Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology ~ Volume 2

HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY

HANDBOOK OF

PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY VOLUME

2

Edited by

DANIEL LONG Tokyo Metropolitan University

DENNIS R. PRESTON Michigan State University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM / PHILADELPHIA

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of perceptual dialectology, vol. 2 / edited by Daniel Long and Dennis R. Preston. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Linguistic geography. 2. Speech perception. 3. Language and languages--Variation. 4. Language awareness. I. Preston, Dennis Richard. P375.H28 2002 417’.2--dc21 98-25334 ISBN 90 272 2185 5 (Eur.) / 1 55619 757 8 (US) (Vol. 2; alk. paper) CIP © 2002 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

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Table of Contents

List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

xi

Preface Ronald R. Butters

xv

Acknowledgments

xvii

Introduction

xix 1

1.

Miami Cuban Perceptions of Varieties of Spanish Gabriela G. Alfaraz

2.

Aesthetic Evaluation of Dutch: Comparisons across Dialects, Accents, and Languages Renée van Bezooijen

13

3.

Perceptions of Languages in the Mandingo Region of Mali: Where Does One Language Begin and the Other End? Cécile Canut

31

4.

Gender Differences in the Perception of Turkish Regional Dialects Mahide Demirci

41

5.

Mental Maps: Linguistic-Geographic Concepts Willy Diercks

51

6.

Attitudes of Montreal Students Towards Varieties of French Betsy E. Evans

71

7.

An Acoustic and Perceptual Analysis of Imitation Betsy E. Evans

95

8.

California Students’ Perceptions of, You Know, Regions and Dialects? Carmen Fought

113

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Perception of Dialect Distance: Standard and Dialect in Relation to New Data on Dutch Varieties Ton Goeman

10. A Dialect with ‘Great Inner Strength’?: The Perception of Nativeness in the Bergen Speech Community Paul Kerswill 11. Dialect Recognition and Speech Community Focusing in New and Old Towns in England: The Effects of Dialect Levelling, Demography and Social Networks Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams 12. Where is the ‘Most Beautiful’ and the ‘Ugliest’ Hungarian Spoken? Miklós Kontra 13. Microcosmic Perceptual Dialectology and the Consequences of Extended Linguistic Awareness: A Case Study of Noirmoutier Island (France) Jean Léo Léonard 14. Regional Differences in the Perception of Korean Dialects Daniel Long and Young-Cheol Yim 15. A Perceptual Dialectology of Anglophone Canada from the Perspective of Young Albertans and Ontarians Meghan McKinnie and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

135

151

173 205

219 249

277

16. Madrid Perceptions of Regional Varieties in Spain Juliana Moreno Fernández and Francisco Moreno Fernández

295

17. Attitudes Toward Midwestern American English Nancy Niedzielski

321

18. The Perception of Urban Varieties: Preliminary Studies from the South of Italy Maria Teresa Romanello

329

19. A Perceptual Dialect Study of French in Switzerland Caroline L’Eplattenier-Saugy

351

20. Influence of Vowel Devoicing on Dialect Judgments by Japanese Speakers Midori Yonezawa

367

About the Contributors

397

Name Index

399

Subject Index

405



List of Figures

C 1 Figure 1.1. Mean scores for correct. Figure 1.2. Mean scores for pleasant. Figure 1.3. Ratings for correct of Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post by time of arrival. C 2 Figure 2.1. Mean ugly – beautiful ratings for four dialects of Dutch by seven listener groups of different ages and from various regional backgrounds. Figure 2.2. Mean ugly – beautiful ratings for individual speakers of four dialects of Dutch by five adult listener groups from various regional backgrounds. Figure 2.3. Ratings by 23 phoneticians of eight languages on ugly–beautiful, monotonous–melodious, and loud–soft. C 3 Figure 3.1. The Mandingo region of Mali. C 4 Figure 4.1. The map used in this task. Figure 4.2. An upper-class female hand-drawn map with minimal distinctions. Figure 4.3. An upper-class male hand-drawn map with several distinctions. Figure 4.4. Perceived dialect areas by female respondents. Figure 4.5. Perceived dialect areas by male respondents. C 5 Figure 5.1. The city of Schleswig and the places from which the dialect samples used in the test were obtained. Figure 5.2. Age and dialect orientation. Figure 5.3. Residence and dialect orientation. Figure 5.4. Occupation and dialect orientation (1). Figure 5.5. Occupation and dialect orientation (2). Figure 5.6. Gender and dialect orientation. Figure 5.7. Geographic distance and dialect orientation. C 6 Figure 6.1. Hand-drawn map. Figure 6.2. Hand-drawn map.

viii Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

LIST OF FIGURES 6.3. Hand-drawn map. 6.4. Hand-drawn map. 6.5. Hand-drawn map. 6.6. Composite of hand-drawn maps. 6.7. Regional map from ALEC data (Verreault and Lavoie 1996: 462). 6.8. ‘r’ isogloss map from ALEC data (Dulong and Bergeron 1980: 31). 6.9. Correctness means scores. 6.10. MDS for correctness. 6.11. Pleasantness means scores. 6.12. MDS for pleasantness. 6.13. Difference means scores. 6.14. MDS for difference.

C 7 Figure 7.1. “Normal” or “Midwestern” American English vowels, based on F1 and F2 scores from Peterson and Barney (1952). Figure 7.2. The Southern Vowel Shift (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 1997). Figure 7.3. Noah’s “normal” front vowel system. Figure 7.4. Noah’s “imitation” front-vowel system. Figure 7.5. Noah’s “normal” back-vowel system. Figure 7.6. Noah’s “imitation” back-vowel system. Figure 7.7. Noah’s “normal” low-vowel system. Figure 7.8. Noah’s “imitation” low-vowel system. Figure 7.9. Noah’s normal and imitation systems. Figure 7.10. Location of speakers’ home towns in West Virginia. Figure 7.11. Mean scores for all speakers. Figure 7.12. Cluster tree. Figure 7.13. Acoustic analysis of the Charleston speaker. Figure 7.14. Acoustic analysis of the Parkersburg speaker. C 8 Figure 8.1. Hand-drawn map. Figure 8.2. Hand-drawn map. Figure 8.3. Hand-drawn map. Figure 8.4. Hand-drawn map. Figure 8.5. Areas identified by 4 respondents (from the cities shown) as being The Midwest. Figure 8.6. Number of respondents who identified a state as being in The Midwest. Figure 8.7. Number of respondents who identified a state as being in The South. Figure 8.8. Number of respondents who labeled an area including this state as Proper English. Figure 8.9. Number of respondents who labeled an area including this state as Good, Better, or Best English. C 9 Figure 9.1. Subjective identification of southwestern Dutch dialects, general (above) and detailed (below) (Goeman 1984). Figure 9.2. Dispersion and orientation to the standard. Figure 9.3. Vowel shortening, showing positive residuals in the shaded areas and negative residuals in the unshaded areas. Figure 9.4. Models.

LIST OF FIGURES

ix

C 10 Figure 10.1. Mean ratings of the nine voices. Figure 10.2. Frequency distribution of ratings. Figure 10.3. Correlation of mean ratings and the morpho-lexical index. Figure 10.4. Frequency distribution of ratings for three intermediate voices. C 11 Figure 11.1. Map showing location of places mentioned in this article. Figure 11.2. Correct identifications of young voices from judges’ home towns. Figure 11.3. Hull identifications of speakers from Hull. Figure 11.4. Non-generic ‘Northern’ identifications of Northern voices by Working Class Hull judges. Figure 11.5. Non-generic ‘Northern’ identifications of Northern voices by Middle Class Hull judges. Figure 11.6. Reading identifications of speakers from Reading. Figure 11.7. Reading judges’ identifications of Reading and London voices as ‘West Country’, ‘Reading’ and ‘London’. Figure 11.8. Milton Keynes and Hull southern identifications of Reading and London voices. Figure 11.9. Milton Keynes identifications of speakers from Milton Keynes. C 12 Figure 12.1. Map of Hungarian dialect areas and sites referred to in this study. C 13 Figure 13.1. Villages and hamlets of Noirmoutier. Figure 13.2. Numbers assigned the dialect varieties of Noirmoutier. Figure 13.3. 1st person singular and plural pronouns. Figure 13.4.1. Various features of Noirmoutier dialects. Figure 13.4.2. Some Noirmoutier isoglosses. Figure 13.5. Front nasal vowel in Noirmoutier. Figure 13.6. Complex nuclei in Noirmoutier and northern Poitevin. Figure 13.7. Stressed front nasals on Noirmoutier and the mainland. Figure 13.8. Rhoticity and secondary diphthongs in Noirmoutier and the mainland. Figure 13.9. Network relations on the island in the last 1,000 years. Figure 13.10. Occupational networks on Noirmoutier. Figure 13.11. A v4 respondent’s comments on v3. Figure 13.12. A v4 respondent’s comments on v7. C 14 Figure 14.1. One respondent’s hand-drawn map. Figure 14.2. Distribution of Korean dialects, after Ogura 1940. Figure 14.3. “Standard (p’yojun-æo)” region; all informants, n = 70. Figure 14.4. “Most Pleasant” 7 region, National Average. Figure 14.5. “Most Pleasant” region of Seoul informants, n = 51. Figure 14.6. “Most Pleasant” region of Kyæonggi informants, n = 35. Figure 14.7. “Most Pleasant” region of Kangwæon informants, n = 22. Figure 14.8. “Most Pleasant” region of Ch’ungch’æong informants, n = 84. Figure 14.9. “Most Pleasant” region of Chæolla informants, n = 94. Figure 14.10. “Most Pleasant” region of Kyæongsang informants, n = 51. Figure 14.11. “Most Pleasant” region of Cheju informants, n = 34. Figure 14.12. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Seoul respondents. Figure 14.13. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Kyæonggi respondents.



x Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

LIST OF FIGURES 14.14. 14.15. 14.16. 14.17. 14.18.

Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Kangwæon respondents. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Ch’ungch’æong respondents. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Cholla respondents. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Kyæongsang respondents. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Cheju respondents.

C 15 Figure 15.1. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘pleasantness’. Figure 15.2. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘pleasantness’. Figure 15.3. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘correctness’. Figure 15.4. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘correctness’. Figure 15.5. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘similarness’. Figure 15.6. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘similarness’. Figure 15.7. Percentage of respondents drawing boundaries. C 16 Figure 16.1. Map of Spain with areal divisions. Figure 16.2. Immigration to Madrid. 1955 and 1992. Figure 16.3. Correspondence analysis. Areas 1–7 and respondent sites 1–4. Figure 16.4. Multidimensional analysis. All respondents. Figure 16.5. Multidimensional analysis. Men. Figure 16.6. Multidimensional analysis. Women. Figure 16.7. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 18–35. Figure 16.8. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 36–55. Figure 16.9. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 56+. Figure 16.10. Multidimensional analysis. University education. Figure 16.11. Multidimensional analysis. Secondary education. Figure 16.12. Multidimensional analysis. Less than secondary education. Figure 16.13. Perceptual areas, combined, showing greatest differences. C 17 Figure 17.1. Michigan map of correctness means scores ratings (Preston 1989) where respondents rated each area on a scale of 1 to 10. Figure 17.2. Perceived vowel space (bold and enlarged) chosen for speaker on test tape for five vowels, superimposed on her actual vowel space. C 18 Figure 18.1. The research area. Figure 18.2. The City of Lecce. Figure 18.3. The Mazzini section of Lecce. Figure 18.4. Lecce Center. Figure 18.5. The City of Brindisi. Figure 18.6. Brindisi Center. Figure 18.7. Casale section of Brindisi. Figure 18.8. Respondent map outlines (Brindisi Center). C 19 Figure 19.1. French-speaking Switzerland.



