GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad Y
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Mapping Dialect: GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad Y. and Luthin H Mapping Dialect: GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad, Y. ([email protected]) Luthin, H. ([email protected]) Clarion University of Pennsylvania Abstract Historically, most surveys of American dialect have focused on large‐scale regions of the country: the Linguistic Atlas of New England, the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States, and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, for example. However, even in a region as small and relatively homogeneous as western Pennsylvania, there is measurable diversity of language. This paper describes a dialect survey, in progress for the last 10 years that focuses precisely on dialect variation within western Pennsylvania. In recent years, the researchers have tapped the potential of GIS techniques to help make these distributions visible and assess the underlying speech patterns of the region. This paper is an attempt in this direction. It demonstrates the methods and techniques used to manipulate the collected data and the process of creating visual cartographic representations of the results. Introduction The essence of dialectology is the study of variation in language. Variation can be found at every level of language, from the nuances of pronunciation and the details of verb conjugations, to the structure of sentences, the content of the vocabulary, and patterns of interaction between individuals. The field of dialectology today is pursued down all of these avenues and more, and from a multitude of perspectives (social, anthropological, diachronic, synchronic, longitudinal, qualitative, quantitative, statistical), but it had its origins in the study of regional variation—the geography of language—and cartography was at the heart of its enterprise. The earliest systematic exploration of American dialects was undertaken for the American Dialect Society by Hans Kurath, who published the three‐volume Linguistic Atlas of New England in 1939.1 This, and the eight other regional atlases that followed it over the course of the next 40 years, established a base‐line portrait of the dialect areas of the United States. Since then, other major studies have been produced, most notably the Dictionary of American Regional English,2 out in four volumes to date (from A‐Sk), and the definitive Atlas of North American English.3 The cartographic presentation of data is a key part of both these publications. 1 Kurath, et al. 1939‐43. Linguistic Atlas of New England. 6 vols, bound as 3. Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies. 2 Cassidy & Hall (eds). 1985‐2002. Dictionary of American Regional English, vols. I‐IV. Cambridge: Harvard U. Press. 3 Labov, Ash & Boberg. Atlas of North American English: Phonology and Phonetics. Berlin: Mouton/de Gruyter. 2006. Page 1 of 26 Mapping Dialect: GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad Y. and Luthin H The present study is based on the Western Pennsylvania Dialect Survey, an online database hosted by the English Department at Clarion University.4 The WPDS began as a teaching tool for a class on American dialects, and its narrow focus is a by‐product of the demographics of the student body at Clarion University, where the vast majority of students are from the region itself. There were simply not enough representatives of outside dialects to conduct meaningful nation‐wide surveys. To salvage the field‐collecting experience for the students, the teacher of that class (Luthin), turned his attention to micro‐variation within the Western Pennsylvania sprachbund. To this end, students consult the language use in their own towns and cities and come up with a list of items that display variation. The current version of the survey, which has been online and collecting data since 2003, consists of 60 such variables—mostly vocabulary, but also including some phonological variables and a few syntactic alternants as well. Among these variables are many of the more prevalent Western Pennsylvania regionalisms, such as redd up vs. clean or tidy up; sledding vs. sled riding; spicket or spigot vs. faucet; the pronunciation of the word color as either “keller” or “kuhler”; the use of yinz as a second person plural pronoun; and the needs fixed syntactic pattern, which exists in opposition to either the Standard English needs to be fixed or the Southern variant needs fixin’. Other variables are more localized to Pittsburgh and its environs—the so‐ called “Pittsburghese” dialect—for instance, gumband vs. rubberband; nebby vs. nosey; slippy vs. slippery; and the monophthongization of the /aw/ vowel in words like out and downtown as “aht” and “dahntahn”. Prior to 2003, students composed their maps the hard way: by hand, working with small samples of the data they collected. With the increasing availability of mapping software in the University’s GIS lab, however, another possibility suggested itself. A small change to the database allowed us to collect zip code data along with the other personal information associated with each record. From 2003 on, then, each response in the database could be associated with a point on a map, allowing us for the first time to take a really close look at the spatial patterns contained in our data. There are indeed some straightforward geographic distributions for several of our variables. For instance, the isogloss boundary between the Northern and North Midlands dialect areas (which runs across the upper part of the commonwealth, splitting off the northernmost tier of counties from the rest of Pennsylvania) is plainly visible on a number of maps: on the REDD UP map, for example. But it is also fair to say that, for the majority of our variables, while there may be tantalizing spatial tendencies, the distributions are anything but straightforward. This is perhaps to be expected for the kind of “intramural” variation we are exploring with this survey. The question is why. Are most variants simply in random circulation throughout the speech area, or are there other factors in play that work to obscure existing patterns? The fact is, not all patterns are necessarily spatial in character. There are a host of social factors that influence speech every bit as strongly as geography does. Socioeconomic class and level of education, for instance, have powerful effects on the way people speak, as do age and gender, ethnicity and occupation. Sometimes variables are confined to a particular class or gender or ethnicity; others are strongly associated with a particular age‐group, or can increase or decrease in prevalence or intensity 4 The WPDS site can be accessed at: http://web2.clarion.edu/english‐luthin/dialect2003/ Page 2 of 26 Mapping Dialect: GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad Y. and Luthin H with age; still others might covary with level of education. Often all these factors can interact, cross‐ influencing each other, while spreading geographically as well. The needs fixed construction, for instance, is found throughout Western Pennsylvania, and cuts across socioeconomic class, largely without stigma. The keller pronunciation, on the other hand, and the use of the non‐standard pronoun yinz, are strongly disfavored by upper and upper‐middle class speakers, and are inversely associated with level of education. Sometimes the interactions among all these factors can be dauntingly complex. Like keller and yinz, the Pittsburgh pronunciation pattern found in words like down and out (“dahn” and “aht”), is correlated with both class and education. In addition, it is favored more by men than by women, particularly men associated with blue‐collar occupations like (in the old days of Pittsburgh steel) millwork, carpentry, and manufacturing. It is still a prominent feature of the Pittsburgh speech‐scape, but younger speakers are less likely overall to use the variable than older speakers are.5 The pronunciation also appears to have been spreading outward from the city into surrounding areas, so there is a spatial component to this variable as well. Later in the paper, we will look more closely at this variable to see how mapping can help tease apart its intricacies. 5 For a detailed recent discussion of this variable, see Johnstone, Bhasin & Wittkofski (2002), “ ‘Dahntahn’ Pittsburgh: Monophthongal /aw/ and Representations of Localness in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” American Speech, 77:2, pp. 148‐166. Page 3 of 26 Mapping Dialect: GIS Applications in Studying Dialect of Western Pennsylvania Ayad Y. and Luthin H Survey Data Description The survey results were presented in Excel format; it was converted to a file geodatabase table in order to simplify the parsing process. Out of the available 60 different topics, 19 were identified and extracted based on their significance. Those were tabulated (see Appendix A) and a list of other attributes that might have a possible correlation with those topics was listed (Table 1). Those attributes are: Population Density, Community Type as a child (ENVIRONS_CHILD) and their Socioeconomic Class category at childhood time (CLASS_CHILD), the Gender (SEX) and the Age (AGE) of the respondent. The present study is concerned with the methodology involved in extracting those data and presenting them in a spatially sound format in order to visually identify geographic correlations and interrelationships. Therefore, only one topic was considered as an example of data extraction (DOWNANDOUT). Table 1 List of