Browsing by Author "Walt Wolfram, Committee Member"

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Differential Vowel Accommodation among Two Native American Groups
(2006-05-08) Coggshall, Elizabeth Learn; Agnes Bolonyai, Committee Member; Erik R. Thomas, Committee Chair; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member
Despite recent attention to English varieties spoken by Native Americans in the Eastern United States, (Anderson 1999; Wolfram & Dannenberg 1999; Dannenberg 2002), they have generally been overlooked in terms of their construction of ethnolinguistic identity (Fought 2002). Many Native American contact situations in the Eastern US are different from those in the Western US because of the relative length of contact with and exposure to marked dialects of English. Is there evidence for a pan-lectal core of Native American English or a "Boarding School effect" in Eastern US, as posited for the Southwest by Leap (1993) and others? How have Native American speakers accommodated to their regional English dialects? Is there evidence for lingering source language transfer or substrate influence? Do these Native American English varieties maintain an ethnic identity separate from their regional identity? These questions are addressed through the comparative examination of the vowel systems of the Eastern Cherokee and Lumbee English, two prominent but quite distinct Native American groups in North Carolina. Their vowel systems are compared with each other and with their respective regional benchmark varieties—Appalachian English for the Eastern Cherokee and the Coastal Plain European American and African American English for the Lumbee in Robeson County. Based on acoustic analysis, their overall vowel systems are compared, with particular attention paid to the fronting of back vowels such as ⁄u⁄, the upgliding of ⁄⁄, and the realization of ⁄ai⁄. The Eastern Cherokee show more similarity to their European American Appalachian cohorts than do the Lumbee to their cohorts. The local Southern Highland dialect has played a primary formative role in the English of the Eastern Cherokee, especially in the production of ⁄u⁄ and ⁄⁄. At the same time, local dialect accommodation is complemented by some subtle substrate effects from the Cherokee language on the ⁄ai⁄ diphthongs (Anderson 1999). In part, this accommodation may be explained in terms of the long-term, highly local interaction between European Americans and Cherokees and the durablity of the Cherokee community in this region. A strong sense of regional place is also shared by the Eastern Cherokees with their European American cohorts. Though the Lumbee are regionally connected to other North Carolina dialect regions, they do not exhibit the degree of local dialect accommodation shown by the Cherokee. The differences include relic features such as backed ⁄ai⁄ nuclei, especially among the older speakers. Furthermore, no detectable substrate effect occurs in their vowels. This difference may be explained in terms of the Lumbee's early exposure and shift to English. Furthermore, they were historically exposed to a wider range of varieties of English than the Cherokee, and have been living in close contact with both European and African Americans since around 1730. In the process, their identity as American Indians has been questioned continually, leading to greater linguistic burden on marking themselves symbolically as the ethnolinguisitic "other"—that is, neither white nor black—in the tri-ethnic setting of Robeson County. References: Anderson, Bridget (1999). Source language transfer and vowel accommodation in the patterning of Cherokee English ⁄ai⁄ and ⁄oi⁄. American Speech 74, 4: 339-68. Dannenberg, Clare (2002). Sociolinguistic Constructs of Ethnic Identity: The Syntactic Delineation of an American Indian English. Durham, NC: Duke UP, for American Dialect Society. Fought, Carmen (2002). Ethnicity. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. 444-72. Leap, William (1993). American Indian English. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Wolfram, Walt & Clare Dannenberg (1999). Dialect identity in a tri-ethnic context: The case of Lumbee American Indian English. English World-Wide 20:179-216.
The Emergence of Hispanic English in the Raleigh Community: A Sociophonetic Analysis
(2004-04-01) Carter, Phillip Martin; Mark Darhower, Committee Member; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Agnes Bolonyai, Committee Member; Erik Thomas, Committee Chair
Though the recent influx of native Spanish speakers to the Southeastern United States has caused sociolinguists to pay closer attention to Hispanic English, most studies have focused their attention on the adaptation of segmental features, leaving rigorous examinations of suprasegmental features vastly underrepresented. Although some studies have commented on prosodic differences between Spanish, English, and dialects of English influenced by Spanish, most of these have relied on impressionistically based observations and have avoided systematic, quantifiably based examinations. Nevertheless, Ramus et al. (1999) were able to show quantifiable differences between Spanish and English, firmly classifying the former as more syllable-timed and the later as more stress-timed. The development of the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) by Low and Grabe (1995) provides a method for examining the degree of stress-timing or syllable-timing in a given linguistic variety. Fought and Fought (2003) used PVI to show that bilingual Chicanos in California were more syllable-timed than the adjacent English-speaking community, though only for the first five syllables of an utterance. This thesis study examines the Spanish and English of adolescent bilinguals in Raleigh, NC and applies the PVI method in order to a) report empirically quantifiable differences between the two systems b) determine the rhythmic nature of Hispanic English and c) explore possible influences of southern American English on the Spanish of immigrants to the Mid-Atlantic South. As expected, findings show a range of rhythmic productions that is best represented on a continuum, where Spanish is located on one endpoint, the English of native monolinguals on the other, and the English of Hispanic immigrants somewhere in between. This analysis provides further insights on the bilateral affects of Spanish-English contact situations. The nature of prosody as a substrate feature in emerging varieties of Hispanic English in the Mid-Atlantic South is also considered in this description.
