/ (bet)
/æ/ (bat)
(see pp. 148-9)
/o/ (boat)
/^/ (but)
/Ɔ/ (bought)
/ɑ/ (father)
5.4 Dialect Diffusion
(in geographical
and social space)
• The Wave Model (text p. 154): “contiguous diffusion” (dropping a
stone into a pond)
• Considerations in spread of innovation:
– (1) the phenomenon itself (linguistic dimensions)
– (2) communication networks (change starts in low-density, uniplex
network situations = urban) INNOVATORS, EARLY ADOPTERS
– (3) distance
– (4) time
– (5) social structure (lower middle class initiates)
• The Gravity model or Hierarchical Model (text p. 155): physical
distance + social density: (skipping a stone across the surface of a
pond)
– larger to smaller cities = “cascade diffusion”
– Oklahoma: “counterhierarchical diffusion”: importance of social meaning
(e.g., “fixin’ to” as symbolic of Southern identity)
5.5 Perceptual Dialectology
• Sometimes called “folk dialectology”
– Focuses on people’s “commonsense” beliefs
and subjective mental categories rather than
spoken language data
– May plan an important role in shaping
language variation and change across regional
and social space
• Dennis Preston’s work (map p. 160)
5.6 Region and Place
• Have social meaning in grounding people’s
identities in localized communities
• The construction of social identity
• “The distribution of dialect features in
physical space may be quite different from
the role that they play in people’s
construction of cultural place”