List of Tables

C 2 Table 2.1. Product-moment correlations among the ugly – beautiful ratings of seven listener groups of different ages and various regional backgrounds. *p < .05. Table 2.2. Mean ratings for standardness and intelligibility of four dialects by students from Nijmegen University. Table 2.3. Product-moment correlations between mean ugly – beautiful ratings by three listener groups from Liessel and ratings for standardness and intelligibility by students from Nijmegen University. *p < .05. Table 2.4. Product-moment correlations between ugly – beautiful and seven judgment scales by a varied group of 113 listeners. *p < .05. Table 2.5. Principal components resulting from a varimax rotation of ten scales rated by 113 listeners. Loadings < .10 have been omitted. Loadings > .60 have been shaded in grey. Table 2.6. Reliability (Cronbach’s alpha), mean confidence score and percentage explained variance of 21 scales rated by 23 phoneticians. Table 2.7. Product-moment correlations between ugly – beautiful and other scales rated by 23 phoneticians. *p < .05. Table 2.8. Outcomes of a multiple regression analysis (stepwise) with ugly – beautiful ratings by 23 phoneticians as criterion and fourteen descriptive scales as predictors. C 3 Table 3.1. Morphological variations in Mandingo (Bambara/Malinke). C 4 Table 4.1. Perceived dialect areas by each subgroup. C 6 Table 6.1. t values for significance of differences in the evaluation of English and French guises of speakers (Lambert et al. 1960: 46). Table 6.2. Subjects’ mean ratings for five adjective traits of spontaneous speech samples (d’Anglejan and Tucker: 1973: 22). Table 6.3. Responses to statements 2a, b, and c [translation mine] (Tremblay 1990: 203). C 7 Table 7.1. Two- and three-way K-means cluster analyses. Table 7.2. Respondents’ ratings for the Charleston speaker and the imitation (n = 69).

xii

LIST OF TABLES

C 8 Table 8.1. Terms associated with the South. Table 8.2. Terms associated with the East or East Coast. Table 8.3. Terms associated specifically with New York. Table 8.4. Terms associated with the Midwest. Table 8.5. Terms associated with California (or the West Coast). C 10 Table 10.1. Key differences between Stril and Bergen dialects. Table 10.2. Stril and Bergen dialect features used by voices V3 and V7 on the test tape. Table 10.3. Variants of two phonetic variables used by V3 and V9. C 11 Table 11.1. Summary of demographic characteristics of Reading, Milton Keynes and Hull. Table 11.2. Voices presented to judges in Hull, Reading and Milton Keynes. Table 11.3. Birthplace of Hull judges and their parents. Table 11.4. The PRICE vowel with following voiceless and voiced consonants, Hull speakers (adapted from Williams and Kerswill 1999, Table 7). Table 11.5. Birthplace of Reading judges and their parents. Table 11.6. Birthplace of Milton Keynes judges and their parents. C 12 Table 12.1. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Western dialect speakers. Table 12.2. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Transdanubian dialect speakers. Table 12.3. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Southern dialect speakers. Table 12.4. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Palóc dialect speakers. Table 12.5. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Northeastern dialect speakers. Table 12.6. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Tiszai dialect speakers. Table 12.7. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Budapest speakers. Table 12.8. Rank list of most beautiful Hungarian judged by two groups. Table 12.9. Rank list of ugliest Hungarian judged by two groups. Table 12.10. Rank list of ugliest and most beautiful Hungarian judged by linguists. C 13 Table 13.1. I, we: {i ≠ jhe}. Table 13.2. Passive Past Participle ⇒ [a AGR.]. Table 13.3. Latin N+ -ELLU-Suff. Table 13.4. -eN# [+ Stressed], front nasal vowel /ê/: {[Áâj] ≠ [Áêj] ≠ [Áan]}. Table 13.5. -oN# [+ Stressed], back nasal vowel /ô/: {[Áâj] ≠ [Áêj] ≠ [Á7ô]}. Table 13.6. Prosodic alternation of marked nuclei (oral nuclei). Table 13.7. Complex nuclei in Noirmoutrin and northern Poitevin. Table 13.8. -eN, L [+distributed] or -eN, -eL +Pal. Table 13.9. Phonolexical -o- raising versus lowering. Table 13.10. oiR#: {oi ≠ wE}. Table 13.11. Rhoticity. Table 13.12. -C#. Table 13.13. “beaucoup” = “much”. Table 13.14. Stressed nasal vowels in Noirmoutier and the mainland. Table 13.15. Dialect clustering. Table 13.16. La Guérinière dialect clustering.

LIST OF TABLES Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

13.17. 13.18. 13.19. 13.20. 13.21. 13.22. 13.23.

xiii

Individual dialect clustering. Unlikely dialect clustering. Individual dialect clustering. /ˆ/ ~ /j/ Coronal affrication before [i]. The conceptual world. Availability (First Hand Constraint).

C 14 Table 14.1. The most commonly drawn speech regions. Table 14.2. Combinations of locative descriptors and variety descriptors in speech variety labels. Table 14.3. Frequency of “Standard” and “Seoul” maps by informant region. Table 14.4. Dialect Attitudes by Informant Region. Table 14.5. Areas given as “Most Pleasant” by Informant Region. Table 14.6. Regions indicated as most pleasant. Table 14.7. Indicators of perceptual centralization in three countries. C 15 Table 15.1. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Pleasantness’. Table 15.2. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Pleasantness’. Table 15.3. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Correctness’. Table 15.4. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Correctness’. Table 15.5. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Similarness’. Table 15.6. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Similarness’. C 16 Table 16.1. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of complete sample. Table 16.2. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of MEN. Table 16.3. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of WOMEN. Table 16.4. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 18–35. Table 16.5. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 36–55. Table 16.6. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 56 and over. Table 16.7. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of UNIVERSITY GRADUATES. Table 16.8. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of SECONDARY STUDIES. Table 16.9. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of WITHOUT SECONDARY STUDIES. C 17 Table 17.1. Where can you hear basic, standard American English? Table 17.2. Formants of tokens of ‘pop’ played for respondents (n = 42) and responses. Table 17.3. Formants of tokens of ‘last’ played for respondents (n = 42) and responses. Table 17.4. Formant values of tokens of ‘close’ played for respondents (n = 21) and responses. C 19 Table 19.1. Mean scores for correctness, pleasantness (six-point scales) and degree of difference (fourpoint scale) for all respondents. C 20 Table 20.1. Words containing environment of potentially devoiced /i/. Table 20.2. Words containing environment of potentially devoiced /u/. Table 20.3. List of distracters. Table 20.4. Coding for each word.



xiv Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table

LIST OF TABLES 20.5. Results by devoicing and undevoicing at the end of words. 20.6. Overall results by types of variants. 20.7. Overall results by types of variants and correct/incorrect responses. 20.8. Results by Tokyo/Kinki accent and devoicing/undevoicing. 20.9. Results by position of devoiceable vowel (mora). 20.10. Results by position of devoiceable vowel (boundary). 20.11. Results by accent patterns HLL, HLLL, and HLLH. 20.12. Results by accent patterns HLL and LHL. 20.13. Results by preceding consonant. 20.14. Results by consonant preceding devoiced vowels. 20.15. Results by consonant preceding undevoiced vowels. 20.16. Results by following consonant. 20.17. Results by consonant following devoiced vowels. 20.18. Results by consonant following undevoiced vowels. 20.19. Results by speaker. 20.20. Results by speaker with devoiced/undevoiced variants. 20.21. Results by gender of the speaker. 20.22. Results by gender of the speaker for devoiced variants. 20.23. Results by gender of the speaker for distracters by accent. 20.24. Results by gender of the respondent. 20.25. Results by gender of the respondent for devoiced variants. 20.26. Results by gender of the respondent for distracters by accent.



Preface Ronald R. Butters

In his foundational book Language, Leonard Bloomfield indicated the need for perceptual dialectology (doubtless without quite knowing it) when he noted that “within a relatively homogeneous set of speakers — say, the native speakers of English in the Middle Western part of the United States — the habits of speech are far more uniform than the needs of communication would demand. We see the proof of this when an outsider — say, a Southerner … — comes into our midst: his [sic] speech may be so much like ours as to cause not the slightest difficulty in communication, and yet strikingly noticeable on account of inessential differences” (45). Bloomfield elsewhere referred to the reactions of speakers to these “inessential differences” as secondary responses to language, and in the course of linguistics in the past 70 years such “secondary responses” have been much discussed in terms of prestige, particularly insofar as social and regional dialects relate to national norms and standard languages. Dialectologists and sociolinguists have analyzed an impressive amount of data that demonstrate the “how” and “what” of linguistic variation, and linguists in general have striven mightily for decades to substitute the notion of prestige in place of the widespread nonscientific belief in “good” versus “bad” varieties of English (and other languages). Far less effort, however, has been expended in the linguistic community of scholars to establish the scientific “how” and “what” of Bloomfield’s secondary responses to language. That is to say, we may know with some accuracy what constitutes Detroit African American working-class English and New York City European American middleclass English, but we know factually far less about how these two communities regard the English of each other, not only in terms of relative prestige but even in terms of their sense of the very existence of each other. Early scientific interest was relatively sparse: in 1966 Henry M. Hoenigswald published “A proposal for the study of folk-linguistics” (in William Bright, ed., Sociolinguistics, 16–26); some pioneering work was carried out earlier in Holland (W. G. Rensink, “Dialectindeling naar Opgaven van Medewerkers [Dialect Classification According to Informant Judgments]”, Mededelingen der Centrale Commissie voor Onderzoek van het Nederlandse Volkseigen [Amsterdam Dialectbureau



