Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:31:48.847Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

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

Abbott, Carl. (1987). The new urban America: Growth and politics in Sunbelt cities (2nd ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Armour, Malcolm. (1983). The social stratification of (e) in Midlothian, Texas. In Edmondson, Jerold A. (Ed.), Pilot studies in sociolinguistics: Variation, use, and attitudes. (Research Papers of the Texas Summer Institute of Linguistics 13.) Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 2–21.Google Scholar
Atwood, E. Bagby. (1962). The regional vocabulary of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Bernstein, Cynthia. (1989). Methodology fora phonological survey of Texas. Journal of English Linguistics 22:6–16.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Dyer, Margie. (1992). An approach to sampling in dialectology. American Speech 67:1–18.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Maynor, Natalie. (1985). The present tense of be in Southern black folk speech. American Speech 60:195–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Maynor, Natalie. (1987). Decreolization? Language in Society 16:449–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, & Maynor, Natalie. (1989). The divergence controversy. American Speech 64:12–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, & Sand, Lori. (1991). The focus of linguistic innovation in Texas. English World-Wide 12:195–214.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan, & Sand, Lori. (1991). The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3:241–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan, & Sand, Lori. (1993). Some patterns of linguistic diffusion. Language Variation and Change 5:359–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan, & Sand, Lori. (1996). The linguistic consequences of catastrophic events. In Arnold, Jennifer et al. (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford: CSLI. 435–451.Google Scholar
Bayley, Robert. (1994). Consonant cluster reduction in Tejano English. Language Variation and Change 6:303–326.Google Scholar
Berni, Mary. (1995). The distribution of [œl] in the American South. Master's thesis. University of Memphis.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Cynthia. (1993). Measuring social causes of phonological variables. American Speech 68:227–240.Google Scholar
Buckingham, Andrew. (1983). The stratification of the sociolinguistic variable (e) in the speech of residents of Midlothian, Texas. In Edmonson, Jerold A. (Ed.), Pilot studies in sociolinguistics: Variation, use, and attitudes. (Research Papers of the Texas Summer Institute of Linguistics 13.) Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 22–36.Google Scholar
Callary, Robert E. (1975). Phonological change and the development of an urban dialect in Illinois. Language in Society 4:155–169.Google Scholar
Carver, Craig M. (1987). American regional dialects: A word geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cedergren, Henrietta, & Sankoff, David. (1974). Variable rules: Performance as a statistical reflection of competence. Language 50:335–355.Google Scholar
Clark, Thomas L. (1972). Marietta, Ohio: The continuing erosion of a speech island. Publication of the American Dialect Society 57:1–55.Google Scholar
Cook, Stanley J. (1969). Language change and the emergence of an urban dialect in Utah. Doctoral dissertation. University of Utah.Google Scholar
Deser, Toni. (1990). Dialect transmission and variation: An acoustic analysis of vowels in six urban Detroit families. Doctoral dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
DiPaolo, Marianna. (1989). Double modals as single lexical items. American Speech 64:195–224.Google Scholar
Disner, Sandra Ferrari. (1980). Evaluation of vowel normalization procedures. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67:253–261.Google Scholar
Edgerton, William. (1935). Another note on the Southern pronunciation of “long i.” American Speech 10:190.Google Scholar
Edwards, Walter F. (1992). Sociolinguistic behavior in a Detroit inner-city black neighborhood. Language in Society 21:93–115.Google Scholar
Edwards, Walter F. (1996). Sex-based differences in language choice in an African-American neighborhood in Detroit. In Schneider, Edgar W. (Ed.), Focus on the USA. (Varieties of English around the World, general series 16.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. 183–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellison, Mary. (1974). The Black experience: American Blacks since 1865. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Evans, Medford. (1935). Southern “long i.” American Speech 10:188–190.Google Scholar
Everhart, Jim. (1967). The illustrated Texas dictionary of the English language. Volume 1. Houston: Creative Books of Houston.Google Scholar
Feagin, Crawford. (1986). More evidence for major vowel change in the South. In Sankoff, David (Ed.). Diversity and diachrony. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 83–95.Google Scholar
Galindo, D. Letticia. (1988). Towards a description of Chicano English: A sociolinguistic perspective. In Ferrara, Kathleen, Brown, Becky, Walters, Keith, & Baugh, John (Eds.), Linguistic change and contact. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference on New Ways of Analyzing Variation in Language. (Texas Linguistic Forum, 30.) Austin: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas. 113–123.Google Scholar
Garcia, Juliet Villareal. (1976). The regional vocabulary of Brownsville, Texas. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
González, Gustavo. (1976). Some characteristics of the English used by migrant Spanish-speaking children in Texas. Aztlan 7:27–49.Google Scholar
Greet, W. Cabell. (1931). A phonographic expedition to Williamsburg, Virginia. American Speech 6:161–172.Google Scholar
Gregg, Robert J. (1972). The Scotch-Irish dialect boundaries of Ulster. In Wakelin, M. F. (Ed.), Patterns in the folk speech of the British Isles. London: Athlone. 109–139.Google Scholar
Grossman, James R. (1989). Land of hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Joseph S. (1942). The phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain speech. American Speech 17:1–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Westley H. (1977). Phonological variations observed in San Antonio, Texas. Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest 2:83–93.Google Scholar
Hartman, James W. (1985). Guide to pronunciation. In Cassidy, Frederic G. (Ed.), Dictionary of American regional English, Volume 1. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. xli–lxi.Google Scholar
Iri, M. (1959). Mathematical models in phonetics. Gengo Kenkyu 35:23–30.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. P. (1928). Who lost the Southern? American Speech 3:377–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. (1996, October). Rural and urban speech forms as symbolic resources in contemporary Texas. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXV, Las Vegas.Google Scholar
