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LANGUAGE, IDEOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN RURAL EASTERN KENTUCKY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Rebecca Dayle Greene August 2010 © 2010 by Rebecca Dayle Greene. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/fh361zh5489 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Penelope Eckert, Co-Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. John Rickford, Co-Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Miyako Inoue I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Meghan Sumner Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii ABSTRACT Linguists still know relatively little about the speech of the rural US South, in part because rural speech is thought to be more conservative than urban speech with regard to language change. In order to fill in a gap in our dialect map and explore the innovative capacity of rural speakers, this dissertation examines language use in its social context in Wilson County (a pseudonym), a small rural community in Eastern Kentucky. Data come from interviews with thirty women, stratified by age and education level, who have spent most of their lives in the community. I employ a combination of ethnographic and quantitative methods to analyze interviewees’ use of three local dialect features, monophthongization of /ay/ before voiceless consonants (n=270), raising and fronting of // (n=309), and leveling of standard-were to was (n=450). Results show that speakers use pre-voiceless /ay/-monophthongization and / /- fronting and raising nearly categorically, but use was -leveling infrequently. Metapragmatic commentary indicates that the overall low level of morphosyntactic variation is driven by standard language ideology (Lippi-Green 1997) and negative ideologies that characterize rural and Mountain Southerners as old-fashioned, unsophisticated and ignorant. Such commentary also indicates that, inversely, the high use of local phonetic features is motivated by those same negative ideologies about rural and Mountain Southerners: Wilson Countians appear to have developed a strong sense of local identity and pride in oppositional reaction to cultural and linguistic marginalization. I conclude that speakers combine strongly locally-accented phonology with relatively prescriptive grammar in an effort to appear local and authentic, yet at the same time competent and modern. iv As predicted, younger and more-educated speakers use less of the local phonetic features than older and college-educated speakers do. More-educated speakers also use less was -leveling than less-educated speakers do. Mainstream language norms appear to be entering the community through those speakers who feel the greatest pressure to appear competent and modern. The high rate of pre-voiceless /ay/-monophthongization (a relatively new Southern feature), as well as the complete reorganization of linguistic constraints on was - leveling since Northern British settled the region, indicate that rural speech can be highly innovative. v PREFACE I was motivated to study language in rural Eastern Kentucky in part because I grew up in that region and language is by far the most salient aspect of my regional identity. When I left my small hometown to go to college at the University of Kentucky, only an hour and a half away from my home, people commented on or made fun of my rural Eastern Kentucky accent multiple times each day. My social identity shifted very rapidly from “the good student” to “the girl with a hillbilly accent.” In California more than ten years later I still find that people are shocked and confused by my strong Southern accent. My social identity is still powerfully shaped by how others perceive my speech. Rather than try to hide my accent, I speak as naturally as I can, and I resent others’ marginalizing and condescending comments about my speech, rural areas and the South. When I speak to others from my hometown, I find that most of them also feel proud and affectionate toward their accent rather than ashamed of it, even if they are ideologically very outward-oriented. I wondered whether rural Eastern Kentucky speech patterns might remain highly distinctive due in part to an oppositional reaction to cultural and linguistic marginalization. Therefore I chose in this dissertation to explore how ideology, identity and language do in fact interact in this frequently misunderstood and maligned region. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have helped me throughout the course of preparing this dissertation, and I would certainly not have been able to produce this work or become the person that I am without them. Thank you to John R. Rickford for reading many, many drafts of chapters and getting back to me almost immediately with an abundance of helpful comments. You diligently helped me see any weaknesses in my overarching argument when I was unable to do so. Thank you also for your constant emotional support and warmth. I have always felt that you believe in my ideas and my abilities one hundred percent and that you want nothing but the best for me in my career and in life. I will benefit for the rest of my life from the self-esteem I gained while working with you. You also helped me understand issues surrounding race and ethnicity in ways that powerfully inform my study of regional ideology and identity. Thank you to Penny Eckert for reading many drafts and returning them to me as well. You helped me completely restructure my work to make it much more streamlined and coherent, and you provided elegant ways of explaining things where mine were clunky and repetitive. You tirelessly challenged me and helped me become a much better writer and thinker. You also inspire me personally with your strength, confidence and charisma. You also taught me about issues surrounding gender so poignantly that I am now obsessed with the topic. I believe and hope that people will always be able to tell that I was your student. vii Thank you to Meghan Sumner and Miyako Inoue for providing critiques on my work from your different viewpoints. You both greatly stretched my intellectual abilities and ways of thinking, and provided warm emotional support. It is hard to write a dissertation that can satisfy not only two variationists but an experimental phonetician and an anthropologist! But my work is so much better because I did so. Thank you to the interviewees who took me kindly into your homes and shared not only your time but your personal thoughts and feelings with me. I hope that I have faithfully represented your perspectives. Thank you to my family—Mom, Cody, Kyle, Dad, Sally, Emmy, Evan, Amy Jesslyn, Pap and Mamoo—I love you all so, so much and I have never doubted for a second that you all love me just as much. I know that you would believe in me and support me no matter what I did, and you want nothing but happiness for me. Thank you to Kate Geenberg—you really got me through this last couple years. You are my hero. “What is your main inspiration in life?” “I’m mostly inspired by my friend Kate.” I can’t wait to see what else you accomplish in life. Thank you to my fellow Stanford sociolinguists—Lauren Hall-Lew and Rebecca Starr, you started with me and were there basically the whole way. It’s been so strange to be here without you. I miss you very much! The rest of you—you provided the warmest friendship and the best feedback that I could have ever asked for. Thank you to the Stanford Humanities Center and to the Geballe family for funding my last year of school and allowing me to focus exclusively on my research and writing. I also became a much more confident scholar and gained a much broader understanding of what researchers in other fields are pursuing during my year there. viii Thank you to Kara Becker and Maryam Bakht, my dissertation support high-five club. I really appreciated your uplifting Facebook posts! Thank you to Katie Drager, Bryan James Gordon and Lal Zimman for your kind friendship and support as well. Thank you to my best pals Leslie Merrill, Brooke Pennington, Kristin Hall and Vanessa Vega. No one could ask for better friends. You are always there for me no matter what, and you don’t have a judging bone in your bodies. You are amazing, creative, unique people. I love you very much. Thank you to all the other professors, administrators and students who I have had the pleasure to work with in the Stanford Linguistics department. You have been so supportive and pleasant, and I will always remember my time there with supreme fondness.

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