xvi

PREFACE

Bulletin] 7 [1955]: 20–23.) and Japan (Willem A. Grootaers, “Origin and Nature of the Subjective Boundaries of Dialects”, Orbis 8 [1959]: 355–84). Relevant parallel work was also carried out by social psychologists (see, e.g., W. E. R. Lambert, R. C. Hodgsen, R. C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum, “Evaluational Reaction to Spoken Language”, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60 [1960]: 44–51; Ellen B. Ryan and Howard Giles, eds., Attitudes towards Language Variation [1982]). It is this relative sparseness that, since the 1980s, Dennis Preston and a growing body of like-minded scholars have been laboring to correct. Two of the most important landmarks in this labor are Preston’s seminal work, Perceptual Dialectology (1989), and the collection of essays that he edited, Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume I (1999). The tradition continues in the present volume, which both reifies and expands upon the underlying principles of folk linguistics and at the same time extends the methodological applications into new regions, new languages, and the perceptions of their speakers. We have perhaps reached a time where the study of perceptual dialectology is no longer so new that it somehow needs any overt justification. After something like two decades of endeavor, perceptual dialectology is alive and well precisely because the results themselves are so impressively interesting and connect in so many ways with other dimensions of linguistic research. One is no longer surprised to find a lengthy chapter on perceptual dialectology (“The Names of U.S, English: Valley Girl, Cowboy, Yankee, Normal, Nasal, and Ignorant”, by Laura C. Hartley and Dennis R. Preston) in a collection of essays such as Standard English: The Widening Debate (ed. Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts, 1999). For example, after generations of linguists asking themselves where, based on externals of linguistic-feature variation, one language (say Italian) ends and another (say French) geographically begins, it is extremely useful to pose the question from the perspective of the users themselves, as Cécile Canut does in Chapter 3 of this book. Similarly, examining positive and negative responses to other dialects in aesthetic terms usefully focuses the broader notion of prestige upon the powerful emotive responses that may be masked in the usual discussions of linguistic purity or “logic” (see Chapters 2, on Dutch, and 12, on Hungarian). Other chapters take on issues with practical political implications: attitudes towards French and English in Canada (Chapters 6 and 15); and (even more subtly) French in Switzerland (Chapter 19), Spanish in both Spain and Miami (Chapters 16 and 1), English new and old towns (Chapter 10), Korean (Chapter 14), Japanese (Chapter 20), and urban varieties of Italian in the south of Italy (Chapter 18). Still other chapters relate to issues of great interest to those who study United States society: attitudes towards California speech (Chapter 8) and Midwestern speech (Chapter 17). Finally, there are essays of especial theoretical importance: on gender differences in Turkish (Chapter 4), mental maps (Chapter 5), dialect imitation (Chapter 7), “distance” in Dutch (Chapter 9), nativeness in Bergen (Chapter 10), and perceptual differences in the microcosm of a small island (Chapter 13). As William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., noted in his preface to Volume I of the handbook, “The notion of perceptual dialectology greatly deepens our understanding of the dynamics of speech communities” (xviii). Volume II continues the process.



Acknowledgments

Our first thanks as editors go to our patient authors. We have been longer giving birth to this volume than we would have liked, and it is not the fault of many of our contributors, who sent us manuscripts with almost alarming alacrity. We can only plead the case that we have fallen victim to the many obligations of the furiously-paced academic life, but, of course, we know how hollow that will ring with equally busy people. Nevertheless, we apologize to our authors for delays in the publication of their work and at the same time thank them again for their contributions. We are sure that readers will agree that these are important contributions, both for methodology and findings, to the study of the language and society interface. The patient Kees Vaes of Benjamins not only knows how to find good French restaurants in Amsterdam, he also knows how to get the most out of authors and editors with his always friendly and ever helpful e-presence. The following journal is gratefully acknowledged for its permission to reprint the previously published material included here: Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik for Willy Diercks’ Mental Maps: linguistisch-geographische Konzepte (1988, Vol. 55: 280–305). Finally, as readers of nearly everything else the senior editor has ever put his hands on already know, who else but Carol Preston read every word of this work, straightened out the prose, and, as always, gave the best advice and comfort possible?



Introduction

As our colleague and friend Ron Butters notes in his Preface, too much work in perceptual dialectology has gone on for us to justify its existence here. Readers who nevertheless seek further justification for the study of how nonlinguists conceive of and respond to dialect phenomena may consult the Introduction to the Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume I (Preston 1999, hereafter Handbook I) or, for a more general justification of the study of “folk linguistics” (of which perceptual dialectology is only one part), the Introduction and Chapter One of Niedzielski and Preston (1999). In fact, Butters notes the senior editor’s work of the early 1980’s as an historical jumping-off spot, but Preston has already apologized for discovering a field which had an honorable past. Handbook I contains that apology in its Introduction and was in great part an attempt to make amends for the putative discovery of an already tilled field by making available in one place (and in one language) much seminal work, particularly the contributions by Dutch and Japanese scholars from the mid-20th Century. It is inevitable, however, that any attempt to settle the historical record will overlook important work. Willy Diercks’ important study of dialect perception in the north of Germany (Chapter 5 in the present volume) should have been included in Handbook I; we have included it in the present volume. We are also sorry to have excluded from Handbook I and the present volume two important contributions from the point of view of dialectometry: Hans Goebl’s Die dialektale Gleiderung Ladiniens aus der Sicht der Ladiner. Eine Pilotstudie zum Problem der Geolinguistischen “Mental Maps”, Ladinia 17: 59–95 (1993) and Geolinguistische “Mental Maps”, Zum Problem der subjectiven Dialektverwandschaft (anhand eine Fallstudie aus Ladinien), in K. Sornig, D. Halwachs, C. Penzinger, G. Ambosch (eds), Linguistics with a human face. (Festschrift for Norman Denison on his 70th birthday). Graz: Grazer Linguistische Monographien 10: 97–111 (1995). We apologize to Professor Goebl for this oversight and can only suggest that it is a principal motivation for a Volume III. In addition to gathering historically important pieces and offering samples of current work, a third aim of Handbook I was to offer a comprehensive bibliography of work in perceptual dialectology. That aim too, of course, was bound to suffer from exclusions

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based quite simply on the editor’s ignorance. At first, it was planned to update (and correct those oversights) in the present volume. Luckily, however, both of those tasks were carried out before this work could appear. Sabina Canobbio and Gabriele Iannàccaro have edited Contriubuto per una bibliografia sulla dialettologia percettiva (#5 in the series Atlante Linguistico ed Etnografico del Piemonte Occidentale), Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartamento de Scienze del Linguaggio and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Turin: Edizioni dell’Orso (2000). This bibliography, which they chose to format with the same division between works “principally concerned” and “partially concerned” with perceptual dialectology (as in Handbook I), is, quite simply, the bibliography we would have offered here, and we are happy to recommend it to interested readers. It is thorough and precise. (It is also not quite the case that it is exactly the bibliography we would have offered here. In fact, Canobbio and Iannàccaro have included a number of important Romance-language offerings which we are obliged to admit we might have missed.) The reader will find, therefore, references cited at the end of each chapter in the present volume and no general bibliography. If there is no more historical catching-up to do (and if we have still missed a couple of items which should have been included even in Handbook I) and if there is no updated, comprehensive bibliography, the reader may, with growing unease, wonder what is here. We believe we have found, recruited, and selected a generous sample of continuing work in perceptual dialectology and that, as Butters suggests in his Preface, this work provides coverage of not only new regional and social territory but also new methodologies. These new selections illustrate, in fact, some of the difficulties (the boundaries of the field) and hopes (a focus on greater linguistic detail) expressed in the conclusion to the Introduction of Handbook I, and we review that rich diversity here. We have arranged these articles alphabetically (although Ms. L’Eplattenier-Saugy has changed names on us during the progress of this work but remains in her original “S” slot), since we could not so easily find a rubric like the historical-regional one which guided the partitioning of Handbook I. In Chapter 1, Alfaraz provides an excellent example of an application of one of the traditional methods of perceptual dialectology (querying subjects about where the “correct” and “pleasant” varieties of a language are spoken) but applies it to a very interesting population: Miami Cubans. Based on her general ethnographic and sociolinguistic work in the speech community, Alfaraz was led to ask for such ratings of Cuban Spanish for both the pre-Castro and post-Castro period. The results are an amazing example of the overwhelming influence of essentially nonlinguistic facts on the perception of linguistic ones. Cuban Spanish, in the pre-Castro era, was as “standard” as peninsular (or “Spain”) Spanish; post-Castro Cuban Spanish ranks with the lowest (Caribbean) varieties of Spanish. Chapter 1 is only the first of many of these chapters which include more ethnographic (and discoursal) data to help in the interpretation of either detailed attitudinal surveys or the details of the distribution of or responses to linguistic varieties (and even features) themselves. That development was heartily encouraged in the Introduction to Handbook I. Van Bezooijen, in Chapter 2, approaches basic issues in language attitude study (the distinction between inherent versus contextually conditioned value judgments of dialects,

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varieties, and even languages). Her three-part study (focusing on Dutch dialects, historical varieties of Dutch, and a variety of European languages) shows that such factors as intelligibility, similarity, and familiarity are constructs which are as important as those suggested by the inherent and contextual conditions for the perception of a dialect’s (or language’s) aesthetic quality. Such studies attempt to tease out the underlying cognitive details of recognition and evaluation, relying on carefully selected speech samples and carefully constructed judgment tasks. Perceptual dialectology clearly provides one the answers to the age-old question of where one language stops and another starts. (In fact, we would say it might be the only answer.) Canut shows, in Chapter 3, how linguistic facts in the Mandingo region of Mali (largely showing complex mixtures in every place where one might propose a “language boundary”) are not only not recognized by local speakers but are also ignored by them in their own characterizations of language and place. Demirci, in Chapter 4, continues the work of Demirci and Kleiner from Handbook I, again using data from respondents from western Turkey to show how sociolinguistic categories (in this case gender) may also be successfully teased out in traditional perceptual work. Men and women clearly do not have the same vision of where differences in regional Turkish are. In Chapter 5, Diercks shows the value of a focused or more intensely regional perceptual dialectology by limiting his investigation to a small area of northern Germany. In addition to paying attention to the important “dialect recognition” question, his work is also particularly sensitive to sociolinguistic dimensions, and some of his results show an attempt to tease out the historical dimension in perception by paying special attention to the factor of age (in apparent time). Evans returns to a much-studied territory in language attitude work in Chapter 6–the opinions of speakers of Montreal French. Her report focuses on a wide variety of perceptual and attitudinal techniques. Particularly interesting here are her comparisons of respondent hand-drawn maps with linguists’ maps of regional French in Canada. Those familiar with language attitude study, however, will be interested in seeing that Evans’ young Montreal respondents rank Montreal French on the same level as European French (as regards standardness), an enormous change from the evaluation of local French (on both standardness and solidarity scales) by speakers who would have been only the parents or grandparents of these respondents. In Chapter 7, Evans approaches dialect perception from a unique perspective — imitative ability. Her study exploits, as do several others included here, our increased use of advanced and sophisticated acoustic techniques in the study of language attitudes and perception (a trend suggested in the Introduction to Handbook I and exploited fully in Milroy and Preston 1999). Evans shows that adult dialect imitation may be, in fact, acoustically quite accurate, and she substantiates her acoustic analysis by presenting her “fake” dialect speaker to authentic local judges, who find him very good. These results suggest that the “control” dimension (see Preston 1996) of perceptual dialectology ought to be more thoroughly examined, and such studies have important implications for our claims about adult abilities to acquire new varieties of the same language and about bidialectalism in general.

