Dissertation Research: The Role of Southern Vowels in Ethnic Diversity

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The goal of the project is provide an account of the sociolinguistic and ethnolinguistic boundaries for the three ethnic communities in Warren County, NC: the African-American community, the Native-American community, and the European-American community. The complex nature of the relationships between the communities offers an ideal sociolinguistic laboratory for examining the effects of ethnic boundaries on language change and variation. Acoustic analysis of vowels will be conducted to pinpoint inter- and intradialectal variation, and quantitatively based covariance studies of a set of social and linguistic varieties will provide a profile of the overlapping but distinctive dialect systems. Interviews with members of all three communities will be conducted using sociolinguist/native fieldworker teams to augment the present corpus of speakers, which presently includes 36 Warren County speakers. The project will provide data and analysis relating to three major issues in sociolinguistics today. First, research will provide current and refined information on the state of Southern linguistic identity. Second, quantitative and qualitative analysis will provide a closer look at the possible convergence or divergence between African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and European-American Vernacular English (EAVE). Studies done in large, urban cities reveal social influences on the variation and change of vernacular English; the triracial community of Warren county offers a vastly different social situation, that of an agriculturally based rural community. The possible convergence and divergence of the Native American community with either the local AAVE or EAVE speech communities, vis-a-vis a separate dialectal identity, will also provide crucial evidence pertaining to the attempts of the Warren County Native American community to meet regulations for federal recognition. A distinctive dialect may lend credence to claims of cultural diversity for the Native American community. Third, data and analysis of Warren County speech will provide the linguistic community at large with a clearer view of the nature of ethnic boundaries and language variation. The social setting of Warren County's ethnic boundaries offers a different, diverse, and culturally rich perspective on language variation.