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4 - Sociophonetics and Regional Variation

A New Dialectology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Tyler Kendall  and
Valerie Fridland
Tyler Kendall
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Valerie Fridland
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
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Summary

Chapter 4 examines how the traditional field of regional dialectology evolved toward and contributed to modern sociophonetic pursuits, considering what advances increasingly sociophonetic approaches have allowed.Looking at how geographic space impacts dialect, the discussion considers how recent work, such as the Atlas of North American English, incorporates sociophonetic measures to better capture and explain the features that comprise and contribute to the spread of regional varieties. The chapter surveys recent research taking a sociophonetic perspective to the study of regional variation.In particular, it hones in on how sociophonetic approaches to the study of vowel variation has reshaped the way regional dialects are measured and defined.Finally, work examining the role of phonetic features in how listeners process and recognize regional dialects is considered in some depth.

Keywords

Sociophoneticsregional varietiesdialectologydialect perceptionregional vowel shifts
Type
Chapter
Information
Sociophonetics , pp. 73 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Britain, David 2013. Space, Diffusion and Mobility. In Chambers, J. K. and Schilling, Natalie (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell: 471–500.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K. and Trudgill, Peter 1998. Dialectology, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clopper, Cynthia G. and Pisoni, David B. 2004. Homebodies and Army Brats: Some Effects of Early Linguistic Experience and Residential History on Dialect Categorization. Language Variation and Change 16(1): 31–48.Google Scholar
Kendall, Tyler and Fridland, Valerie 2012. Variation in Perception and Production of Mid Front Vowels in the U.S. Southern Vowel Shift. Journal of Phonetics 40(2): 289–306.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon and Boberg, Charles 2006. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar

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