The Rise of Canadian Raising of /Au/ in New Orleans English Katie Carmichael
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The rise of Canadian raising of /au/ in New Orleans English Katie Carmichael Citation: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 147, 554 (2020); doi: 10.1121/10.0000553 View online: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000553 View Table of Contents: https://asa.scitation.org/toc/jas/147/1 Published by the Acoustical Society of America ...................................ARTICLE The rise of Canadian raising of /au/ in New Orleans English Katie Carmichaela) Department of English, Virginia Tech, 181 Turner Street NW, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA ABSTRACT: New Orleans English (NOE) has always stood out amongst Southern Englishes, since NOE speakers do not participate in the Southern vowel shift, and instead display features more commonly associated with New York City English. While these traditional features of NOE are on the decline, this study establishes the adoption of a new feature in the dialect that is similarly distinctive within the Gulf South: the pre-voiceless raising of the nucleus of /au/. Based on statistical analyses and consideration of the social context in post-Katrina New Orleans, this paper argues that this feature is a change in progress which appears to pre-date the demographic shifts following Hurricane Katrina, and which arose independently rather than due to contact with /au/-raising speakers. The social and phonetic findings in this paper converge to support arguments for the naturalness of raising in pre-voiceless environments, and for the likelihood of this feature being more widely adopted within the region. Moreover, the presence of Canadian raising of /au/ in NOE represents an additional way that the local dialect continues to diverge from patterns in the vowel systems found in nearby Southern dialects, and retain its uniqueness within the American South. VC 2020 Acoustical Society of America. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000553 (Received 17 January 2019; revised 2 November 2019; accepted 4 November 2019; published online 31 January 2020) [Editor: Irina A Shport] Pages: 554–567 I. INTRODUCTION Becker, 2018). These traditional features are on the retreat (Carmichael 2014, 2017), though there is evidence that The raising of the nucleus of /au/ and/or /ai/ preceding social developments in the city following Hurricane Katrina voiceless consonants is commonly referred to as “Canadian” in 2005 have had impacts on ideologies about these linguis- raising, in part because of the association of /au/-raising in tic features, and indeed conceptions about New Orleans lan- particular with a distinctly Canadian identity (Niedzielski, guage practices on the whole (Schoux Casey, 2016; Dajko 1999; Swan, 2017; Nycz, 2018). Despite its name and associ- and Carmichael, 2018). The existence of these documented ations, pre-voiceless diphthong raising is attested in various linguistic and social shifts raises the question of what NOE locations throughout the U.S., with /ai/-raising more common will sound like in future generations, especially as the after- than /au/-raising outside of Canada. That said, /au/-raising is effects of Katrina develop and stabilize. In this paper, I present outside of Canada and has indeed been examined in a suggest that the phonologically conditioned raising of /au/ number of Northern U.S. states along the Canadian border, represents an innovation that will continue to distinguish including Michigan (Dailey-O’Cain, 1997; Niedzielski, NOE from surrounding Southern dialects. This change in 1999), Vermont (Roberts, 2007), and Washington (Swan, progress is of interest for three key reasons: (1) in light of 2017). Within the Southern U.S., /au/-raising has been noted evidence that distinctive NOE features are being lost, it sug- historically in Coastal Atlantic states such as Maryland, gests that the dialect is not simply leveling as Englishes in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia some other Southern cities are doing (e.g., Baranowski, (Kurath and McDavid, 1961; Baranowski, 2007). Though 2007); rather NOE may be developing new local linguistic Canadian raising of /au/ has not been previously noted any- markers; (2) this post-Katrina dataset presents an opportu- where in the Inland/Gulf South, this study establishes its nity to examine broader questions about the relationship presence within a suburban White dialect of New Orleans between language change, mobility, and place orientation, English (NOE), and demonstrates its current status as a since speakers in this sample vary in terms of their move- change in progress. I examine the social patterning of this ments after the storm, and their affiliation with their pre- feature within this community, and consider the role of and post-Katrina homes; and (3) the data presented supports Hurricane Katrina in the adoption and spread of this variable. arguments in favor of the naturalness of pre-voiceless rais- New Orleans has been noted as something of a dialect ing, based on phonetic evidence as well as consideration of island within the South (Labov et al., 2006), with many the social context