The Social Stratiication of 'r' in New York City Department Stores

by Labov
1972

Because tape-recorded interviews interferred with natural speech, Labov conducted 'rapid and anonymous observations.

He went to 3 stores--S. Klein (low status), Macy's (middle), and Saks (high status) and asked salesladies where were women's shoes to elicit the response "fourth floor." He then said "excuse me?" to elicit an emphatic pronunciation.

The results of r-fulness in al three stores were examined. ue to linguistic insecurity, the middle-class women at Macy's adopted the newly prestigious Midwestern r; the linguistically secure older women at Saks retained their r-lessness; the lower-classed women at Kelin's did not know that their r-lessness was not prestigious.

He also found differences in race, gender, and what floor of the store he was on.

EVERYONE UP HERE: ENREGISTERMENT AND IDENTITY IN MICHIGAN’S KEWEENAW PENINSULA

by Remlinger
in American Speech

People in Copper Country, above the mitten in Michigan, have a distinctive dialect which is associated with a particular set of ideals. They call themselves "Yoopers."

"The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the articulation of language,
people, and place is not only an effect of discursive practices, but also a
result of historical, economic, and ideological processes. I argue not only
that Copper Country English has become recognized as a regional dialect,
but also that certain features have become normed through discursive and
metadiscursive practices that collectively function to create and maintain the
idea of a local dialect. This awareness (re)shapes perceptions about what the
local dialect is—and is not—and affects the use of particular features and
defines beliefs about those who speak it."

"As examples of talk about
talk, shibboleths are key in enregisterment and defining local identity as they
forge links among identity, dialect, and local knowledge—knowledge based
on language awareness and use."

Dialect Features Affecting the social mobility and economic opportunities of the disadvantaged in Fort Wayne, IN

thesis
by Charles Edward Billiard

1969

p. 107 "cultivated speakers distinguished /o/ and {backwards}/c/ in such words as cot and caught...WOrking class and lower-class Latin-Americans have difficulty attaining proper distinctions in the English vowel systems, particularly in pronouncing the phonemes, /I?, /ae/, /schwa/, u/,...."

p.205 --Southern and SOuth Midland forms were less tolerated than Northern forms (greazy rejected by prestigious groups)

The North American Midland as a dialect area

by Sharon Ash
in Langauge Variation and Change in the American Midland

the Midland is a coherent dialect area, although there is considerable variation within it.

p. 55 :The Midland is a dialect region, positively defined by a variety of phonological, lexical, and syntactic features."
p.56 "...it is set apart by a anumber opf defining features, even while individual cities have their own unique character."

What is dialect?: Revisting the Midland

by Thomas E. Murray and Beth Lee Simon

in language variation and change in the American Midland

This is a wonderful summary of the Midland controversy. The authors propose that there IS a Midland on the basis of grammatical forms (because grammar is more resitant to change).

The Speech of terre haute: a hoosier dialect study

by marvin dale carmony

thesis

p. xv "This study indicates, among other things, that 1 the vocabulary of Terre Haute is essentialy Midland, witha strong admixture of Northern and North Midland words, as well as a considerable proportion of Southern words; (2) the pronunciation of Terre Haute clearly reflects the city's settlement and cultural history, the prestige dialect of today stemming from the prestigiouis and dominat Yankee elemt of yesterday, while "inferior" speech is that containing tyhe most substantial number fo South Midland features; (3) the degree of both social stratification and racial segregation is considerable, judging form the number fo lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactic features with social and racial connotations."

Positive anymore in the midwest

by thomas e. murray
in "heartland" english

negative anymore is standard english, but some dialects also accept positive anymore. positive anymore has "little or no sociolinguistic significance". "various forms of positive anymore having unequal acceptance throughout the Midwest: all forms are evidently not considered equal in the mids of all users;..."

"continues to spread outward"

Linguistic COntroversies, VBE Structures, and Midwest Attitudes

by Timothy J. Riney
in heartland english

p 85 "...VBE and vernacular Midland share a lot of common grammatical structures."
p. 85-87 differences and similarities in Midland and VBE
Waterloo is 21% black

Subjects rated standard English, black accented Eng. with historical present, and VBE on an perceived intelligence scale.

Of course, VBE was associated with less intelligence, standard with highest intelligence, and black accent in the middle.

Cerebral organization of component processes in reading

by pugh et al.

