Ethnic, Stylistic and Perceptual Aspects of the Southern Vowel Shift

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，瓦莱丽·弗里德兰博士将对美国南方英语方言中的元音移位进行为期两年的语言学研究。她将把南方元音最近的变化与早期南方语言和当代北方语言进行比较。最近的研究表明，北方和南方的语音位置正在重新调整。这种调整所产生的系统表明两种方言之间的分歧越来越大。弗里德兰的研究小组将孟菲斯作为实地考察地点，收集自然发生的对话数据和引出的访谈数据，并分析这些数据中元音的声学位置。感知测试将测量元音的声学定位和与单个元音变化相关的态度负荷。通过研究每个移位元音类别的社会嵌入和感知突出性，本项目将评估影响方言变化的内部（地区）和外部（国家）压力，并确定如何判断传入规范，以及它们如何作为说话者的地方、种族或国家身份的展示。共同言语规范通常意味着说话者参与相同的交际网络。因此，这项研究的一个重要部分是记录了欧洲裔美国人和非洲裔美国人是否都参与了这些变化，这是孟菲斯地区种族融合的一个迹象。非裔美国人似乎并没有参与到北方城市的发音变化中，但他们在影响南方语言的变化中所起的作用可能解释了北方非裔美国人元音系统中一些变化的起源。这项社会语言学研究将有助于当代南方语言和语言感知的新兴图景。这对教育和理论都具有重要意义。首先，南方人的语言在全国范围内被定型为不标准的。了解当地规范及其背后的观念对全国教育考试至关重要。在应用层面上，该研究对语言专家和教育工作者具有启示意义，他们关注方言变化与教育和社会劣势之间的关系。其次，对当代南方英语变化的调查将记录方言的趋同和分化，并揭示一些声音变化的社会动机。在理论层面上，这项研究将深入了解语言变化背后的机制，这是推动社会语言学研究的基本问题之一。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Valerie Fridland will conduct two years of linguistic research on vowel shifts in Southern dialects of American English. She will compare recent changes in Southern vowels to both older Southern speech and contemporary Northern speech. Recent research suggests that vocalic positions in Northern and Southern speech are realigning. The systems resulting from this realignment suggest increasing divergence between the two dialects. Using Memphis as a field site, Fridland's research team will collect both naturally occurring conversational data and elicited interview data and analyze the acoustic position of vowels in those data. Perceptual tests will measure the acoustic positioning of the vowels and the attitudinal load associated with changes in individual vowels. By examining the social embedding and the perceptual salience of each shifted vowel class, this project will assess the internal (regional) and external (national) pressures affecting dialect variation and determine how incoming norms are judged and how they function as displays of local, ethnic, or national identity for speakers. Shared speech norms generally suggest that speakers participate in the same communication networks. Thus, an important part of this research is its documentation of whether both European-Americans and African-Americans participate in the changes, an indication of racial integration in the Memphis area. African-Americans do not appear to participate in the vocalic changes identified in Northern cities, but their role in the changes affecting Southern speech might explain the origin of some changes in the Northern African-American vowel system. This sociolinguistic research will contribute to the emerging picture of contemporary Southern speech and speech perceptions. This is significant for both education and theory. First, Southern speech is stereotyped as non-standard nationally. Understanding local norms and the perceptions behind them is crucial to national testing in education. On an applied level then, the research has implications for language specialists and educators concerned with how dialect variation relates to educational and social disadvantages. Second, this survey of changes in contemporary Southern English will document convergence and divergence in dialects and reveal the social motivation of some sound changes. On a theoretical level, the research will provide insight into the mechanisms behind linguistic change, one of the fundamental questions driving sociolinguistic research.