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INTRODUCTION

At last, in Chapter 8, California is heard from. Fought exploits a number of the traditional techniques of perceptual dialectology to elicit from the much-talked-about Californians their own opinions of US linguistic diversity. Fought’s work is not, however, all beach-bum and Valley Girl perspectives. She struggles with the difficulty of analyzing hand-drawn maps, and, to some extent, helps modify a political boundary-line (e.g., state, province) process (used by several contributors to Handbook I). In addition, she pays particular attention to the labels (especially labels of linguistic significance) put on maps by her respondents, modifying and enlarging on the sort of analysis given hand-drawn map labels in Hartley and Preston (1999). Goeman, in Chapter 9, tries to carry out in great detail a study which will bolster one of the claims concerning the more general linguistic importance of perceptual dialectology — perceptual-attitudinal factors are important players in the study of on-going linguistic change. Of course, that has been known for a long time (and brought to bear on studies of on-going change in such phrases as “correction from above”), but it is rare to find a careful correlation laid out between perceptual status of areas (one’s own and others’) and a specific linguistic feature (or features). Goeman shows, however, through careful statistical modeling (making use of equally carefully obtained perceptual and linguistic feature measures) how perceptual status is related to such specific dialect features as t-deletion and vowel lengthening in Dutch dialects. The call for specific-feature studies in Handbook I is particularly well heeded in this contribution. Chapter 10 (along with Chapter 20) is one the most sophisticated studies to date of local dialect recognition strategies based on specific linguistic features. Here Kerswill carefully correlates judgments of a continuum of voices (from urban Bergen, Norway to a rural site) and notes that judges’ positioning of respondent voices on the scale corresponds closely to the speech samples’ score on a morpho-lexical index designed to accurately represent the linguistic status of each speaker. He goes on to show that when the judges distinguish among speakers who show no difference on the morpho-lexical scale, that characteristic phonological differences come into play. Overall, the work shows considerably more sensitivity to low-level dialect features among nonlinguists than is typically felt to exist, and it reveals a methodology much more appropriate to the study of dialect contact and mixture situations than those heretofore used. Kerswill and Williams, in Chapter 11, continue to focus on recognition of dialect differences in mixed areas (in this case in the English “new” and “old” towns of Milton Keynes versus Reading and Hull, respectively). Here, however, they tie dialect recognition to the notion of focusing as used by LePage to identify speech communities with little and well-patterned linguistic variation, suggesting that focused speech communities ought to be better at recognizing other speech community members’ linguistic variation than residents of diffuse speech communities. Their results show that dialect leveling, even in “old” towns with strong local networks may play an important (negative) role in dialect identification, and their use of class and age as demographic factors plays an important role in their argumentation. In Chapter 12, Kontra asks the simple perceptual question “Where do they speak ugly and beautiful Hungarian?” The answer is not so simple, and it is certainly not so simple

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as a dichotomy between a stereotypical locus for the “standard” and the solidarity function of a “local” variety. Léonard, in Chapter 13, takes an intensive look at perception, variety, and folk linguistic comment about French on the island of Noirmoutier. After carefully establishing linguistic patterns which differentiate areas on the island, he shows that there is, indeed, a three part perceptual division of the island which corresponds roughly to the dialectal subdivisions (and corresponds exactly, in fact, to the distribution of nasal vowels on the island). Léonard richly documents the perceptual data, however, with ethnographic data from both historical sources and from a careful discourse analysis of a lengthy interview with one respondent, from whom he extracts interesting examples of “folk linguistic theory”. Finally, he tests respondents’ perception of specific dialect features in an attempt to determine the degree of salience of each in areal perception. In Chapter 14, the junior editor of this volume expands on his work in Japan by collaborating with his colleague Yim in investigating, for the first time, the perception of dialect differences in Korea, one also interesting geographically for the same political subdivision which could be found temporally in Chapter 1 in Alfaraz’s distinction between pre-Castro and post-Castro Cuba. Here again we see an interesting historical-political effect, but a very different sort. Little or no distinctiveness is attributed to the regions of North Korea; it is as if a linguistic wall of information had been dropped. In other regional characterizations, it is also clear that political boundaries (i.e., provincial ones) are important in South Korea as well, perhaps overwhelming the facts of actual dialect subdivision, lending credence to the long-standing claim in Japanese perceptual dialectology that such official boundaries are more important than actual linguistic ones. Meghan McKinnie and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain explore, in Chapter 15, the differences in Canadian perceptions of English between Albertans and Ontarians. They use the traditional techniques of ratings of Canadian provinces for “correctness”, “pleasantness”, and “degree of difference” (from one’s own variety). They also use a sophisticated statistical procedure (K-means clustering, also first used in perceptual studies in Hartley 1996) to present their findings. Moreno and Moreno in Chapter 16 report on the first perceptual study of peninsular (“Spain”) Spanish. They also use the traditional perceptual dialectology task of “degree” of difference” but their exploitation of it is extremely sensitive, both in demographic areas (touching on sex, age, and education) and in statistical analysis (using, for example, the multidimensional scaling techniques introduced to perceptual dialectology by Hartley (1996) and used also in the present volume by Evans in Chapter 6). Niedzielski in Chapter 17 presents the most compelling case to date for social interference in linguistic perception. Using advanced acoustic modification techniques, she offers judges from Michigan a sample of the word “house” with the diphthong in the typical “Canadian raised” position /%~/. Three other versions of the word “house” are played, and the judges are asked to match the first with the one of these three which is most like it. When the judges believe the first voice is that of a fellow Michigander, they rate the sample as more like the most common US pronunciation with the diphthong /"~/; when they believe the speaker is Canadian, however, they match the sample (correctly)

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INTRODUCTION

with the /%~/ version. She goes on to show how extreme Michigan linguistic security does not even “allow” respondents to hear a “deviant” acoustic token from a speaker they believe to be “normal”. In Chapter 18, Romanello studies the perception of urban varieties in the south of Italy. Hers is a richly detailed ethnographic study which correlates knowledge of city and region to knowledge of language differences. Her work shows a remarkably detailed knowledge of linguistic features differentiating one area from the other by her respondents, and she notes that the vast majority of such clues mentioned by her respondents are phonetic ones. L’Eplattenier-Saugy studies francophone Swiss respondents’ perceptions of French in Chapter 19. Her work also involved the most common perceptual tasks — hand-drawn maps of respondent-determined dialect areas and ratings of degrees of “correctness”, “pleasantness”, and “degree of difference”. As in some other areas, canton (political) boundaries were seen as very salient for these respondents in indicating different speech regions. One interesting result is that these Swiss francophones felt that the French of France in general and Paris in particular was “most correct”, but, in their evaluation of “pleasantness”, they still found France French (not the local area) to be most pleasant, but found Parisian French to be least pleasant. L’Eplattenier-Saugy goes on to show important demographic (e.g., sex, education) effects in these data. In Chapter 20 Yonezawa seeks to determine (by holding all other factors constant) the degree to which vowel devoicing plays a role in the identification of a speaker as local to Tokyo. Although she finds that it is salient in identifying a speaker as “from Tokyo”, she shows, more importantly, that the phonetic environment in which the devoiced (or nondevoiced) vowel occurred also has a salient effect on perception (just as it does on production). Like so many other of these studies, the work of perceptual dialectology here reaches down to the level of linguistic detail. We hope our outline of these studies and our special regard for the linguistic detail of some would not indicate that we do not admire the usually more global approach taken to language attitude work by social psychologists. We believe, however, that in any interdisciplinary enterprise, the first rule is respect for (and competence in) disciplines. Since we are linguists (and dialectologists) we hope it follows that we believe we can contribute more to the study of language regard (and its relation to variation and change) by focusing on what we know best — language structure and detail. That focusing, however, takes us off into areas of ethnography, discourse, and social psychology, and we happily embrace the techniques and understandings which come from these diverse fields in our attempts to make sense of the folk perception of language varieties. We will not be so foolhardy as to suggest what the next steps in such studies might prove to be. We hope, however, that interested readers will take from these several studies ideas for the application of methodologies to local, perhaps unique, sites and situations, and that the methodological sophistication and innovation suggested in these chapters will inspire interested readers to improve on them and report such improvement in the literature. That, of course, would make us most happy as editors.



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Dennis R. Preston Michigan State University Daniel Long Tokyo Metropolitan University

References Hartley, Laura C. 1996. Oregonian perceptions of American regional speech. Unpublished M. A. Thesis, Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. Hartley, Laura C. and Dennis R. Preston. 1999. “The names of US English: Valley girl, cowboy, yankee, normal, nasal, and ignorant.” In Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds), Standard English: The widening debate. London: Routledge, 207–38. Milroy, Lesley and Dennis R. Preston (eds). 1999. Attitudes, perception, and linguistic features. Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18:1. Niedzielski, Nancy and Dennis R. Preston. 1999. Folk linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Preston, Dennis R. 1996. “Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5,1:40–74. Preston, Dennis R. 1999. Handbook of perceptual dialectology (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



C 1 Miami Cuban Perceptions of Varieties of Spanish Gabriela G. Alfaraz

1.

Introduction/Background

Since the late 1950’s, metropolitan Miami, located in Dade county at the southeast tip of the Florida peninsula, has received four waves of mass migration from Cuba provoked by political unrest in that country. In the early years of the exodus, Cubans considered their migration a temporary situation and remained in Miami to await a change in political events, particularly because of its similarity and proximity to the home island. Later migrants found Miami appealing because they could readily find employment, not only in the non-skilled occupations typically filled by immigrants, but also in professional and technical fields since Miami had become a bilingual, bicultural city, the gateway to Latin America. As a result, Miami is the principal ethnic enclave for Cubans and CubanAmericans. Miami was reported as having the highest concentration of foreign-born persons (59.9%) of all metropolitan areas with populations over 200,000, based on the results of the 1990 U. S. Census (County and City Data Book, 1994). Persons of Hispanic origin accounted for 51% of the total population in 1990, and, of the total number of Hispanics, Cubans made up 59%, Puerto Ricans 8%, Mexicans 2%, and the remaining 31% were persons of South or Central American origin. Since the 1990 census, the Cuban population in Miami has increased substantially as a result of a new wave of immigration from Cuba during the mid 1990’s. The number of Cubans legally admitted to the U. S. jumped from the previous year by 22% in 1995, 48% in 1996 and 27% in 1997. The U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that 77,990 Cubans were legally admitted into the U. S. between 1995 and 1997. While some new arrivals agree to be relocated to other states, many decide to remain in Miami; 84% of Cubans who entered the U. S. in 1995 stayed in the Miami area. The high concentration of foreign-born individuals and the large numbers of new immigrants from Cuba and other Latin American countries has made Miami a bilingual city with large concentrations of monolingual Spanish speakers who live and work in a mainly Spanish speaking environment. Miami was ranked as the number one metropolitan

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GABRIELA ALFARAZ

area in the U. S. in which persons speak a language other than English at home, with 73.3% of individuals reporting the use of another language (U. S. Census Bureau, County and City Data Book, 1994). For individuals of Hispanic origin the number is even higher: 95% reported speaking Spanish at home. The relationship between Spanish and English in Miami cannot be characterized as diglossic (Ferguson, 1959), in which English is used in public domains and Spanish in private ones, but rather as bilingual since both languages are used in either public or private domains (Fishman, 1970). In spite of Miami’s bilingual character, Spanish is the only language used by thousands of monolingual Spanish speakers in their public affairs. As a result of the wide-spread public use of Spanish, the large number of monolingual speakers, and the constant stream of new Spanish-speaking immigrants, Miami Cubans are involved in two different dialect contact situations. The first is transparent: Cuban Spanish is in contact with other Spanish varieties, whose speakers accounted for over 30% of the population of metropolitan Miami in the 1990 Census and whose numbers are currently estimated to be much higher. The second contact situation is more complex because it involves the contact of the Cuban variety with itself at two different points in time. My research in the Miami Cuban community prior to this study revealed that many Cubans believed one variety was spoken before the Revolution in 1959 and that another had arisen after that time. In other words, the Spanish of the immigrants who arrived in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s, and the Spanish of young immigrants who had arrived in the 1990s were considered two different varieties. This study has two objectives: 1. 2.

to examine Miami Cubans’ perceptions of the many varieties of Spanish involved in the contact situation in order to determine the factors involved in those perceptions, and to examine Miami Cubans’ perceptions of their own variety at two different points in time, before and after 1959, in order to explore the effects of differences in political ideology on the perception of dialect boundaries.

The following sections will describe the methodology used and will present and discuss the results obtained from the statistical analysis of the data in light of the two research objectives noted above.

2.

Method

The methodology used in this study is the one developed by Preston (1986, 1988, 1989) to elicit evaluative data about dialects. A questionnaire was administered in which respondents rated on a seven-point scale the correctness and pleasantness of Latin American varieties, a generic variety referred to as Peninsular Spanish, and two varieties of Cuban Spanish, representing the variety before and after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, henceforth referred to as Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post. The varieties were represented by the countries in which they are spoken, and respondents were given the opportunity to add

MIAMI CUBAN PERCEPTIONS OF VARIETIES OF SPANISH

3

any regions they considered distinct, but only one respondent made an addition to the list, suggesting that for Spanish speakers the geopolitical entity is representative of the variety of Spanish. Data collection was carried out in Miami, Florida in 1997. One hundred and fortyeight questionnaires were collected from a demographically diverse population of Cubans. The respondents included 93 (63%) females and 55 (37%) males. The age composition was as follows: 24% were between the ages of 20 and 29, 19% 30–39, 15% 40–49, 14% 50–59, and 28% 60 years old and above. The socioeconomic status of the respondents was calculated using an index combining education and occupation, and respondents were placed in four subgroups: 35% were upper middle class, 27% lower middle class, 32% upper working class, and 9% lower working class. An attempt was made to collect data from respondents who had arrived in both early and later waves of immigration. Respondents reported the year in which they had arrived in the U. S., which was later classified as one of four periods of immigration (Llanes, 1982; García & Otheguy, 1988) with an additional category included to account for respondents born in the U. S. of Cuban parents. Respondents who arrived during the first and second waves of immigration and their interludes, a twenty-year period extending from 1959 through 1979, make up 40% of those questioned; 11% arrived during the third wave and its interlude between 1980 and 1990; 33% are arrivals from the most recent immigration between 1991 and 1997; 5% arrived in the U. S. prior to 1959; 11% were born in the U. S. Respondents were asked not only about their social network affiliations but also to estimate the number of Cubans among their friends and colleagues. The majority (67%) reported that most of their affiliations were Cuban. 17% claimed all their friends and colleagues were Cuban. 12% reported that half their social network affiliations were Cubans. Only 3% interacted with few Cubans, and just one respondent (0.7%) claimed there were no Cubans in his social network. The following section describes the results of the questionnaire and discusses the findings.

3.

Results and Discussion

The varieties of Latin American, Cuban (before and after 1959), and Peninsular Spanish were evaluated according to how correct and pleasant they were perceived to be on a seven-point scale, with a ranking of one as the least favorable and seven the most. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show the results for correct and pleasant. In general, the ratings for pleasantness tend to reflect the correctness ratings. Although Cuba-Pre was rated slightly higher for pleasant than for correct (6.22 vs. 5.98), there were no remarkable differences in the ratings of the other varieties, suggesting that these respondents are oriented toward the status dimension represented by correctness rather than to the solidarity dimension represented by pleasantness.

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Mean Scores

6 5 4 3 2

Peru

El Salvador

Panama

Cuba-Post

Nicaragua

Mexico

Honduras

Puerto Rico

Dom. Rep.

Peru

El Salvador

Panama

Cuba-Post

Nicaragua

Mexico

Honduras

Puerto Rico

Dom. Rep.

Guatemala

Paraguay

Ecuador

Bolivia

Uruguay

Venezuela

Chile

Colombia

Argentina

Cuba-Pre

Spain

0

Costa Rica

1

Varieties

Figure 1.1. Mean scores for correct. 7

Mean Scores

6 5 4 3 2

Guatemala

Paraguay

Ecuador

Bolivia

Uruguay

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Colombia

Argentina

Cuba-Pre

Spain

0

Chile

1

Varieties

Figure 1.2. Mean scores for pleasant.

3.1 Perceptions of Varieties of Spanish As Figure 1.1 indicates, a generic Peninsular variety was selected as most correct with a mean score of 6.35. The second most correct variety, with a rating of 5.98, was Cuba-Pre. These results show that the respondents hold Peninsular Spanish in high regard as a sort of supra-regional standard. They also suggest that they consider their own regional variety

MIAMI CUBAN PERCEPTIONS OF VARIETIES OF SPANISH

5

as prestigious as the original European norm and most prestigious among Latin American varieties. Similarly high evaluations of Cuban Spanish on a status dimension were given by the Cuban judges in a matched-guise study carried out by Castellanos (1980). She reports that “Cubans consistently assigned higher ratings to all the questions about their own variety. Even when they made a mistake and identified another variety as Cuban, they gave it a higher score” (1980, p. 77, my translation). Other varieties rated highly for correctness were the Argentinean (5.17) and Colombian (5.14) ones. However, a significant drop in the mean ratings distinguishes Cuba-Pre from these two varieties. The ratings for most of the other Latin American varieties are within the 4.0 to 5.0 range. The lowest ratings are given to the two neighboring Caribbean varieties of Spanish, Puerto Rican (3.83) and Dominican (3.73). The latter are interesting because they show that, although Cubans are aware of and accept the stigmatization of other varieties of Caribbean Spanish, they do not recognize that their own variety belongs to that group, in spite of the fact that the linguistic features of Cuban Spanish are more like those of Puerto Rican and Dominican Spanish than those of Peninsular or Argentinean varieties. These perceptions are similar to those described by Preston (1993, 1996) for Southern Indiana respondents, who are speakers of a stigmatized variety but manage to exempt themselves from this status by downgrading their Southern neighbors and aligning themselves with their northern, eastern and western ones. While Preston’s Southern Indiana respondents detected a linguistic boundary separating them from their neighbors directly across the river in Kentucky, Cubans perceive a dialect boundary that sharply distinguishes their dialect from the dialects of the neighboring Spanish speaking Caribbean islands. Preston (e.g., 1996) has noted that nonlinguists’ perceptions of dialect divisions may not actually correspond to the dialect boundaries proposed by dialectologists since social, political or historical facts may lead to the belief that there is a linguistic boundary where in reality there is none. In their study of Turkish perceptions, Demirci & Kleiner (2000) found that the evaluation of regional dialects in Turkey is strongly influenced by the particular social, political, economic and linguistic circumstances of the group being studied. Dailey-O’Cain’s (2000) study of post-unification Germany revealed the effects of political differences and separation on Germans’ perceptions of eastern and western dialects. 3.1.1 The role of race and economic development The correct and pleasant ratings of varieties of Spanish appear to follow a regional pattern since the varieties of South America are perceived as more correct and pleasant than those of Central America, which, in turn, are perceived as more correct and pleasant than Caribbean ones. However, there are exceptions (e.g., Costa Rica, Cuba-Pre) which cannot be explained on the basis of the salience of region. Degree of economic development and racial composition are two factors which appear to be more salient than region in accounting for these perceptions. Economic development was identified by Demirci & Kleiner (2000) as playing a key role in the evaluation of regional speech in Turkey. They found that more impoverished regions tended to receive lower ratings than more prosperous areas. Ethnic composition was also identified by Demirci & Kleiner (2000) as a salient feature underlying perceptions, noting that

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regions with predominantly European populations received more favorable evaluations. The relevance of economic development and racial composition as salient factors underlying the Miami Cuban perceptions was explored using correlation tests. The findings for economic development showed a substantial relationship (r = 0.667, p = 0.001, two-tailed) between the evaluation of the variety on the correctness dimension and the gross domestic product of the country it represents. In general, the varieties evaluated most positively were those of the more prosperous regions. One exception was Puerto Rico, which was down-graded even though it had the third highest gross domestic product after Cuba-Pre and Spain. One reason for this could be that Puerto Ricans in the U.S. have the highest poverty level of all Hispanic groups, according to the United States Census Bureau, and that information is more salient for Miami Cubans than the prosperity of the island of Puerto Rico. The role of race in these evaluations must also be considered. The results for the correlation test on the correctness ratings of varieties and the racial composition of the region they represent also revealed a statistically significant (r = 0.584; p = .007, two-tailed) relationship. The countries which are predominately white receive the highest ratings, followed by regions that are mostly mestizo (white and South or Central American Indian), then the areas that are predominately indio (South or Central American Indian). The region that is predominately black, the Dominican Republic, is perceived as the least correct variety of Spanish. Castellanos (1980) proposed race as an underlying element in the general stigmatization of Caribbean Spanish. 3.2 Cuban Spanish The results for correct and pleasant shown above in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 indicate that Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post are perceived as distinct varieties. On both dimensions, the evaluation of Cuba-Pre was the second highest, ranking only after the prestigious Peninsular Spanish, whereas the evaluation of Cuba-Post is among the lowest. The two factors underlying perceptions of other varieties may also be used to explain the different evaluations of Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post. For instance, race was highlighted in respondents’ comments as an important element in the down-grading of Cuba-Post. Many respondents expressed the belief that the racial composition of the island had changed, having become predominately black. An older upper middle class female respondent (Manuela) who had immigrated from Cuba the year before stated: “Es que la cantidad de negros que hay en La Habana es extraordinaria. En Cuba entera.” (It’s that the number of blacks in Havana is extraordinary. In all of Cuba.) When I asked her why she believed Cubans on the island spoke differently now compared to thirty-some years ago, she replied, “Bueno, hablan muy anegrado” (Well, they talk very black-like). The exchange with her continued as follows: Gabriela: Tu dices que en Cuba hablan muy anegrado, ¿cómo es eso? You say that in Cuba (they) speak very black-like, how is that? Manuela: Sí ane- anegrado en el sentido de las expresiones. Yes, bla- black-like in terms of the expressions.