AN fMRI study found that "Orthographic processing made maximum demands on extrastriate sites, phonological processing on a number of frontal and temporal sites, and lexical-semantic processing was most strongly associated with middle and superior temporal sites." Men and women processed reading differently: "females did not show an increase in the numbers of activated pixels from the rhyme to semantic category subtractions while males did."

p9 typo? "males displayed greater activation in the LH" shouldn't it be RH?

"in extrastriate regions (as in the total area analysis) females fail to show patterns of increased activation for real words (semantic category-line) relative to nonwords (rhyme-line) while males do show them.

lateral extrastriate region - orthographic processing
medial extrastriate region - real words than to nonword strings of letters
frontal regions - phonological processing
temporal regions - phonological and semantic processing

phonological and semantic networks overlap spatially in women more than man

The Language of Yankee Cultural Imperialism

frazer
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

p 62 IN and IL experienced tension between the N and S over political power
p 63-64 New Englanders moved entire congregations together Their culture stressed accumulation of wealth
p64-65 "want out" in a novel a Yankee schoolmistress heard this expression for the first time
p. 65 Inland N. became dialect of Midwest cities

"On Inland Northern and the Factors for Dialect Spread and Shift

donahue
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

Inland Northern was once considered just a regional dialect, but is now conidered "basic and correct." "General American."

4 reasons for this:
p 52
1. industrial Great Lakes region increased in economic and social power
2. Webster's 2nd Intl Dictionary
3. NBC Pronouncing Dictionary
4. Mass media

p54 N. Inland is used by mass culture, the dialect used away form family
p56-57 people in the 30s went to movies and learned inland n. dialect. Like finishing school
p57-58 inland N. in decline and N Midland on the rise due to "collapse of the rust belt" and social factors

Two Heartland Perceptions of language variety

by Preston
in in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest

Hoosierss have linguistic insecurity from their association with the South
p46-47 insecure areas such as IN perceive themselves as "exaggerated isolation"

Problems in Midlwest English: Introduction and Overview

in "heartland" english: variation and transition in the american midwest
by Timothy C. Frazer

p2 Inland Northern sometimes mistaken as General American
p3-4 Northern-Midland boundary thru Indiana. Debate about where S. and N. boundaries are
p9 Terre Haute IN--a Hoosier apex but N regional vocab
p. 267 Where are the boundaries of the Midwest? North Central, according to Ling. Atlas

Indiana dialects in their historical setting

by Marvin Carmony

p9 south and north immigrants to IN
p11 Hoosiers are "isolated and self-sufficient"
p15 older dialectology
p18 N. and S. divided, but some words throughout IN
p19 North, South, and Midland with N.Midland and S.Midland
p26 there was a fuzzier line between dialects for freshmen in 1969
p28 southern march of northern words
p28-29 southernmost IN is seperate still
p 32-33 northern forms winning out
p38 "melk" and "manella"

Afrcan American Vernacular English in "Middletown"

by Huang

Muncie has a small African American population which must interact with whites on a daily basis.

p. 245 "this study has found linguistic convergence of Muncie AAVE with WVE phonologically in the last two decades."

p. 252 also syntactically

p. 253 "a linguistic change in which Muncie AAVE is converging with WVE both syntactically and phonologically" due to linguistic accomodation and close daily contact

contrast to Labov 1986, where in a city setting the dialects are diverging

American Dialects: a manual for actors, directors and writers

by Lewis Herman and Marguerite Shalett Herman

p. 298 the Midwestern Dialect is spoken by most in IN.
p. 299 the dialect has musical notes, lilting, cogitation

This view is corroborated by the BBC site and by the Midwestern guy in American Tongues

"a-Prefixing in Appalachian English"

by Walt Wolfram 1980

In Appalachian English. Ex: "he come a-runnin' out there and got shot"

"a-prefixing is restricted to those -ing particles that are part of the verb or its complement (i.e., the adverb); it does not occur in other types of contexts such as true gerunds."

"all a-prefixed participial forms are derived from prepositional phrases, and that a- itself comes from a preposition."

Used in continuous, unstructured activities like hunting, canning, churning, running. Not used in games or structured activities like baseball or puzzle-solvin. Not used in non-kinetic activities like dreaming.

"The Midlands: The Upper South and Lower North Dialects"

Craig M. Carver

in American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography

The Midlands do not have their own dialect, but only subdialecs of the Upper South and Lower North. Indiana is basically cut in half.

Rethinking the neurological basis of language

stowe, haverkort, zwarts

The clasical view of neurolinguistics assumed that language was localized in the left hemisphere, Broca's and Wernicke's area were the main areas involved in language, and they were only involved in language. These are incorrect.

