Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating the Local Construction of Identity: Sociophonetic Variation in Smoky Mountain African American Women's Speech

在William Kretzschmar博士的指导下，Rebecca查尔兹女士将在北卡罗来纳州的德克萨斯州进行社会语音研究，以完成她的博士论文。该项目探讨了语音细节的社会意义，在两个非洲裔美国妇女的实践社区，调查具体的方式，这些非洲裔美国妇女使用微妙的语音变化，在他们的身份建设。多年来，非裔美国人英语的研究一直是美国女性语言研究的重点。该项目将具体研究非洲裔美国妇女在区域范围内（阿巴拉契亚）的语言，并审查当地社会习俗如何影响妇女的语言。本研究综合运用社会语言学和声学语音学的研究方法，对影响语音产出的语音变量，如协同发音、持续时间和社会变量等进行了研究，具有广泛的意义。首先，它将使语言学家能够比较不同地区和社会群体的非裔美国妇女的语音特征，并获得一种感觉，复杂性和异质性，可以在这个群体的语言中找到。它还将提供非洲裔美国妇女语言的少数定量和语音研究之一。此外，它将建立在变异研究传统的基础上，分析这种多样性，不仅考虑到传统的变量，如种族，性别，地区和年龄，而且还与这些变量，因为它们表现在社会实践中。此外，这项研究将增加我们对大烟山英语的知识基础，因为它包括了研究生活在美国这一地区的非洲裔美国人方言的极少数研究的大部分。

Under the direction of Dr. William Kretzschmar, Ms. Rebecca Childs will conduct sociophonetic research in Texana, North Carolina for her doctoral dissertation. The project examines the social meaning of phonetic detail among two African American women's communities of practice, investigation specifically ways in which these African American women use subtle phonetic variation in the construction of their identity. Over the years, studies of African American English have been the major focus of American women's language. This project will look specifically at African American women's language in a regional context (Appalachia) and examine the ways that local social practices can affect women's language. Using an integration of sociolinguistic and acoustic phonetic methodologies this study will account for the phonetic variables such as coarticulation and duration and social variables particular to each community of practice that have an effect of vocalic production.This project has broad significance, first it would allow linguists to compare the phonetic characteristics of different regional and social groups of African American women and gain a sense of the complexity and heterogeneity that can be found within the speech of this group. It will also provide one of the few quantitative and phonetic studies of African American women's language. Additionally, it will build on the variations research tradition by analyzing this variety not only with regard to traditional variables such as race, gender, region, and age, but also with these variables as they manifest in social practice. Further, this research would add to our knowledge base about Smoky Mountain English, since it comprises the bulk of the very few studies that have examined the dialect of African Americans living in this region of the United States.