Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Sounding Appalachian
Session Abstract or Summary
What does it mean to “sound Appalachian”? What happens when one shifts the way one talks to sound “more like home” or “more Appalachian”? What pronunciations are the tip-offs? Linguists have argued that it’s the combination of pronunciations, not any one or small group of them, that distinguishes Appalachia from surrounding regions.
Speech is probably among the most prevalent means by which people from the region show regional affinity. In the conversation we aim to begin, our concern is not whether the signals of speech are volitional and deliberate (the why’s of “sounding Appalachian”), but rather what these signals are (the what’s of “sounding Appalachian”), as identified by linguists.
The present panel seeks to illustrate how Appalachian people utilize variety to express their connection to the region. The first presentation creates a historical backdrop by comparing well-known features to a historical baseline as documented in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountains Speech by Joseph Sargent Hall. The first presentation identifies seven pronunciations, some or all of which we believe to combine in “sounding Appalachian,” The second presentation examines how Cherokee, White, and diasporic migrant Appalachian populations exhibit vowel production that is similar to ‘home’, in spite of being separated by time and distance. The final presentation seeks to show how more holistic speech qualities, in particular prosody and intonation, are used by speakers to show a connection to the region.
Presentation #1 Title
Breaking into "Sounding Appalachian"
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This presentation presents a historical backdrop by comparing well-known features to a historical baseline as documented in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountains Speech by Joseph Sargent Hall. Hall described general tendencies and individual words as pronunciation in a six-county area along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Seventy-five years later, Hall’s work remains not just the only comprehensive account of the pronunciation of an Appalachian variety of English, but also the only such detailed account of an American variety of the language. Hall observed many speakers ranging from children to the elderly, which sometimes enabled him to detect pronunciations that were increasing or even new.
Any list of specific forms or groups of form would be somewhat arbitrary, because the list could easily be lengthened.
The features are:
1) Appalachia pronounced as Ap-a-LAT-cha (not noted in Hall).
2) merger of ten with tin, hem with him, etc. (Hall, 19).
3) pronunciation of /ai/ before voiceless consonants /p, t, k, f, s/ in pipe, fight, hike, wife, rice, etc. (Hall, 43).
4) vocalization of final /l/ in ball, boil, etc.; (no comment by Hall).
5) the so-called Southern Vowel Shift, in which fist sounds like feest (Hall, 15); feast like faced (Hall, 14), etc.
6) fronting of back vowels, so that toot and tote almost sound like tut and pool, pull, and pole almost sound alike and rhyme with gull (not observed by Hall, except Hall, 36)
7) fronting of vowel in judge and mud to approach jedge and med (Hall, 40)
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Michael Montgomery is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and author of The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English and the forthcoming Dictionary of Southern Appalachia
Presentation #2 Title
The Patterning of a Subset of Traditional Appalachian Sounds for Early Whites and Cherokees in the Great Smoky Mountains, Contemporary Smokies Speakers, and Appalachian Migrants in Detroit
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
This presentation takes up the features described by Montgomery and Hall (2004) and Hall (1942) as traditional features of the Appalachian English sound system and examines their distribution in (1) Hall’s early recordings of Smoky Mountain speech; (2) and for more contemporary speakers in Western North Carolina; and (3) in the Diaspora (Detroit). The sounds examined do not encompass all the features that are important to sounding Appalachian, but does include an important subset: the pin/ pen merger (words like “pen” are raised to the “pin” vowel); the reversals of i/I and ei/ɛ (“Bridget” pronounced like “Breedget” and “egg” pronounced like “eyug”); the glide-weakening of /ai/ in all phonetic contexts (“side, sigh, sight” pronounced as “sahd, saht, saht”), the fronting of /ʌ/ (“judge” pronounced like “jedge”), the fronting of the back vowels --/oʊ/ (“boat” pronounced as “beyt”), /ʊ/ (“should” pronounced as “shewd”), and /u/ (“boot” pronounced as “biwt”), and the vocalization of /l/ (a velarized, backed /l/ in words such as “all, ball, field”). The acoustic analysis shows the importance of considering Appalachian sounds as gradient phenomena, both historically and currently. The distribution of features across time, space, and diverse groups of speakers also reveals that “sounding Appalachian” means having at least some core Appalachian (traditional) features, but that there are also important subtle differences, both within and between speakers and groups. Achieving a recognizable Appalachian “accent” occurs through a gradient continuum of acoustic realizations and across ethnic and geographical boundaries. In other words, sounding Appalachian encompasses both acoustic and cultural diversity but is still recognizable as mountain talk.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Dr. Bridget L. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and the Director of Tidewater Voices: An Oral History and Dialect Project. She specializes in acoustic phonetics and language variation. She is also works on criminal investigations involving language through her forensic linguistic casework.
