Sounding Appalachian: /Ai/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, and Rootedness Paul E
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2016 Sounding Appalachian: /ai/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, and Rootedness Paul E. Reed University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Reed, P. E.(2016). Sounding Appalachian: /ai/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, and Rootedness. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3563 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sounding Appalachian: /aI/ Monophthongization, Rising Pitch Accents, and Rootedness by Paul E. Reed Bachelor of Arts Maryville College 2004 Master of Arts University of Memphis 2007 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Tracey L. Weldon, Major Professor Elaine Chun, Committee Member Michael Montgomery, Committee Member Allen Montgomery, Committee Member Erik R. Thomas, Outside Member Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies c Copyright by Paul E. Reed, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of two great men, Paul Henry ‘Pop’ Reed and Dr. Paul Emory Reed Sr. They both exemplified what it meant to be mountain men. Dad and Pop, I hope you are looking down from your rockers with smiles. iii Acknowledgments When I think of the number of people that have helped me throughout the course of preparing, researching, and writing this dissertation, my gratitude swells. I would not have been able to produce this work, and I would also not be who I am today. To the people of Hancock County who shared their lives and stories with me, thank you. I hope this work shows that I did not and do not take your words for granted. There would be no dissertation without your voices, and I am eternally grateful for the privilege of hearing them. Thank you to Tracey Weldon for your steady and compassionate hand. You are all that an advisor is supposed to be: kind, encouraging, supportive, and firm when needed. Your comments, questions, feedback, and exhoration were always helpful and thorough. You pushed me to see the weaknesses in my argument and my ideas, but you were also quick to help me to see how to address them. You also knew when to let me be more independent, as my ideas were flourishing and the dissertation was coming to fruition. Mastery of the delicate balance of oversight and freedom characterizes your advisement. I hope one day that I can be the same. Thank you to Michael Montgomery. With your help and guidance, I found the proud Appalachian mountain man that was always there inside. Our conversations helped me to understand who I was, where I came from, and how I could be an advocate for my region. Along the way, I not only gained a mentor, but a friend. I cherished our conversations, trips, and collaborations. Thank you for your input into this work; it would not have happened without you. Thank you to Elaine Chun, Allen Montgomery, and Erik Thomas for serving on iv my committee. Conversations with Elaine helped me to better understand more qualitative approaches, and to see how identity can be expressed. I am so grateful that you helped me see past numbers, tokens, and formants! Allen Montgomery showed me the wonderful word of statistical analysis. Thank you for showing me how to bring a modicum of order from the chaos of real-world data. This analysis would have been much poorer without your help! To Erik Thomas, thank you for opening my eyes to sociophonetics. Your instruction helped me to even be able to approach this topic, and your guidance helped me to carry it out. There are so many of my fellow students who have shared this journey with me. Thanks to Sandra Keller, Julia McKinney, Sara Lide, and Thor Sawin for spending many an hour with me writing. Your help, criticism, encouragement, and comments were always on point, even when I sidetracked us with Skype emojis! We did it! To the Agraphia Group — Allison, Vic, and Spencer — thanks for helping me to set writing goals and for encouraging me to meet them. To Emily Garnett and Isabel Hubbard, #StatPackForLife. Thanks also to Bridget Anderson, my Appalachian big sister from another mister, for conversation, encouragement, and insight. I am very grateful to Kirk Hazen for sharing his dissertation data from Warren County with me, and to Michael J. Fox for helping me get it. Thanks also to Dennis Preston and Walt Wolfram for conversations that helped refine my thinking on many topics, both dissertation related and beyond. I hope to be like you both someday! I would be remiss if I did not thank the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, for the Dissertation Fellowship during 2014-2015. That award allowed me to conduct research and to focus on writing, I am very grateful. Last, but certainly not least, thanks go to my wife, Kristin, my partner in this journey of life. You are my muse and my anchor. Thanks for the encouragement and for the support. I am so grateful to you for listening to me babble away about v euclidean distance and pitch accent onset, for understanding when I had to write, and for always being there during the hard times and the easy times. I love you so dearly! vi Abstract Appalachia, the mountainous region that stretches from northern Georgia to Pennsyl- vania (ARC, 2015), is a region that has been considered culturally and linguistically unique in the United States. There is a small but growing body of literature that has demonstrated that the language varieties of this region, collapsed under the broad heading of Appalachian English (AE), diverge from Mainstream American English and other Southern American English varieties (Wolfram & Christian, 1976, Mont- gomery & Hall, 2004, Labov et al., 2006, among others). Much of this literature has focused on vowels and morpho-syntax, but other linguistic aspects have not received much attention, and there is little to no scholarly work on the perception of these varieties within the region, much less the ideology that underlies the perception. To begin to fill this gap in knowledge about Appalachian English, this disserta- tion investigates two features from a sociophonetic viewpoint: /aI/ monophthongiza- tion and intonation. The former has received attention from traditional descriptive (Hall, 1942) and sociolinguistic (Wolfram & Christian, 1976; Thomas, 2001, 2003) perspectives. Research suggests that speakers use this feature in various ways to in- dex regional, cultural, and ethnic identities (Fridland, 1999, Feagin, 2000, Thomas, 2000, Thomas, 2001, Anderson, 2003, Fridland, 2003, Bernstein, 2006, among oth- ers). The latter has only been anecdotally noted in the literature, save one study — Greene (2006), who observed a higher incidence of L+H* accents among AE speakers, compared to speakers of Mainstream American English or other Southern American English varieties. The phonetic realization of pitch has been shown to have regional variation in American English (Arvaniti & Garding, 2007; Clopper & Smiljanic, 2011) vii and other English varieties (e.g., Grabe et al., 2000; Grabe, 2004; Ladd et al., 2009). The field site for the study is Hancock County, Tennessee, a small, rural county in north East Tennessee, which is also the hometown of the author. Data come from sociolinguistic interviews from 25 (13 women, 12 men), all natives to the area. I employed quantitative methodology to analyze participants’ use of both /aI/ monoph- thongization and rising pitch accents. Results show that speakers who are more rooted to the local area have more monophthongal productions of /aI/, use more frequent rising pitch accents, and also realize rising pitches in a quantitatively different way. Thus, both of these features and their phonetic realizations can serve as a way to signal local orientation, what I call rootedness. Further, these Appalachian speakers are distinct from other Southern speakers with respect to the relative frequency of rising pitch accents, as well as the phonetic realization of pitch. Thus, frequent rising pitch and its phonetic realization may function as a unique feature of Appalachian English. viii Preface This dissertation represents a crucial effort in a on-going process of self-recognition and regional appreciation. On the surface, my dissertation reports on the linguistic behavior of a small corner of a misunderstood region. But, at its core, it is also the story of my realization of who I am. I am a proud son of the South, a Tennesseean with roots that go back as deep as you want, a now-unapologetic Mountain Man. Yet, I have also carried a sizable chip on my shoulder about the South and my region, Appalachia. A well-hidden shame about where I come from. But, over the course of several years, I have reflected upon my region and my people, the good and noble and the bad and difficult; I have shed that shame. In its stead is now a deeper understanding and a profound appreciation, a true love, of the people whose voices echo in the mountains and the vales. Not merely a sycophantic love, but one that is principled and nuanced. Along the way, I have read articles, chapters, essays, and books about my region and my people penned by perceptive, well-meaning, and caring outsiders. Many of these people are friends and colleagues, and I am very grateful for their work.