Katzman, David M. (1991). Black migration. In Foner, Eric & Garraty, John A. (Eds.), The reader's companion to American history. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 114–116.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1994a). Dialects converging: Rural speech in urban Norway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1994b). Babel in Buckinghamshire? Pre-school children acquiring accent features in the New Town of Milton Keynes. In Melchers, G. (Ed.), Nonstandard varieties of language. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. 64–83.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E. (1995). Children, adolescents, and language change. In Kerswill, Paul, Ingham, Richard, Huang, Yan, & Shockey, Linda (Eds.), Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 2. Reading: Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading. 201–222.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul E., & Williams, Ann. (1994). A new dialect in a new city: children's and adults' speech in Milton Keynes. Final report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council.Google Scholar
Kurath, Hans, & McDavid, Raven I. Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19:273–309.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. (Conduct and Communication 4.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1991). The three dialects of English. In Eckert, Penelope (Ed.), New ways of analyzing sound change. San Diego: Academic. 1–44.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Cohen, Paul, Robins, Clarence, & Lewis, John. (1968). A study of the Non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City. (Cooperative Research Project 3288.) Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Yeager, Malcah, & Steincr, Richard. (1972). A quantitative study of sound change in progress. Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Lambert, Sage. (1995). The/r/-ful truth of the matter. Master's thesis. University of Memphis.Google Scholar
Leyburn, James G. (1962). The Scotch-Irish: A social history. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
McDavid, Raven I. Jr. (1958). The dialects of American English. In Francis, W. Nelson (Ed.), The structure of American English. New York: Ronald. 480–543.Google Scholar
McDowell, John, & McRae, Susan. (1972). Differential response of the class and ethnic components of the Austin speech community to marked phonological variables. Anthropological Linguistics 14:228–239.Google Scholar
Merrill, Celia Dale. (1987). Mexican-American English in McAllen, Texas: Features of accentedness in the English of native Spanish bilinguals. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (1980). Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mock, Carol C. (1991). Impact of the Ozark drawl: Its role in the shift of the diphthong /ey/. In Eckert, Penelope (Ed.), New ways of analyzing sound change. San Diego: Academic. 233–250.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Michael. (1993). The Southern accent—alive and well. Southern Cultures: Inaugural Issue 47–64.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Michael. (1996). The future of Southern American English. The SECOL Review 20:1–24.Google Scholar
1960 Census of Population. General Population Characteristics: Texas. (1961). Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce.Google Scholar
1970 Census of Population. General Population Characteristics: Texas. (1971). Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce.Google Scholar
1980 Census of Population. Characteristics of the Population. Number of Inhabitants: Texas. (1982). Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce.Google Scholar
1990 Census of Population. General Population Characteristics: Texas. (1992). Washington, DC: Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.Google Scholar
Pederson, Lee A., Leas, Susan, Bailey, Guy H., & Bassett, Marvin H., (Eds.). (1981). Linguistic atlas of the Gulf states: The basic materials. Ann Arbor University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, & Labov, William. (1979). On the uses of variable rules. Language in Society 8:189–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, Janet B. (1959). Aloofness from Spanish influence in Texas English. Word 15:270–281.Google Scholar
Sawyer, Janet B. (1964). Social aspects of bilingualism in San Antonio, Texas. Publication of the American Dialect Society 41:7–15.Google Scholar
Shuy, Roger W. (1962). The Northern-Midland dialect boundary in Illinois. Publication of the American Dialect Society 38:1–79.Google Scholar
Tarpley, Fred A. (1970). From blinky to blue-john: A world atlas of Northeast Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1989). A phylogenetic analysis of the Southern Shift. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1989 [1993]). Vowel changes in Columbus, Ohio. Journal of English Linguistics 22:205–215.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1991). The origin of Canadian raising in Ontario. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 36: 147–170.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1993). Why we need descriptive studies: phonological variables in Hispanic English. In Queen, Robin & Barrett, Rusty (Eds.), SALSA I (Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium about Language and Society—Austin). (Texas Linguistics Forum, 33.) Austin: University of Texas, Department of Linguistics. 42–49.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1995). Phonetic factors and perceptual reanalyses in sound change. Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. (1996). A comparison of variation patterns of variables among sixth-graders in an Ohio community. In Schneider, Edgar W. (Ed.), Focus on the USA. (Varieties of English around the World, general series 16.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. 149–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik, & Bailey, Guy. (1992). A case of competing mergers and their resolution. The SECOL Review 16:179–200.Google Scholar
Thompson, Roger M. (1975). Mexican-American English: Social correlates of regional pronunciation. American Speech 50:18–24.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 2:215–246.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1986). Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Walsh, Henry, & Mote, Victor L. (1974). A Texas dialect feature: Origins and distribution. American Speech 49:40–51.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Bernard L., Gross, Harold T., & Rees, John. (1985). Regional growth and decline in the United States (2nd ed.). New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Wells, J. C. (1973). Jamaican pronunciation in London. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wesley, Charles H. (1927). Negro labor in the United States, 1859–1925: A study in American economic history. New York: Vanguard.Google Scholar
Wheatley, Katherine E.t & Stanley, Oma. (1959). Three generations of east Texas speech. American Speech 34:83–94.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (1995). Moribund dialects and the endangerment canon: The case of the Ocracoke brogue. Language 71:696–721.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (1996). Dialect change and maintenance in a post-insular island community. In Schneider, Edgar W. (Ed.), Focus on the USA. (Varieties of English around the World, general series 16.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. 103–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar