A rural/metropolitan split in the speech of Texas Anglos

Abstract

The migration of people to the Sunbelt in the United States constitutes a major demographic shift, but has received little attention from language variationists. In Texas, this migration has led to a split of the Anglo population of the state into two dialects, a rural dialect and a metropolitan dialect. Evidence from a random-sample survey of Texas and from a systematic set of surveys of high schools in the state shows that young rural Anglos preserve two stereotypical features of the Texas accent, monophthongal /ai/, as in night, and lowered onsets of/e/, as in day, while young Anglos from metropolitan centers lack these features. This difference, which is absent among middle-aged and older native Texan Anglos, appears to have resulted from the fact that in-migration from other parts of the country is concentrated in metropolitan centers, especially suburbs. I wish to thank Guy Bailey for providing me with the raw data from the Texas Poll and the recordings from the high school surveys on which this study is based. Collection of the Texas Poll data was supported by National Science Foundation grant BNS-8812552.1 also wish to thank Walt Wolfram, Guy Bailey, and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors, of course, are my own. 309 310 ERIK R. THOMAS

The social dimension of the Southern Vowel Shift: Gender, age and class

“…In his investigation into the distribution of monophthongal /ay/ and lowered /ey/ (part of the /ey/~/E/ reversal in the Southern Shift) in the speech of Anglos in Texas, Thomas (1997) found a rural/urban split in the use of these two features such that rural Texans were the predominant users of these features while urban Texans tended to exhibit these features least. He associated the non-use of urban Texans with the in-migration of (non-local) Northerners.…”

On the role of social factors in the loss of phonemic distinctions

“…It is found throughout the South (Brown 1991;Montgomery & Elbe 2004;Tillery & Bailey 2004), though it is also present at scattered points across the US (Metcalf 1972;Bigham 2005;ANAE). In the South, it has been found to be receding recently in large urban centres such as Houston (Koops et al 2008), Dallas and Atlanta (Tillery & Bailey 2004), likely due to a large influx of non-Southerners in the last few decades (Thomas 1997(Thomas , 2004. 4…”

Vowel patterns in developmental apraxia of speech: three longitudinal case studies

“…(Bailey, & Bernstein, 1989;Thomas, 1997). In particular, an acoustic study of Texas Anglo high school students showed lower F2 offset values of /aı/ for rural speakers than metropolitan speakers, suggesting monophthongization in the former group but not in the latter (Thomas, 1997).…”

“…The phonological characteristics of Southern American English (SAE) as spoken by Texans have been studied in some depth (see Bailey, & Bernstein, 1989;Bailey, & Tillery, 1996;Thomas, 1997). (Bailey, & Bernstein, 1989;Thomas, 1997).…”