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7

Gabriela: De las expresiones. Of the expressions. Manuela: Sí de las expresiones, de lo chabacano. Yes of the expressions, of the sloppiness. Gabriela: Pero no la pronunciación. But not the pronunciation. Manuela: Sí sí::: todo todo. La pronunciación, la tonalidad de la voz. Yes yes everything everything. Pronunciation, tone of voice. Gabriela: ¿De qué vendrá eso? ¿Qué raíces tiene? Where does that come from? What roots does (it) have? Manuela: Las raíces que tiene son africanas. Africanas. Porque en Cuba The roots it has are African. African. Because in Cuba actualmente, o cuando yo salí, había una tendencia a lo africano. now, or when I left, there was a tendency toward what’s African. The black-like features of Cuban Spanish on the island, according to this respondent, result from a revival of pride in Afro-Cuban heritage and are evident in lexical as well as phonological aspects. It seems that Miami Cubans believe that if the predominant race on the island is black, and if Cubans on the island are positively oriented to Afro-Cuban cultural and social influences, then Cuban Spanish on the island is a reflection of the highly stigmatized Afro-Cuban variety. Perhaps the low ratings of Cuba-Post can be accounted for by the fact that for Miami Cubans, who are predominately white and have the highest income levels of Hispanics in the U. S. and in other countries, including Spain, the positive evaluation of a variety reflects the white race and the economic prosperity of the variety’s speakers. However, there is a more significant factor underlying these perceptions which cannot be ignored: political ideology. An important characteristic of the Cuban group in Miami is its political activism and interests in Miami, the U. S., and Cuba, which are vital elements in the group’s sense of unity and distinctiveness. The political nature of the Miami Cuban community motivates the rejection of all aspects of Cuba-Post, whether political, cultural, artistic or linguistic. Language, as a symbol of group membership, is used to build up group boundaries between different political ideologies. The linguistic boundary the group perceives between its variety and the one spoken on the island serves an important separatist function, as it is necessary to distinguish Miami Cubans from Cubans on the island. The results of a K-means cluster analysis using the correctness scores provided strong evidence that politics was more salient than either race or economic development in accounting for Cubans’ perceptions of their own variety at two different points in time, before and after the 1959 Revolution. The K-means cluster analysis was carried out in order to place the varieties into groups based on the relative numerical distance between them. When asked to cluster the varieties into three groups, the following emerged from the analysis: one cluster contained Spain and Cuba-Pre, another contained Cuba-Post, and a third cluster included all other

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varieties. When the number of clusters was expanded to five, the varieties from Argentina and Colombia were grouped separately in clusters four and five respectively, revealing a small tendency for respondents to distinguish these two from the other varieties. These results reflect the common folk belief that Colombian Spanish is the Latin American standard. When the number of clusters was reduced to four, however, Colombian Spanish fell into the large group of other varieties, but Argentinean Spanish persisted as a separate cluster. This variety’s positive evaluation on the status and solidarity dimensions reflected the racial and economic characteristics of its speakers: Argentina is predominately white, and it is has the highest gross domestic product in Latin America (with the exception of Puerto Rico, which was noted earlier). Reducing the clusters to three, however, caused Argentina to fall into the large group of South and Central American varieties and left Cuba-Post and Cuba-Pre with Spain in the two remaining clusters. These statistical results show most clearly the effects of political events on the shaping of a speech community’s perceptions of dialect boundaries. Cuba-Pre is grouped with Peninsular Spanish, a reflection of Cubans’ beliefs about their strong cultural resemblance to the white European Spaniard, whereas Cuba-Post occupies a separate cluster, symbolizing its distinctiveness and exclusion. The politically charged context surrounding the two varieties of Cuban Spanish is responsible for the perception of a linguistic boundary between Miami and the island. Respondents readily provided comments about what they believe is the source of the differences between Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post. One young female respondent who had arrived from Cuba one year before reported: “Actualmente se habla un español horrible. Está muy chabacan. Antes se hablaba mejor.” (The Spanish spoken [in Cuba] now is horrible. It’s very sloppy. People used to speak better.) When she was asked why she thought this was so, she responded: “No sé, pero se han perdido muchos valores.” (I don’t know, but many values have been lost.) Other respondents provided similar comments about what they believed was a loss of values and moral principles in Cuba as the source of linguistic impoverishment, attributing the situation to the island’s political stance. Another common argument respondents give for down-grading Cuba-Post is that they feel that individuals in Cuba must adapt to the system, and, as one older woman pointed out, “part of that involves the way of speaking”. Another respondent stated that the government in Cuba had carried out a campaign to corrupt Cuban Spanish to celebrate the triumph of the proletariat. The system is bad and has made the language of the people who live within that system bad, too. Dailey-O’Cain’s (2000) study in post-unification Germany specifically addressed the effects of the cold war on dialect perceptions. It reported that West Germans’ perceptions of East German varieties were negatively affected by their former political differences, as evidenced by the fact that West Germans gave lower ratings to eastern varieties than to western ones, while East Germans rated eastern and western varieties similarly for correctness. The results of an ANOVA, shown in Figure 1.3, indicate that recent Cuban immigrants behave differently from East Germans when evaluating their own variety. Year of arrival in the U. S. was statistically significant for the evaluations of Cuba-Post correct, but it was not significant for ratings of Cuba-Pre. As Figure 1.3 shows, recent Cuban

MIAMI CUBAN PERCEPTIONS OF VARIETIES OF SPANISH

9

immigrants (those who arrived between 1991 and 1997) gave lower ratings to Cuba-Post, their own variety, than to Cuba-Pre. The mean correctness rating for Cuba-Post for new arrivals was 5.1, which is significantly higher than the ratings given by the other groups, whose ratings range between 2.7 and 3.7. The down-grading of Cuba-Post by recent arrivals appears to reflect their desire to disassociate from the island in order to avoid the negative sentiments of the Miami Cuban community toward all aspects of Cuba-Post, as discussed earlier. At the same time, new arrivals signal their loyalty to the Miami group by accepting its attitudes toward Cuban Spanish on the island. 7 6

Mean Score

5 4 Cuba-Pre Cuba-Post

3 2 1

US Born

Pre-1959

1959–79

1980–90

1991–97

Arrival

Figure 1.3. Ratings for correct of Cuba-Pre and Cuba-Post by time of arrival (Cuba-Post N=113, df=4, f=4.79, p=0.001; Cuba-Pre, N=236, df=4, f=0.087, p=0.986).

Finally, the positive evaluation of Cuba-Pre for both correct and pleasant (shown in Figures 1.1 and 1.2) reveals the Miami Cuban speech community’s preference for its own variety to express status, represented by correct, and solidarity, represented by pleasant. Ryan, Giles & Sebastian (1982) stated that a strong preference for the in-group variety on both the status and solidarity dimensions was common among groups of political activists, such as the “Black Power Movement, Chicano Movement, Basque Liberation Movement” (10), because the group variety is a symbol of its political interests. For Cubans, such language perceptions appear not only to serve a unifying function but also to serve to maintain the group’s distinctiveness, both from Cubans on the island and other Hispanics in the contact situation.

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Conclusions

One of the objectives of this study was to examine the perceptions of Cubans in Miami toward other varieties of Spanish with which they are in contact in order to make generalizations about the salient factors underlying dialect perceptions. A second objective was to examine the perceptions of Miami Cubans toward their own variety at two different points in time, before and after the Revolution of 1959. The results showed that Miami Cubans evaluated Cuba-Pre as more correct and more pleasant than all other varieties, with the exception of Peninsular Spanish, which received the highest ratings. Race and economic development both correlated with perceptions. The findings indicated that the variety of Spanish now spoken on the island (Cuba-Post) is perceived as less correct and less pleasant by all Cubans regardless of their length of residence in the U. S., although recent arrivals tended to rate it less harshly. Although race and economic development play a role in these perceptions, it appears that political ideology is the most important factor. Lastly, Miami Cuban perceptions serve to both unify the group and to distinguish it from other Hispanics in the contact situation and, more importantly, from Cubans on the island.

References Castellanos, I. M. 1980. “Actitudes sociolinguisticas hacia el español del caribe.” Lenguaje (Cali, Colombia) 11: 73–91. Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 2000. “The perception of post-unification German regional speech.” In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 227–242. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Demirci, Mahide, and Brian Kleiner. 2000. “The perception of Turkish dialects.” In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 261–281. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. “Diglossia.” Word 15: 325–40. Fishman, Joshua A. 1970. Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. García, O. and R. Otheguy. 1988. “The language situation of Cuban-Americans.” In Language Diversity: Problem or Resource? A Social and Educational Perspective on Language Minorities in the United States. S. L. McKay and S. C. Wong (eds), 166–192. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Llanes, J. 1982. Cuban-Americans: Masters of Survival. Cambridge, MA: ABT Books. Preston, Dennis R. 1986. “Five visions of America.” Language in Society 15: 221–40. Preston, Dennis R. 1988. “Sociolinguistic commonplaces in variety perception.” In Linguistic Change and Contact: NWAV-XVI. K. Ferrara, et al. (ed.), 279–292. Austin: University of Texas, Department of Linguistics. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis R. 1993. “Folk dialectology.” In American Dialect Research. D. R. Preston (ed.), 333–378. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Preston, Dennis R. 1996. “Where the worst English is spoken.” In Focus on the USA: Varieties of English around the world. E. W. Schneider (ed.), 297–359. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.



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Ryan, Ellen B, Howard Giles, and R. J. Sebastian. 1982. “An integrative perspective for the study of attitudes toward language variation.” In Attitudes toward language variation: Social and applied contexts. Ellen B. Ryan and Howard Giles (eds), 1–19. London: Arnold. United States Census Bureau. County and City Data Book. (n.d.). Retrieved August 9, 2000, from http:// www.census.gov/statab/www/ccdb.html. United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. (n.d.). Immigration and Naturalization Service Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/index.htm.



C 2 Aesthetic Evaluation of Dutch Comparisons across Dialects, Accents, and Languages Renée van Bezooijen

1.

