joining me is William Labov, he is a professor of linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania. Also author of this book
"Dialect Diversity in America: The Politics of Language Change".
So Professor Labaov, thanks so much for being here, this is a fascinating topic to me.
I think a good way to start would be
how many distinct dialects do you identify in the United States?
Well on the map of our, uh
atlas of North American English,
there's about fifteen.
Uh, they differ as far as their size and importance are concerned.
People used to think of the American dialects as
North, South,
and General American.
But uh... there isn't any such thing as General American,
while there is however a distinction between the North,
the Midland
in between, and the South.
So when people - when people use this term which I don't even know if it's a term you
agree with, but kind of a
a generic American accent, what it - what are they really referring to in your
experience?
Well, there are some dialects
where change is not so active,
and I think that people point to the
midwest around Iowa
as dialect that is missing.
some of the marked features of the
North-East, the South
or the North.
DAVID PAKMAN: Understood.
So when when we talk about different dialects taking on
negative connotations sometimes right, do-do uh... we we see situations where
there's sometimes stereotypes around certain dialects?
One of them I think it-that the common one is
certain Southern dialects reflect either lack of intelligence, or lack of
education.
I'm curious, what's your opinion of how those connotations develop around
certain American dialects?
There's two dialects that are marked as -
in this negative in the way that you talk about. The first is the one
is not the South, but New York City.
My first study was called "The Social Stratification of English in New York City,"
and I'm faced with the fact that
New York is what we call the
"sink of negative prestige".
And uh,
another way to put it was that
if you - you're dead on Madison Avenue if you sound like New York.
Well that tendency,
it goes way back,
uh... was once
noted by
the great dialectologist Raven McDavid,
that the line surrounding New York City
is the same as a line of the occupation of the city by the British troops in the
War of 1812.
Whereas most of the big cities have an area of,
uh... hundred miles radius around them,
showing their influence,
like Philadelphia, Boston, Ch- uh, Charleston.
NYC is tightly confined
and uh...
the reasons for this particular stereotype and negative pattern
are hard to put your hand on, because
New York is the leader in
fashion,
finance,
and so many other areas,
even in graffiti.
New York is uh,
a big cultural influence in the city. As far as language is concerned,
it is stamped as being
uncouth,
you're lower class.
DAVID PAKMAN: Okay. And-and then also, I would love to get your thoughts on on this kind of
prototypical
Southern accent and the reason I'm interested in that is we've had a number
of interviews on this program with different people.
And what we find is often we'll interview someone who
had grew up in the South, went to school in the South, lived in the South
their entire life, but they have no particularly noticeable accent that
appears to be from there. And I guess what really my question is-is
do we-do you experience-do you have any-any evidence that suggests that there
are people that may either deliberately or
by osmosis maybe from being involved in higher education, lose what
may be a kind of particularly regionalized dialect?
What is the process by which that happens in your experience?
Well, "The Influence of Higher Education
On Local Phonology" is the name of a research project that we're engaged in
right now.
And it used to be that
going to college was, I used to think, was bad for you. As a I linguist I like people
people to use their native
personal accent they grew up with. We have to face the fact that certain
dialects have negative prestige, I mentioned New York, and it is true what we said, what
you suggested about the South.
In our atlas we find is that almost all of the
dialects of the United States are becoming
more different from each other, are growing and developing and their
idiosyncratic features are becoming stronger.
The South is different. The South is receding.
Slowly,
but gradually,
the boundaries of the South are shrinking.
But more importantly, big cities like
Atlanta,
Dallas and Houston
are filled with people coming from the North.
And they've lost a great deal of their Southern character
DAVID PAKMAN: So is it fair to say that-that you believe that as we go forward, what is
sometimes called the prototypical Southern accent may become something
that is spoken-that is heard less and less?
Well that would be going a little far, but uh,
just to put it this way we, we had last four or five presidents
have shown the Southern accent in their-
these-they didn't do any harm.
Uh, Bill Clinton is not injured
by his Arkansas accent.
So that, uh... politicians
make a ...
find a middle way,
to show their local affiliation, and at the same time, to indicate that they're intelligent and educated people.
Dennis Preston is a linguist who studied this folk
psychology of language,
more than anyone else.
And he's made - had people draw maps,
of where the best English is spoken and
where the worst English is spoken.
And uh...
over and over again,
the South is marked as where the worst English is spoken.
As you said,
is associated with...with
uh...rural...ignorant...
uh...sometimes called lazy speech.
DAVID PAKMAN: Sure.
DR. LABOV: Uh..., on the other hand, if we look back,
to, uh, if we look at the North, we find that people
say that the best English is spoken,
well, in Michigan [where the study was done] they say the best English is spoken in Michigan.
I've been trying to uh, find the origins of this development.
And go back, look at the settlement patterns of the United States.
And see whether the Yankees settled the North
and the Quakers settled the midland area,
along with the Appalachian people.
And the South, has its origins,
but the-these dialect differences have their roots
in the violent controversies of the middle of the 19th century
having to do with slavery.
DAVID PAKMAN: Interesting.
DR. LABOV: And uh...
I think it would be difficult to avoid the implication that people associate
souther accents with negative attitudes towards race.
Even though
the vast number of Southerners
have taken the lead
in civil rights.
DAVID PAKMAN: No question about it.
Let's shift a little bit and talk about changes that we can observe right now in
American dialects. Now one of them
is the northern cities shift. Can you describe what that is and maybe give us
some examples?
Well, I've got uh... a map from the atlas... to to look at here
and we can see this
area called the North outlined in blue
and within that, is an area called the Inland North which is
surrounding the Great Lakes.
It includes cities like
Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo
Detroit,
Cleveland, Toledo,
Gary,
from uh...
Chicago,
Madison,
Milwaukee.
That's a vast area of about 30 million people, and they all are marked by
a new sound change that developed in the middle of the 20th century
which is quite remarkable.
No one talks about it. No one makes fun of it.
There's no stereotypes to do with it
If you listen to people on the radio,
you'll hear
people saying things like
Not what hAppened but what hEppened?
Look at thAt vs.Look at thEAt?
So all these words spelled with a short A. 'That,' 'rap,' 'mat.'
'athletic,'
are pronounced 'mEAt,' [mat] 'rEAp,' [rap] 'thEAt,' [that]
'EAthletic' [athletic].
You'll hear this from very educated people, from judges and lawyers.
It isn't as if it's a...
stigmatized feature at all, on the contrary
it's a growing tendency which has
reached its peak in this area, and then it brought about
changes
in other vowels, the neighboring vowels, the system. So that the
words that are spelled with a short O
moved forward to the place where the short A used to be.
So people of this area will say not: 'I've gOt the jOb' but
'I've gAt the jAb.'
Not 'a pair of sOcks' but 'a pair of sAx' [socks].
This leads to a lot of misunderstanding across dialects, of course.
DAVID PAKMAN: I'll say.
DR. LABOV: So then, there's three other sounds,
perhaps one of the most striking ones is the one that is spelled ... words that are spelled with short U
And uh... or sometimes O as in 'bOsses.'
So
one of the experiments we have, people are listening to...
individual words and they hear the word
'bosses'
and then a little later on they hear
'the bosses with the antennas on top'
and then: 'we used to ride on the bosses with the antennas on top,' and gradually
people begin to realize that this person
is pronouncing the word 'bus'
the way that they prounounce 'boss.'
Well,
so these rotations, this great rotation of five vowels, it is
is what we call the Northern City Shift,
and it is
something that's growing and developing
and becoming
perhaps someday it will become
conscious and people will talk about it.
Right now,
it's
marking that
most
educated, Yankee settled area of
the American
linguistic scene
as quite different from any other.
DAVID PAKMAN: The other one that you talk about is the vowel merger. And so an example of that,
would be for example
the word
cot, C-O-T,
being pronounced the same way as to catch something, C-A-U-G-H-T.
So talk about that one little bit
Well I've got a map there
for you to take a look at, from the atlas showing
the vast areas of the United States
where 'cot'
and 'caught' are pronounced the same.
The area marked in green.
And it includes
eastern New England,
where this started,
and it includes
western Pennsylvania
and all of Canada
and most of the west, so geographically it's about half
of the United States even though of the population, it's a little less
and in those areas people say
uh...
'I'm sleeping on a cOt and i've cOt [caught] a cold."
they talk about - a boy named Don and a girl named Dawn will sound the same-
which is a source of great confusion for people named Don and Dawn.
DAVID PAKMAN: Right, so do that one again, do the different pronunciation for Don and Dawn
'cause I - I think I say it the same way. Give us the different one.
DR. LABOV: I'll give you two ways of exaggerating the difference. DAVID PAKMAN: Okay.
DR. LABOV: In New York,
it's dOn
and dAWn
dOn and dAWn.
In Chicago,
it's dAn
and dOn
but they're different
it'll be very hard for some of my listeners
who are of the Merger to hear the difference because once two vowels have
been decided they're gonna be the same,
it's very hard to hear them as different.
DAVID PAKMAN: RIght, okay this - this is fascinating
let me ask you another question: is it possible that we may at some point get
to - I want to get to the political influence on dialect.
