Where education and salience meet, local dialects retreatHilary Prichard Robin Dodsworth

University of Pennsylvania North Carolina State University

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Interaction of education & salience• Prichard and Tamminga (2012) introduced a novel 4-level education index

• No higher education (high school or less)• Local, community college, often 2-year degree• Regional, 4-year college, draws students from across region• National, prestigious, geographically diverse student body

• Hypothesized that education interacts with social salience in a gradient fashion

• National university educated speakers lead retreat from salient local features

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Testing the interaction• We test this hypothesis in two locations:

• Philadelphia, PA• reversal of socially-salient dialect features• no evidence of influence of large-scale dialect

contact

• Raleigh, NC• leveling of SVS features following dialect contact• large-scale migration of Northerners begins in

1960s

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Philadelphia, PA

• Reversal of:• /æh/ BAD

• /oh/ THOUGHT • /aw/ MOUTH

• Ongoing change in:• /eyC/ FACE

• /ay0/ PRICE

BAD represents tense class of Philadelphia split short-a systemTHOUGHT is especially tense and raised in PhiladelphiaMOUTH is raised and frontedFACE is raised and fronted in checked positionPRICE is raised before voiceless consonants

Labov et al. 2013 document:

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Philadelphia vowel salience• Three vowels undergoing reversal are also salient

• 1970s LCV studies showed “moderate degree of awareness” for raised MOUTH but not PRICE

• Labov et al. 2013 identify tense BAD and THOUGHT as local stereotypes

• As of yet no evidence of social awareness of FACE raising

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Philadelphia sound changes

Ed D., male born 1889, high school educationSpaz A., male born 1992, high school education

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Philadelphia Data• Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus (Labov et al. 2013)

• 201 speakers born between 1889 and 1994

• 134: No higher education• 23: Local college (e.g., Phila. Community College)• 27: Regional college (e.g., Drexel University)• 17: National college (e.g., University of Pennsylvania)

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Changes in progressNWAV 42 9/26

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Reversal of changeNWAV 42 10/26

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Reversal of changeNWAV 42 11/26

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Philadelphia Statistics• Fit a mixed effects model for each vowel variable• Fixed effects of DOB, Education, Sex• By-speaker and by-word random intercepts

• Education is significant main effect for:• BAD all comparisons sig. except local vs. high

school• THOUGHT all comparisons sig. except local vs. high

school• MOUTH national vs. regional *, local ***, high school ***

• vs.• FACE no significant differences• PRICE national vs. local *, high school **

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Philadelphia• Education groups are well-differentiated for the three salient vowels, BAD, MOUTH, and THOUGHT

• Modeling shows that local, regional, and national groups are statistically different • but HS and local are not

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Raleigh, NC: Southern Vowel Shift

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FLEECE

KIT

FACE

DRESS

TRAP

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Raleigh, NC• Dodsworth & Kohn (2012) find reversal of the SVS

• Second stage of SVS demonstrated to be salient & negatively-stereotyped in Memphis (Fridland et al. 2004)

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Raleigh Data• Raleigh Corpus (Dodsworth & Kohn 2012)

• 122 speakers born between 1923 and 1989

• 20: No higher education• 13: Local college (e.g., Wake Tech)• 60: Regional college (e.g., NC State, UNC-Greensboro)• 29: National college (e.g., Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill)

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Change over time in the Raleigh front vowel system

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Raleigh: FLEECE & KIT reversalNWAV 42 19/26

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Raleigh: FACE & DRESS reversalNWAV 42 20/26

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Raleigh: TRAP retractionNWAV 42 21/26

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Raleigh changes by education groupNWAV 42 22/26

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Raleigh Statistics• Fixed effects of preceding & following place, DOB, education, duration• By-speaker random intercepts, by-duration random slopes

• Education is significant only in the model for FACE• national vs. local ** • regional vs. local marginal (p=.06)

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Discussion• In Philadelphia we saw:• Strong reversal of BAD, THOUGHT, MOUTH • led by national group• Continuing change in FACE, PRICE

• Whereas in Raleigh:• All features have some degree of salience• Education groups are not well differentiated• But lack the clear lock-step pattern seen in Philadelphia

changes from below

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Conclusions• Initial hypothesis is borne out:

• The effect of college education is not uniform

• National university speakers show greatest retreat from salient local features

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Thank You!References

• Dodsworth, Robin, and Mary Kohn. 2012. Urban rejection of the vernacular: The SVS undone. Language Variation and Change 24:221–245.

• Fridland, Valerie, Kathryn Bartlett, and Roger Kreuz. 2004. Do you hear what I hear? Experimental measurement of the perceptual salience of acoustically manipulated vowel variants by Southern speakers in Memphis, TN. Language Variation and Change 16:1–16.

• Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

• Labov, William, Ingrid Rosenfelder, and Josef Fruehwald. 2013. One hundred years of sound change in Philadelphia: linear incrementation, reversal and re-analysis. Language 89:30–65.

• Prichard, Hilary, and Meredith Tamminga. 2012. The impact of higher education on Philadelphia vowels. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18.2:87–95.

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