Introduction

What are the attitudes of Dutch people towards Dutch as the standard dialect compared to non-standard dialects of Dutch, or as the standard accent compared to other accents of Dutch, or as a language compared to other languages? Are they positive or are they negative? Answers to these questions provide insight into the cultural embedding of Dutch and into the subjective experience of the language. And in the long run, this may determine to a great extent what its future will be, both at the national and international levels. Will Dutch keep its status as an independent language or will it be replaced little by little by languages such as English? Will the norms as to what constitutes Dutch as the standard language variety in the Netherlands stay relatively strict or will more and more elements that are now considered non-standard be admitted within the range of acceptance? And what effects will this have on the non-standard dialects and accents spoken in the Netherlands? Will they stabilize, grow, or disappear? We think that all this depends to a great extent upon the attitudes the Dutch hold toward their (standard) language relative to other languages and language varieties. Various aspects of the nature and causes of these attitudes have been investigated, using an ugly – beautiful judgment scale. Judgments of this type are seen as the most direct and compact means to gain access to language attitudes. The first systematic studies of the aesthetic differentiation among language varieties were carried out by Giles and others in the seventies (Giles, 1970; Trudgill and Giles, 1978). The results were surprisingly uniform: listeners invariably located Received Pronunciation at the top of the aesthetic hierarchy, regional accents in the middle, and urban accents at the bottom. To account for the consistently favorable evaluation of the standard variety, Giles, Bourhis, and Davies (1975), concentrating on the segmental level, suggested two explanations, referred to as the ‘inherent value hypothesis’ and the ‘imposed norm hypothesis’. The inherent value hypothesis claims that some language varieties have sounds that are intrinsically (and therefore universally) pleasant to listen to

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and that these varieties have become accepted as the standard because of this. The imposed norm hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that the standard variety is considered as the most pleasing variety simply as a result of cultural norms. Because of social pressures upon people to emulate the standard, it has come to be regarded as the superior form along many dimensions, including the aesthetic. Trudgill and Giles (1978) extended the imposed norm hypothesis to include other social factors in addition to the standard related norms imposed by cultural pressure. This so-called ‘social connotations hypothesis’ would, for example, explain why listeners do not make a simple dichotomy between standard and non-standard varieties but make finer distinctions along a continuum. Thus, regional accents would be judged more positively than urban accents because, at least in Britain, the former are associated with a more attractive lifestyle and environmental setting. In order to assess the relative merits of the three hypotheses, a number of crosscultural studies were carried out. The crucial question was whether people were able to differentiate in terms of pleasantness and status between standard and non-standard varieties of an unknown language (Giles, Bourhis, Trudgill, and Lewis, 1974; Giles, Bourhis, and Davies, 1975; Van Bezooijen, 1988). The finding that listeners could not make these distinctions was interpreted as evidence against the inherent value hypothesis, and in favor of the imposed norm/social connotations hypotheses. However, there is no positive evidence in favor of the latter two hypotheses, as no data were gathered on the norms and social connotations to see whether they actually correlated with the aesthetic judgments given. In the present article (somewhat) different formulations of the three hypotheses mentioned are used. The inherent value hypothesis, as we see it, can better be named the sound driven hypothesis. It claims that aesthetic judgments can be traced back to segmental or prosodic properties of the languages and language varieties at hand. Some properties are considered more beautiful than others, and these judgments are applied to the languages and language varieties as a whole. However, in contrast to what the inherent value hypothesis as defined by Giles claims, in our view the opinions about the sound properties do not necessarily have to be intrinsic/universal, and no causal relationship is assumed between sound properties and the present (standard or non-standard) status of varieties. The imposed norm hypothesis we renamed as the norm driven hypothesis. It takes its cue from the idea that people think the standard language sounds nice, because in the educational system and the mass media the positive properties (in terms of correctness and adequacy) of the standard language are continually emphasized. This (culturally imposed) positive view would express itself in a positive aesthetic evaluation. The norm driven hypothesis also applies to norms that attach to the beauty of foreign languages. These norms do not necessarily have to be imposed through the educational system or the mass media; they can be part of the culture as a whole, just like some other aesthetic norms. To keep in line with the sound driven and norm driven hypotheses, we call the social connotations hypothesis the context driven hypothesis. Attitudes towards languages and language varieties are related to context variables, i.e., knowledge and stereotypical ideas about the personal and professional properties of the people by whom the variety is

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spoken and the geographic, cultural, and economic aspects of the regions where the variety is spoken. If the attitudes towards these context variables are positive, the attitudes towards the language or language variety itself will be positive as well, and vice versa. As speakers of the standard variety are generally attributed positive properties such as intelligence, high status, professional success, wealth, etc., the variety they speak is seen in a positive light as well. Speakers of urban dialects, and, consequently, the urban dialects themselves, have low status because of bad working and living conditions. And (speakers of) regional dialects occupy an intermediate position. In our approach the context driven hypothesis and the norm driven hypothesis are independent of each other. In addition to the three hypotheses mentioned, we distinguish two more hypotheses. The fourth hypothesis is the intelligibility driven hypothesis. Intelligibility is a factor which was not considered by Giles et al. (1974, 1975) and Van Bezooijen (1988), as the varieties judged within a single study were either all intelligible or all unintelligible. That intelligibility may in fact play a role is suggested by the study of Boets and De Schutter (1977), who report a high positive correlation between judged intelligibility of 14 regional dialects from Dutch-speaking Belgium and aesthetic evaluations. As the standard language is intelligible to all, this hypothesis predicts it will receive high ratings on an ugly – beautiful scale. Of course, with dialect speakers as judges, the hypothesis also predicts high ratings for their own variety. The fifth, and last hypothesis is the familiarity driven hypothesis, which claims that people will be more positive about a language (variety), i.e., will give higher ratings on an ugly – beautiful scale, as they are more familiar with this language (variety). Dutch has two proverbs expressing this popular idea: onbekend maakt onbemind (“unknown is unliked”) and wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet ie niet (“what the farmer doesn’t know he won’t eat”). Again, just like with the intelligibility hypothesis with bidialectal speakers as judges, there will be two varieties competing for high ratings on an ugly – beautiful scale: the standard, which is familiar to everybody, and the dialect with which the judges grew up. The five hypotheses given all try to explain what aesthetic judgments are caused by: the sounds of varieties, aspects of the context (by whom and where), cultural norms, intelligibility, and familiarity. In a more general way, leaving the cause of the positive attitudes towards the standard aside, one may predict that non-standard varieties will be judged to be more beautiful as they are seen to be more similar to the standard. This hypothesis is referred to as the similarity driven hypothesis. In the research described in this paper we have examined the causes and nature of the aesthetic evaluation of languages and language varieties in further detail, taking the language atittudes held in the Netherlands towards the Dutch language as a point of departure. Three studies are described. In the first study, evaluative judgments are compared between standard Dutch and non-standard dialects of Dutch. This study is based on semi-spontaneous speech fragments which differ from each other at all linguistic levels (phonetic, phonological, prosodic, morphological, lexical, and syntactical). As the varieties differ in intelligibility, the intelligibility driven hypothesis is examined. In addition, data is collected to test the context driven hypothesis. Finally, the similarity driven hypothesis is looked into.

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The second study compares the aesthetic evaluation of present-day standard Dutch with that of older variants of standard Dutch (from the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties). In this case fragments are judged which only vary at the phonetic level. As all fragments are equally intelligible, the effect of intelligibility on the judgments can be ruled out. The main emphasis is on the similarity hypothesis. In the third study, attitudes towards Dutch are compared with attitudes towards some other European languages. Here, no auditory stimuli are presented; subjects react directly to language labels. In contrast to the first and second studies, attention is focussed explicitly on the phonetic basis of aesthetic evaluation, i.e., on the sound driven hypothesis. In addition, the validity of the familiarity hypothesis is tested. The final section of this article consists of a general discussion of the results of the three studies. In addition, some suggestions are made for further research.

2.

Study 1. Aesthetic evaluation of Dutch across dialects1

How does standard Dutch compare aesthetically with non-standard dialects of Dutch? Insight into this question was gained by asking seven groups of Dutch listeners to judge the beauty of the standard and three non-standard dialects of Dutch on the basis of semispontaneous speech fragments. In particular, we were interested in the relative plausibility of the context driven and the intelligibility driven hypotheses to explain aesthetic differentiation. To collect information on context variables, subjects were asked to indicate the most likely profession and housing of the speakers. Intelligibility was estimated by means of subjective ratings on an intelligibility scale. Finally, it was tested whether similarity to the standard leads to higher aesthetic ratings. 2.1 Method The stimuli consisted of 20-second semi-spontaneous speech fragments segmented from descriptions of pictures and produced by four speakers for each of the following four varieties of Dutch: 1.

2.

3.

Standard Dutch, in its purest form mainly spoken by educated people in the western part of the country. Standard Dutch is used in the Dutch educational system as well as in national television and radio broadcasting. It is intelligible and familiar to everyone in the Netherlands, even in regions where a dialect or other language (Frisian) is spoken. The Hague, an urban dialect spoken mostly by the lower socio-economic classes in the poorer quarters of The Hague, a town of 445,000 inhabitants situated in the western part of the Netherlands. The Hague dialect is rather similar to standard Dutch; it differs almost exclusively at the phonetic and phonological levels. Bedum, a regional dialect spoken in a village (8,000 inhabitants) in the province of Groningen in the far north of the Netherlands, a typically agricultural area. The Bedum dialect belongs to the Lower-Saxon dialect group and differs from the other three dialects at all linguistic levels.

AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF DUTCH

4.

17

Tielt, a regional dialect spoken in a small town (14,000 inhabitants) in West-Flanders, Belgium. Tielt is situated about 40 km southwest of the Dutch-Belgian border. Just like the Bedum dialect, the Tielt dialect has its own characteristics at all linguistic levels. It is characterized in particular by many typical words not known in the Netherlands.

The speakers from The Hague, Bedum, and Tielt were all born and raised in the respective places. They were interviewed by local women speaking the same variety. The speakers of standard Dutch had a varied regional background; they were judged by a panel of phoneticians to be good speakers of standard Dutch and were interviewed by a standard Dutch speaking woman. All speakers were female and between 20 and 50 years old. The 4 (dialects) × 4 (speakers) = 16 speech fragments were rated on a 10-point ugly – beautiful scale by seven groups of Dutch listeners (mixed male female) of different ages and regional origins: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

15 children (7 years old) from Liessel (Noord-Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands) 15 children (10 years old) from Liessel (Noord-Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands) 15 adults from Liessel, parents of (1) and (2) (Noord-Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands) 12 adults from the Randstad2 (in the west of the Netherlands) 10 adults from Waspik (Noord-Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands) 10 adults from Weert (Limburg, in the south of the Netherlands) 10 adults from various places in Mid-Limburg (in the south of the Netherlands)

Note that there were no listeners from the north of the Netherlands (where the speakers from Bedum come from) and Belgium (where the speakers from Tielt come from). 2.2 Results The mean ugly – beautiful judgments, averaged over listeners and speakers, are presented in Figure 2.1. It appears that standard Dutch was judged far more beautiful (ratings between 7.4 and 8.4) than the other three varieties by each of the seven groups of listeners. In all but two cases The Hague dialect is second (ratings between 3.9 and 6.4). Tielt is usually third (ratings between 3.4 and 6.3) and Bedum fourth (ratings between 2.7 and 4.4). Product-moment correlations were computed among the ratings of the seven listener groups for the 16 speech fragments. The coefficients, given in Table 2.1, are rather high: in virtually all cases more than half of the variance is shared and in some cases more than 90%. This outcome indicates that the various speech communities from which listeners participated in the judgment experiment, of different ages and from different places in the west and south of the Netherlands, have common norms as to the relative beauty of different dialects spoken in the Netherlands and the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. Their aesthetic evaluation of standard Dutch is most outspoken and most stable. The judgments for the individual speakers are shown in Figure 2.2. The mean ratings of five groups of listeners are presented; the ratings of the two groups of children from Liessel have been omitted because they are similar to the ratings of the group of adults