Peterson et al. performed the first neuroimaging study of normal individuals in 1989.

In the classical view, Broca's was involved in production and Wernicke's in comprehension. Neuroimaging studies have shown that linguistic centers cannot be split up this way.

They are both necessary for normal language functioning. Both light up for semantic and syntactic tasks. Broca's area might be responsible for general working memory and storage of information. This is why Broca's aphasics have trouble with syntax and leave out function words.

It is possible that there are two functionally seperate systems in one anatomical area. Broca's area can be divided into 3 sections. It sometimes lights up when a person hears music.

The anterior temporal lobe on both the right and left sides are somehow involved in the comprehension of syntactically, lexically, or semantically ambiguous sentences.

articulatory rehearsal and error detection are utilized when the sentence is difficult or ambiguous. This lights up motor areas and the right cerebellum, which may be involved in error detection.

The superior frontal gyrus is involved in semantic evaluation.

The anterior insula is used in articulation. The "left anterior insula is important for fine motor coordination in speech."

"The posterior inferior temporal and fusiform gyrus are important for various aspects of langauge processing.

These areas are not dedicated to language, but are part of the language system.

The right frontal lobe is important for understanding metaphors, for humor comprehension, and inferring topic shifts.

The right hemisphere figures out nonliteral meanings of sentences.

"when processing demands increase, activation in the right hemisphere increases."

"Language as a complete anatomical network is not modular, relative to other cognitive functions. Component functions within the language network may be specific to language."

Appalachian English in Southern Indiana?

by Brian Jose

Montgomery (1989, 2007) proposed three standards for establishing that dialects are genetically related: historical connection, explicit quantitative description of plural verbal -s, and the plural verbal -s was compared to dialects of Appalachian English.
He also gave evidence that the patterns are not simply "universals" of english vernaculars.
Jose also investigated other aspects of the grammar.

Defining the Speech Community

Nancy C. Dorian
Chapter 2 Defining the Speech Community
1982, in Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities

There is a community of fisherfolk in Scotland who are bilingual in East Sutherland Gaelic and English. According to Gumperz they would belong to two speech communities. Dorian notices that the picture is complicated by low-proficiency bilinguals identified as part of the speech community by fluent bilinguals. The low-proficiency speakers understood everything spoken in Gaelic, including jokes, but some almost never spoke in Gaelic. They also understood sociolinguistic cues that the “linguist-guest”, and fluent speaker of Gaelic, often missed. One speaker considered herself relatively fluent, but under testing, was proven to have low-proficiency; this hadn’t stopped her, her entire life, form inclusion in the Gaelic speech community.

Speech COmmunities

in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
By Ronald Wardhaugh
1998 Chapter 5 ‘Speech Comunities”
Speech communities are impossible to define precisely, but the term is still useful to sociolinguists.
The English language is spoken by variety of speech communities, and Switzerland is one speech community with multiple languages. Speech comm.. cannot be defined in linguistic terms.
Hindis separate themselves from speakers of Urdu, although it is the same lang.; most Chinese consider every other Chinese part of their community, although they may only be able to communicate by the written language.
“Each individual … is a member of many different speech communities.” People may switch back and forth between types of speech (jargon, dialect, standard, another lang.) during the course of the day or even switch while speaking an utterance.
Networks: in England, people of lower class and upper class are said to have dense multiplex networks, but middle-class people are said to have loose simplex networks.

"interpreting Words"

Chapter 5 of Images of Mind by Michael Posner, 1994

The researchers first asked subjects to perform a very simple task: looking at a cross on a computer monitor. The tasks became increasingly complex until the authors finally asked the subjects to produce words in response to a prompt. PET scans were taken during every task. The researchers identified the areas of the brain involved in looking at the simplest task; when these areas of the brain were activated during the next task, the researchers subtracted these areas from the second scans to identify the areas of the brain needed for the second task. Eventually, the researchers were able to isolate the areas of the brain used for accessing lexical meaning.

There are 2 models of how humans read; neurological and cognitive. They disagree as to whether or not our visual interpretation of the word goes through the phonetic representation before we comprehend it. The cognitive model says no, that top-down processing will recognize the word. The neurological model (Wernicke first said it) says yes.

Language processing can proceed thru many dif. areas of the brain.

A verb generation task made many different areas of the brain light up, including Broca's area.

Practicing the verb generation task changes the neural pathways required for the exercise.