In Search of Ethnic Cues: The Status of /ae/ and /epsilon/ and Their Implications for Linguistic Profiling
(2005-04-25) Grimes, Drew; Agnes Bolonyai, Committee Member; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Erik Thomas, Committee Chair
Historically, the study of African American English (AAE), perhaps the most thoroughly documented language variety in the United States, has been centered on syntactic and morphological characteristics. The phonological features that have been discussed are generally limited to consonantal characteristics such as consonant cluster reduction; thorough studies of the vowel systems of African American speakers have only begun to appear in earnest in the literature since the 1990s. Similarly, systematic studies of dialect perception, despite a long tradition in experimental phonetics, have only sporadically been employed in sociolinguistics. This thesis begins to fill both of these gaps by (1) reporting results from two ethnic identification experiments conducted in North Carolina and by (2) reporting data collected from a comparative analysis of two vowels as produced by NC black and white speakers. The vowels examined were /æ/ and /ε/, which are both reported to be raised by African American speakers. The perception experiments required a process of instrumental resynthesis of recorded speech to generate stimuli approximating a continuum of values between two dialectal vowel variants. This process, used for both /æ/ and /ε/, is based on the source-filter theory of vowel production and entails the use of the phonetics software Praat. Using LPC analysis, Praat can synthetically extract a 'filter' from a recorded vowel sound, thereby leaving an approximation of the speaker's unfiltered glottal source. This 'filter' can then be manipulated to represent different formant values and used to refilter the previously generated source signal. With this procedure, a range of experimental stimuli were created for /æ/ and /ε/, representing a continuum of vowels between the black and white variants for each. Results from experimental subjects who heard the stimuli demonstrate that for both /æ/ and /ε/, there was a significant correlation between vowel height and ethnic identification: the stimuli representing a higher vowel position were perceived more often to have been produced by an African American speaker than the stimuli representing a lower vowel position. Furthermore, this correlation seems to be stronger for /æ/ than for /ε/. The data generated by the production study corroborate these perception results. In the production study, F₁ measurements were taken from African American (AA) and European American (EA) pronunciations of the vowels /æ/ and /ε/. These measurements came from field recordings of North Carolina speakers from the North Carolina Language and Life Project archives. The results from this study show a statistically significant difference in the mean AA height and the mean EA height for both of these vowels; furthermore, the difference between the two means for /æ/ was much greater than the difference for /ε/. The impetus for this ethnic identification approach to the analysis of dialect perception comes from the reality of linguistic profiling. Potential landlords and other real estate professionals use this type of racial discrimination to deny housing opportunities to minorities inquiring over the telephone about property availability. The use of such practices is a documented reality; however, many people reject the notion that speakers' ethnicities can be identified based only on their voices. It is hoped that the empirically generated perception data presented here will provide incontestable evidence for the plausibility of linguistically based discrimination practices, and thereby help to solidify the case for legal defendants who have experienced this type of discrimination.
An Intonational Analysis of Mexican American English in Comparison to Anglo American English
(2007-07-26) Ericson, Holly Anne; Erik R. Thomas, Committee Chair; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Carmine Prioli, Committee Member
Until recently, intonational aspects of Mexican American English have received little to no attention. The research that has been conducted (Fought 2003; Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia 1985; Metcalf 1972) is a good start, but needs more precision and rigor. There is a need to describe this prosodic feature in more accurate terms than line drawings accompanied by a narrow number scale (Metcalf 1972). In 1992 Beckman and Hirschberg proposed their solution to this gap with the ToBI Annotation Conventions, which is the current model used for measuring intonation. This thesis uses ToBI conventions in conjunction with Praat spectrograms to compare the intonation of Mexican American English to Anglo American English. Results indicate that speakers of these two groups do typically differ in intonational patterns, most noticeably in final contours and pitch accents. These intonational differences contribute to the distinctness of each variety, which can cause misunderstandings in communication (e.g.: MAE declarative mistaken for interrogative). The results of this study contribute to the understanding of Mexican American English and to the comparative examination of intonation based on natural conversation.