of its development. speakers featuring distinctly Northern-sounding linguistic features, in particular a number of phonological features II. CANADIAN RAISING IN CANADA AND THE U.S. shared with New York City English, such as raised /O/, non- rhoticity, and a split short-a system (Carmichael and Chambers (1973) coined the phrase “Canadian raising” to describe raising of the nucleus of /au/ and/or /ai/ before voiceless consonants. This phonologically conditioned rais- a)Electronic mail: [email protected] ing has been extensively examined throughout Canada 554 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 147 (1), January 2020 0001-4966/2020/147(1)/554/14/$30.00 VC 2020 Acoustical Society of America https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000553 (Joos, 1942; Chambers, 1973, 1989, 2006; Chambers and raising in Kansas City without evidence of contact, and as I Hardwick, 1985; Kinloch and Ismail, 1993; Hagiwara, will argue in this paper, NOE presents evidence of pre- 2006; Rosenfelder, 2007; Sadlier-Brown, 2012; Hall, 2016; voiceless /au/-raising without evidence of contact. Thus, an Swan, 2017) and the U.S. (Kurath and McDavid, 1961; examination of this feature in NOE provides an opportunity Labov, 1963; Vance, 1987; Chambers, 1989; Dailey- to probe the question of naturalness without the issue of O’Cain, 1997; Baranowski, 2007; Roberts, 2007; Labov confounding population- and contact-based factors. et al., 2013; Baclawski et al., 2014; Swan, 2017). Within Within sociolinguistic examinations of /au/-raising in the U.S., /ai/-raising is more common than /au/-raising, with particular, questions have predominantly been centered on some researchers advocating for /ai/-raising without con- the social meaning of this variation and on its spread and comitant /au/-raising to be referred to as “American raising” adoption. A common finding across communities featuring (Davis et al., 2019). And indeed, there is evidence that /au/- /au/-raising is gendered patterning of change, with women raising strongly indexes Canadian nationality, due to stereo- leading changes both towards and away from pre-voiceless types about Canadian pronunciations of words like “out” /au/-raising (Chambers and Hardwick, 1985; Dailey- and “about” (Chambers, 1989; Dailey-O’Cain, 1997; O’Cain, 1997; Roberts, 2007; Sadlier-Brown, 2012; Hall, Boberg, 2010), while /ai/-raising does not (Nycz, 2018). 2016; Swan, 2017). There is also, as mentioned, a strong A central question in phonological research on pre- association of pre-voiceless /au/-raising with Canadian voiceless diphthong-raising has been whether this variation identity. This perception persists even though not all represents a phonemic versus allophonic split (see Mielke Canadian dialects feature /au/-raising. Niedzielski (1999) et al., 2003; Idsardi, 2006; Moreton, 2016; Hualde et al., demonstrated that Detroit listeners so robustly associated 2017). The phonemicization of diphthong raising is gener- /au/-raising with being Canadian that they misidentified ally established based on the existence of minimal pairs raised tokens as unraised when they were attributed to a with raised and unraised variants, such as rider/writer in the Detroit speaker as opposed to a Canadian. Moreover, Swan case of /ai/—where the underlying [t] is realized as a flap, (2017) showed that Vancouverites who express more rendering the trigger for raising “opaque,” or irretrievable national pride in being Canadian also demonstrate more from the surface representation. Examination of pre-flap pre-voiceless raising of /au/. In addition, Nycz (2018) found environments can further shed light on how the adoption of that speakers of Canadian English who live in the U.S. pro- diphthong raising progresses within a community when this duce lower pre-voiceless /au/ nuclei when expressing posi- feature is incipient, though such examinations have typically tive affect about the U.S., compared to when they talk been limited to /ai/-raising (see Fruehwald, 2016; Berkson positively about Canada, which she argued was evidence of et al., 2017; Bermudez-Otero, 2017). This may be due to the their alignment with a U.S.-based, rather than Canada- fact that /ai/-raising is more widespread than /au/-raising in based, identity in those moments. Notably, Nycz did not dialects of North American English, or due to /ai/’s greater find the same effect with /ai/-raising, which she argued was lexical frequency compared to /au/, both in general and in not a salient identifier of Canadian identity in the same way pre-flap environments (the only pre-flap minimal pair for that /au/-raising is. /au/ that could be argued to exist is “powder” vs “pouter,” Vocalic variation in NOE is not well described in gen- with the latter an extremely low frequency word, being a eral, but in the scant research that does document vowel variety of pigeon). pronunciations in NOE (predominantly consisting of While /au/-raising research is not particularly well- Master’s theses, dissertations, and broader dialectological suited to answering questions about the phonologization of surveys), /au/ variation is noticeably absent from descrip- raising on the basis of minimal pairs, it can still provide evi- tions of key NOE features.