Presentation #3 Title
Holistic Features of Appalachian English: Rootedness, Prosody, and Intonation
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
This paper shows how the holistic language features of intonation and prosody (i.e. the melody and timing of speech) are features that allow speakers to express their orientation to the local community, what I term ‘rootedness’. In a region that is undergoing rapid change yet also considers connection to place central, linguistic productions that evince rootedness provide a means for speakers to index their orientation to Appalachia and to the local community.
This study analyzes the intonation from sociolinguistic interview data from 24 (12 male, 12 female) Appalachian English (AE) speakers from northeast Tennessee. These speakers also completed a survey instrument which, when scored in conjunction with several questions from the interview, provided a quantitative measure of rootedness, i.e., a measure of local orientation. Roughly 5 minute samples from the middle portion of the interview were orthographically transcribed, and all intonational phenomena were transcribed using ToBI methodology and measures of prosodic timing (nPVI) were also taken. The results show that speakers with greater rootedness display both quantitative and qualitative differences in intonation and prosody. Speakers with higher rootedness scores had different tonal alignments and a difference in stress timing than speakers with lower rootedness scores. Also, more rooted speakers had relatively more rising pitch accents than less rooted speakers. These findings suggest that pitch and prosody can be considered socio-pragmatically productive means to display one’s orientation to the region and are ways of sounding Appalachian that deserve more research attention.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Dr. Paul E. Reed is an Assistant Professor of phonology/speech science at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on the sociophonetic variation and change in the English varieties of the American South, particularly of the Appalachian region.
Conference Subthemes
Diversity and Inclusion
Breaking into "Sounding Appalachian"
This presentation presents a historical backdrop by comparing well-known features to a historical baseline as documented in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountains Speech by Joseph Sargent Hall. Hall described general tendencies and individual words as pronunciation in a six-county area along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Seventy-five years later, Hall’s work remains not just the only comprehensive account of the pronunciation of an Appalachian variety of English, but also the only such detailed account of an American variety of the language. Hall observed many speakers ranging from children to the elderly, which sometimes enabled him to detect pronunciations that were increasing or even new.
Any list of specific forms or groups of form would be somewhat arbitrary, because the list could easily be lengthened.
The features are:
1) Appalachia pronounced as Ap-a-LAT-cha (not noted in Hall).
2) merger of ten with tin, hem with him, etc. (Hall, 19).
3) pronunciation of /ai/ before voiceless consonants /p, t, k, f, s/ in pipe, fight, hike, wife, rice, etc. (Hall, 43).
4) vocalization of final /l/ in ball, boil, etc.; (no comment by Hall).
5) the so-called Southern Vowel Shift, in which fist sounds like feest (Hall, 15); feast like faced (Hall, 14), etc.
6) fronting of back vowels, so that toot and tote almost sound like tut and pool, pull, and pole almost sound alike and rhyme with gull (not observed by Hall, except Hall, 36)
7) fronting of vowel in judge and mud to approach jedge and med (Hall, 40)