Latino English in North Carolina: A Comparison of Emerging Communities
(2008-04-23) Kohn, Mary Elizabeth; Agnes Bolonyai, Committee Chair; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Tonya Wolford, Committee Member
Political Apology in the Discursive Construction of Hurricane Katrina
(2007-08-06) Shelton, Cecilia D.; Agnes Bolonyai, Committee Chair; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Jeffrey Reaser, Committee Member
With the recent events of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the United States saw a natural disaster turn into a national disaster as the storm devastated the American citizens of the Gulf Coast region. The discourse regarding Hurricane Katrina is uniquely characterized by its political component whose primary topical focus was the responsibility. In response to widespread public unrest and complaint, many politicians issued apologies regarding the government response to Hurricane Katrina. This study will examine the theme of responsibility through analysis of the complaint-apology adjacency pair; that is, the complaints voiced by citizens and the apologies offered by two key political figures in Katrina's political discourse—Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, LA and George W. Bush, President of the United States. Specifically, I will use the notions of framing, voice and intertextuality to determine how discourse participants present other relevant voices and how those participants represent their own voices the dialogical negotiation of responsibility. I intend to compare and contrast how these two participants manage the acceptance of responsibility in order to understand the significance of their distinct discursive voices and perspectives. Analysis of the complaint-apology discourse structure should reveal how varying personal and public perspectives of political discourse participants affected their participation in the political discourse about Hurricane Katrina. This analysis demonstrates the importance of voice and dialogicality in the discursive construction of apology. Moreover, it suggests that researchers who are beginning to investigate political apology take into account factors that could influence variation in voices participating in that discourse which could, in turn produce variation in the forms of political apology and how it is managed pragmatically.
Regional /o/ in North Carolina: A Cartographic Analysis of a Feature of the Southern Vowel Shift
(2007-08-01) Sellers, James Clark; Walt Wolfram, Committee Member; Erik Thomas, Committee Chair; Jeffrey Reaser, Committee Member
This thesis examines sociophonetically the variation of ⁄o⁄ in North Carolina. Though often overlooked in terms of its diagnostic status, it is one of the most symbolic vowels in terms of a range of social and ethnic variables. Previous research by Kurath and McDavid (1961), Thomas (1989), and Thomas and Wolfram (2002) has found that ⁄o⁄ fronting was occurring in the late 18th Century in the northeast coastal region while in the Piedmont region ⁄o⁄ was farther backed. The centralization and lowering of the nuclei of back vowels, including ⁄o⁄, is considered to be a part of the Southern Vowel Shift (Labov 1991). The glide of ⁄o⁄ in the Southeastern US has become fronted more recently (Labov, William, Yaeger, and Steiner, 1972; Thomas 1989; Thomas 2001). Is /o/ in North Carolina conforming to the traditional specifications of the Southern Vowel Shift? Does its conformity vary regionally? How did the change spread across North Carolina? Using acoustic analysis, this paper attempts to answer these questions by looking at the speech of European Americans from twelve sites scattered throughout North Carolina. These sites roughly represent the major dialect regions of the state in an attempt to map the fronting and raising of the nucleus and glide of ⁄o⁄ regionally. Previous research has shown that the nucleus of ⁄o⁄ in North Carolina cities is currently more fronted and lowered, in accordance with the Southern Vowel Shift, than it was in the past. However, the results of this comparative analysis show that this is not universally true for North Carolinians and that the trajectory of change for ⁄o⁄ varies regionally throughout the state. For example, ⁄o⁄ fronting was previously less advanced in the western part of the state but young speakers from that area are now showing a high degree of ⁄o⁄ fronting while speakers from areas like Hyde County, a coastal area, have younger generations showing increasingly backed nuclei for ⁄o⁄. State wide, however, the range of possible values narrows among the younger speakers while the older speakers are much more varied. This variation could indicate that the possible vowel space for ⁄o⁄ is becoming more static as the feature has undergone a change and is now settling into a vowel space that is shared statewide. This study focuses on a single feature and includes both a large quantity of subjects engaged in conversational speech and a broad-based geographic analysis with a representative sample of subjects for each region. This representation allows for an in depth analysis of each speech community so that instead of representing each community as a homogenous group, intra-community variation is accurately represented in a way that allows for regional comparison. For example, the younger generation in Hyde County can be divided up into those who have a fronted glide for ⁄o⁄ and those who do not. This study looks at correlations between site specific variables and represents these correlations geographically allowing for a regional evaluation of intra-community variation. By incorporating geography into sociolinguistic inquiry this study contextualizes intra-community variation within the larger regional dialect, showing how macro- and micro-variables need to be factored into variation analysis.