Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Acoustic Analysis of Regional Variation in African American English

在斯科特·F·基斯林博士的指导下，梅芙·埃伯哈特将对宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡所说的非裔美国人英语(AAE)的地区性变体进行声学分析。使用社会发音学研究的工具，这个项目将定义匹兹堡AAE的元音空间，并调查社区内发声变量的社会模式。这个项目的一个主要目标是确定非裔美国人是否使用了一系列当地方言特征，这些特征在所代表的语言变化类型和与之相关的社会意识水平方面相互对比。社会语言学访谈的使用旨在了解说话者在匹兹堡的经历，特别是他们作为非裔美国人在这座城市的经历，这将使我们能够全面分析社会语言学变量、当地取向和种族认同之间的联系。这项工作增加了一条新兴的研究路线，学者们正在将他们的注意力转向AAE的地区性变异。它有助于探索非洲裔美国人参与或避免发生在当地品种中的健全变化的工作主体，检验非裔美国人不参与这种变化的说法。因此，这项研究挑战了关于AAE的假设，直到最近，这些假设在很大程度上仍然是毋庸置疑的，并挑战该领域脱离纯粹基于种族的AAE定义，转向基于地区语言特征的定义，就像对其他英语变体所做的那样。最后，这项研究的结果将与全国各地非裔美国儿童的早期识字和阅读计划相关。白人和非裔美国学生之间不断扩大的成绩差距需要AAE学者的关注，因为非裔美国儿童在学习阅读时经常经历大量的方言干扰。这项研究有可能直接影响基于地区音系特征的定制阅读项目，从而在社会语言学研究和非裔美国人社区内儿童的教育之间建立重要的联系。

Under the direction of Dr. Scott F. Kiesling, Maeve Eberhardt will undertake an acoustic analysis of the regional variety of African-American English (AAE) spoken in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Using the instrumental tools of sociophonetic research, this project will define the vowel space of Pittsburgh AAE and investigate the social patterning of vocalic variables within the community. A major goal of this project is to determine whether African-Americans use a selection of local dialect features, which contrast with one another both in terms of the type of linguistic change they represent, and in the level of social awareness associated with them. The use of sociolinguistic interviews, designed to elicit information about speakers' experiences in Pittsburgh, specifically their experiences as African-Americans in this city, will allow a holistic analysis of the connection between sociolinguistic variables, local orientation and racial identity. This work adds to a burgeoning line of research in which scholars are turning their attention to regional varieties of AAE. It contributes to the body of work which explores African-American participation in or avoidance of sound changes occurring in local varieties, testing the claim that African-Americans do not participate in such changes. This research thus confronts assumptions about AAE which until recently have remained largely unquestioned, and challenges the field to depart from a purely racially-based definition of AAE and move towards one founded on regional linguistic characteristics, as done for other varieties of English. Finally, the results of this study will be relevant to early literacy and reading programs for African-American children around the country. The ever-widening achievement gap between White and African-American students demands attention from scholars of AAE, given that African-American children often experience substantial dialectal interference when learning to read. This research has the potential to directly impact tailored reading programs based on regional phonological characteristics, thereby building important links between sociolinguistic research and the education of children within the African-American community.