Do you believe there is a situation that could arise in this country
where there becomes either a distinction on dialect among blue and red states, in
other words, more liberal and more conservative areas
uh... or simply among liberals and conservatives could there be any
influence on society such that would create dialect splits among political
lines?
We've been looking at that rather closely.
The evidence is difficult to put together because it has to do with correlations
the blue states
and the red states are very tightly correlated with this difference we've been talking
about
the area where the Northern City Shift takes place is very much a part of the blue
states and its origins as we've
been able to trace it
go back to the period
that yankee settlement area
was motivated and was
riddled by violent
storms of political controversy
where people
denounced the South
and said that slavery was a sin
and that any church which was
associated with a Southern church
was guilty of sin
so that ... this dialect difference grew up in a period where the
split between the North and the South politically and ideologically became extreme
and, uh,
Henry Ward Beecher said at one point
"The South has been found wanting.
"This country will be governed by Northern ideas, Nothern ...
"Northern
"achievements
"Northern ways of thinking."
So the split between the North and South
takes its origin
in that period before the Civil War.
Is it continuing? What has happened is that the geographic distribution of
these groups have been reversed.
When I was a kid,
the rock-ribbed Republicans were solidly entrenched in New England
and the South was solidly Democratic.
As we all know that has been reversed now
and uh... but the dialect differences that mark these two
regions still persist in this in a way that
continues that early
division between the North and the South founded
1840, 1850.
The last thing I want to touch on, and this is kind of an interesting thing
where I would just love to get your expert opinion,
my producer, Louis, we've observed that he he has a kind of his own
dialect which we've noticed that he speaks, and there's certain words that he
pronounces in an unusual way which I'll recreate for you
just to get your thought on
where may this come from. Now a little background on Louis: Louis was born
and grew up in western Massachusetts so outside of the, of the kind of
traditional Boston accent area,
and his father
learned English as a second language. His father's an immigrant of from Iran, okay,
Now we've noticed a couple things Louis does,
A lot of words that here, for example, i would pronounce
'l go to hAIgh [high] school'
or 'I've just purchased an AItem' [item].
Louis pronounces
'I go to hIgh school and i purchased an Item.' Okay, now another weird
pronunciation for Louis is the word, I would say 'musEum'
Louis tends to say 'musAum." This is - this is very specific to certain words. We
have no idea where this came from and Louis doesn't either. Give us an idea,
a hypothesis on this.
Well the first group of words that you talked about has been a
great focus of attention for us in Philadelphia
It's called Canadian Raising
where people - people say
not Ice cream but AIce cream
Now give me again the pronunciation that you hear from your friend, Louis.
So, where as I would say
'AIce cream'
Louis would say 'Ice cream.'
well the I
diphthong
is a big
marker of North-South differences
so - and there are two ways that the North can differentiate from the South
one is to say
'Ice cream'
and the other is to say 'IAce cream' DAVID PAKMAN: Right. DR. LABOV: Strong diphthong.
Is this unusual for Louis, who grew up in Massachusetts to just have these
certain words that he pronounces this way?
Well the certain words you're talking about, I assume, are
not just an individual word but a member of a group. DAVID PAKMAN: Right.
So people who say 'bIke' and 'wrIte' and 'sIght' also say
'pIpe' and 'lIfe'
It's taking the whole group of words that end in what we call voiceless consonants.
So the example you gave of 'ice cream' the two examples are
those that come before S, F, P, T, K.
which are consonants that we call voiceless.
I don't hear in your reproduction of Louis's speech
any of the major tendencies that are marked in New England
DAVID PAKMAN: I don't either, yeah.
No, it, uh, seems to be different.
But in general we could say that people are not marked by the pronunciation of their
parents.
Used to think that ethnicity, where your parents came from, would be the strongest
influence on your local dialect
but it turns out that children somehow have the ability to turn away from the
peculiar ways their parents speak
if their parents are not native speakers of English.
So the least - the slightest influence on
the development of the dialect is the way your parents spoke.
This is
surprising and indicates that children somehow have an uncanny
ability to know what is the most useful form of language so they can use in
communicating with their
not just their friends and their peers, but the whole world out there.
Well we may have a question mark here with Louis. I would
think that uh... you know I would love to make him available to you for an
in-depth study on just exactly what went on with the-with how Louis speaks
but that may be a broader project than just one person can take on, we may need
a team to analyze that, Professor. This has been fantastic, though. We've
been speaking with Professor William Labov, professor of linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania. I recommend the book "Dialect Diversity in America:
the Politics of Language Change." Professor, thank you so much for doing
this.
DR. LABOV: It's a pleasure.