8 - Vowel shifting in the southern states

Summary

Introduction

In 1972 it was first realized that there was a general shift in the vowels of not only the southern states, but all the southern varieties of English around the world – southern England, the southern states of the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. What was especially remarkable about this shift in the United States was that the direction of the rotation of the vowels was completely opposite to the direction of a vowel shift going on simultaneously in the northern cities, producing yet more differences between northern and southern varieties in the United States over time.

This very interesting research was done by William Labov, Malcah Yaeger, and Richard Steiner and presented in a National Science Foundation report (1972) as well as in other publications and presentations. The southern states data on which it was based came from seventeen conversational interviews carried out by Labov in central and west Texas, Georgia (Atlanta), and eastern North Carolina (including the Outer Banks) in 1969. In more recent work, Labov has revised and expanded his earlier research, and has attempted to place it in a larger context (Labov 1991, 1994). Data collected by Ash in 1988 and 1990 from twenty lower-middle-class and working-class young adults and teenagers in Birmingham, Alabama, has also played a part in the work on this topic (Labov and Ash 1997).

Figure 8.1 shows the Southern Shift schematically, in Labov's 1994 version.