Social and Perceptual Dimensions of the Southern Vowel Shift

现代美国日益增加的流动性和不断扩大的网络使语言研究人员评估这种民族对话和接触可能对方言产生的影响，这些方言在历史上将美国分为三大方言区：北部，南部和西部。从最近的研究影响北方品种的变化（标记为北方城市转移），区域变化的新兴图片表明，连续性和非连续性的方言边界。南部和西部的特点是元音系统似乎有独特的变化，所有三个地区都显示出种族群体和社会学类别（如年龄、性别和阶级群体）之间的区域内差异。与此同时，高后元音前置和低后元音合并等变化在各地区品种中越来越多地出现。这些相互矛盾的数据表明，重要的是要研究这些变化的社会扩散和每个地区内说话者的变化功能，以及它们对这些变化在地区内和地区间传播的贡献。了解这些变化是如何在地区内分布和识别的，这些变化是否有助于进一步区分美国的方言，或者使它们更加相似，是这项研究的主要目标之一。语言学上的焦点是南方元音转换，即南方语言中高、中前、后元音的核心位置的一系列根本性变化。使用三个阶段的方法，包括数据收集和分析，匹配伪装的态度调查和感知方言学任务，研究探讨社会认同和语言因素的作用，在预测是否转变将成为一个新的规范，为社会，以及它是否反映了有意识地远离或走向其他方言的语音规范。该项目将研究社会嵌入和感知显着性的每个转移元音类本地扬声器，评估影响方言变化的区域和国家的压力，在一个中等规模的中部南部社区和传入规范的功能。

The increased mobility and expanding networks characterizing the modern U.S. have led language researchers to assess the effect such national dialogue and contact may have on the dialects that have historically separated the U.S. into three broad dialect regions: North, South and West. From recent studies of the changes affecting Northern varieties (labeled the Northern Cities Shift), the emerging picture of regional change suggests both continuity and discontinuity of dialect boundaries. The South and West are characterized by what appear to be unique changes in their vowel systems, and all three regions show intra-regional variation among ethnic groups and sociological categories such as age, gender and class groups. At the same time, changes such as high back vowel fronting and the low-back vowel merger are increasingly found across regional varieties. Such conflicting data suggest that it is important to examine both the social diffusion of the shifts and the functioning of the shifts for speakers within each region and their contribution to the spread of such changes in and across regional speech varieties.Understanding how these incoming changes are distributed and identified within the regions, and whether these changes are serving to further distinguish the dialects spoken in the U.S. or to make them more similar, is one of the key objectives of this research. The linguistic focus is the Southern Vowel Shift, a series of radical changes in the position of the nucleus in both the high and mid front and back vowels in Southern speech. Using a three-phased approach involving data collection and analysis, a matched-guise attitudinal survey and a perceptual dialectology task, the research examines the role of social identity and linguistic factors in predicting whether a shift will become a new norm for the community, and whether it reflects a conscious move away or toward speech norms in other dialects. This project will examine the social embedding and the perceptual salience of each shifted vowel class to local speakers, assessing the regional and national pressures affecting dialect variation in a mid-sized mid-Southern community and the function of incoming norms.