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from Liessel. The difference between standard Dutch and the three other dialects is striking. The ratings for standard Dutch are very compact: the variance of the ratings is small between the four speakers as well as between the five listener groups. In other words, all listener groups agree that all four speakers of standard Dutch sound beautiful. For the dialects of The Hague and Tielt there is much variance between speakers as well as between listener groups. For the dialect of Bedum there is little variance between speakers, but much variance between listener groups, especially between the groups from Limburg on the one hand, who judge the Bedum dialect to be extremely ugly, and the groups from Noord-Brabant and the Randstad on the other, who have a somewhat more moderate opinion. Figure 2.2 confirms that the norms with respect to the beauty of standard Dutch relative to non-standard dialects of Dutch are solidly anchored in Dutch society. Table 2.1. Product-moment correlations among the ugly – beautiful ratings of seven listener groups of different ages and various regional backgrounds. *p < .05. Liessel Liessel Liessel 7 year olds 10 year olds adults Liessel 10 years Liessel adults Randstad Waspik Weert Mid-Limburg

.89* .80* .72* .66* .92* .86*

.89* .73* .59* .85* .83*

.82* .82* .90* .90*

Randstad

Waspik

Weert

.79* .87* .91*

.82* .88*

.96*

In an attempt to understand why standard Dutch is judged to be so much more beautiful than non-standard dialects of Dutch, the relative plausibility of the context driven and the intelligibility driven hypotheses was assessed. To keep things simple, analyses were restricted to the three groups from Liessel. In order to be able to test the context driven hypothesis, the listeners from Liessel were not only asked to judge the sixteen stimuli on an ugly – beautiful scale but also (in another round, with a different stimulus order) to form for themselves an idea of the most likely profession and living environment of the speakers of the fragments.3 As for profession, the subjects had to choose among nine drawings with stereotypical representations of women functioning in professions which, according to Van Westerlaak, Kropman, and Collaris (1975), can be ordered from high to low along an SES continuum as follows: professor, teacher, secretary, nurse, farmer’s wife, shop assistant, supermarket cashier, housewife, and factory worker. Results are clear. In the group of 7-year-olds none of the nine professions is associated in particular with any of the four dialects. However, there are strong response biases towards housewife and farmer’s wife, which together account for almost 60% of the responses. The associations of the 10-year-olds and adults are stereotypically correct: the professions of professor, teacher, secretary, and nurse (i.e., the high end of the SES continuum) are associated with standard Dutch, farmer’s wife with Bedum, and shop

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10 Standard

9

The Hague

Bedum

Tielt

8

Beautiful

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 L.-07

L.-10

L.-ad

Ra.

Wa.

We.

Mid-L.

Listener group Figure 2.1.
Mean ugly – beautiful ratings for four dialects of Dutch by seven listener groups of different ages and from various regional backgrounds. The listener groups are listed in the same order as in the method section.

assistant, cashier, housewife, and factory worker (i.e., the low end of the SES continuum) with Tielt and The Hague. As for housing, the subjects had to choose among four drawings, stereotypical representations of the living environment of the four groups of speakers: a rich neighborhood with residences surrounded by vast gardens and expensive cars on the driveways (standard Dutch), a dilapidated, trashy working-class neighborhood in a large city (The Hague), a charming and peaceful country village with farmhouses and a church tower in the background (Bedum), and a small town with an outdoor café and houses with crowstepped gables (Tielt). Results reveal that the 7-year-olds only choose the stereotypically correct housing for the speakers of standard Dutch. The 10-year olds have the correct associations for standard Dutch and the Bedum and Tielt dialects. And the adults make the correct choices for all four dialects. To what extent can these findings explain the pattern of aesthetic judgments as presented in Figure 2.1? All three listener groups, including the youngest, appear to be able to assign the correct profession and living environment to the speakers of standard Dutch (who, of course, were never designated as such). The rich residential area and the

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10

Listener group

9

Liessel

8

Randstad

7

Weert

Waspik Mid-Limburg

Beautiful

6 5 4 3 2 1 Standard

The Hague

Bedum

Tielt

Dialect/speaker Figure 2.2. Mean ugly – beautiful ratings for individual speakers of four dialects of Dutch by five adult listener groups from various regional backgrounds. Table 2.2. Mean ratings for standardness and intelligibility of four dialects by students from Nijmegen University. Standard Intelligible

Standard Dutch

The Hague

Bedum

Tielt

9.0 9.6

5.3 8.0

2.3 3.3

2.3 3.7

Table 2.3. Product-moment correlations between mean ugly – beautiful ratings by three listener groups from Liessel and ratings for standardness and intelligibility by students from Nijmegen University. *p < .05.

Standard Intelligible

Intelligible

Beautiful 7-year olds

Beautiful 10-year olds

Beautiful adults

.94*

.89* .84*

.97* .95*

.88* .81*

high status professions point to positive connotations. These agree with the high ratings on the ugly – beautiful scale assigned to the speakers of standard Dutch. However, the expected connotations for The Hague, Tielt, and Bedum speakers are not present in the group of 7-year-old listeners, and yet their aesthetic ordering of these three non-standard

AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF DUTCH

21

dialects agrees with that of the other two groups. For this the context driven hypothesis does not seem to provide an adequate explanation. And even if only the group of adults is considered, who appear to have all the right connotations, there still seems to be a discrepancy. According to the context driven hypothesis The Hague dialect should be judged less beautiful than the regional Bedum and Tielt dialects, the associated professions and living environment being less favorable. However, in fact, the reversed order was found. Taking everything into account, we think that the context driven hypothesis is not a plausible explanation for the aesthetic evaluation of Dutch dialects. To be able to test the intelligibility driven hypothesis, the 16 stimuli were rated on the scale not intelligible – intelligible by 25 students from Nijmegen University (originating from the southern Dutch provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg). They also gave ratings on a not standard – standard scale, to quantify the perceived similarity of the fragments to prototypical standard Dutch. This allowed us to test the similarity driven hypothesis. The mean standardness and intelligibility ratings for the four varieties, averaged over speakers and listeners, are given in Table 2.2. The results are clear-cut: the same fragments that were judged to be standard Dutch in a preliminary listening task by phoneticians are assigned high ratings for standardness by students as well. The Hague takes an intermediate position, and both the Bedum and Tielt dialects receive very low ratings. The order for intelligibility is identical, although The Hague dialect is relatively more intelligible than it is standard. The agreement between the two scales is confirmed by a high r of .94, as can be seen in Table 2.3. In Table 2.3 the product-moment correlations of standardness and intelligibility with the aesthetic judgments of the three groups from Liessel are also presented. These correlations are high as well, with coefficients above .80. This means that the ugly – beautiful ratings are related both to standardness and intelligibility, which makes it impossible to decide which of the two hypotheses, the more general similarity driven or the more specific intelligibility driven hypothesis, is more plausible as an explanation of the aesthetic evaluation of the four Dutch dialects. To distinguish between the two, in the next section an evaluation study will be described with variation in standardness but not in intelligibility. 3.

Study 2. Aesthetic evaluation of Dutch across accents

A listening experiment was carried out to compare the aesthetic evaluation of present-day standard Dutch with older variants of standard Dutch by a varied group of Dutch listeners of different sexes, ages, and regional origins. So, in contrast to previous aesthetic research, in this study the perceptual effects of diachronic aspects of language variation are investigated. All fragments were intelligible, so that the intelligibility driven hypothesis can be discarded a priori to explain aesthetic differentiation. The study specifically sought evidence for the validity of the similarity driven hypothesis. In addition, the possible operation of factors not yet accounted for by the hypotheses mentioned in the introduction were explored (for details, see Smakman and Van Bezooijen, 1999).

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3.1 Method The speech material presented in this study consisted of forty-second recordings of formal radio programs broadcast by the Dutch national radio in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. For each period the speech of five male reporters was included, except for the nineties, for which ten speakers were selected. So the total number of stimuli was thirty. The fragments only varied at the phonetic level, since all dated syntactic structures, words, and expressions had been removed. This had been done in a paper-and-pencil experiment in which subjects were asked to rate the time neutrality of all fragments. Moreover, the fragments were time neutral in the sense that references to time bound events had been excluded and that all recordings had been monotonized at a constant pitch of 110 Hz (the mean pitch over all the speakers) to remove time related intonation, if any. Possible effects of small differences in sound quality were reduced by adding typically old sound characteristics to recordings which on the basis of content were clearly recent in nature, and vice versa, by including fragments with outstanding sound quality which were clearly related to events in the past. The recordings were judged by 113 male and female listeners of different ages and varied regions in the Netherlands on eight 10-point scales: ugly – beautiful, not standard Dutch – standard Dutch, not affected – affected, informal – formal, old fashioned–modern, not ‘Randstedelijk’ – ‘Randstedelijk’, (see note 2), not regional – regional, and sloppy – careful. 3.2 Results The product-moment correlations between the mean ratings for ugly – beautiful and the other scales are given in Table 2.4. It can be seen that there is a high significant positive correlation with the scale not standard Dutch – standard Dutch: more than 80% of the variance in the aesthetic judgments is explained by the standardness ratings. This outcome lends strong support to the similarity driven hypothesis: the closer a fragment is to the standard, the more beautiful it is judged. In addition, there are significant positive correlations between ugly – beautiful on the one hand and regional – not regional and sloppy – careful on the other. However, the two latter scales are in turn significantly correlated with not standard Dutch – standard Dutch. Table 2.4. Product-moment correlations between ugly – beautiful and seven judgment scales by a varied group of 113 listeners. *p < .05. Standard Affected Formal Modern Randstedelijk Not regional Careful

−.92* −.09 −.15 −.30 −.16 −.67* −.58*

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AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF DUTCH

The clustering of the four judgment scales appears clearly from a factor analysis (principal component analysis with varimax rotation) which was performed on the scales. Three components with eigenvalues > 1 emerged, together accounting for 94% of the variance. The nature of these factors is shown in Table 2.5. It can be seen that the second component has high loadings from precisely the four scales which are shown in Table 2.4 to correlate significantly with each other, a clustering of scales related to beauty and standardness. On the basis of these results, there does not seem to be any need to add new hypotheses to those already put forward. The correlations between beautiful on the one hand and not regional and careful on the other fit in with the similarity driven hypothesis.

4.

Study 3. Aesthetic evaluation of Dutch across languages

In the two studies described above, attention was focussed on the context driven, the intelligibility driven, and the similarity driven hypotheses. The study described in the present section was explicitly set up to probe the phonetic basis of the aesthetic evaluation of Dutch, i.e., into the nature and plausibility of the sound driven hypothesis. Also, the familiarity driven hypothesis was tested. This time, the speech material judged did not comprise varieties within the Dutch language, but Dutch relative to other languages. Concretely, we wanted to determine to what extent it would be possible to predict judgments on an evaluative ugly – beautiful scale from judgments on descriptive scales related to various aspects of voice and speech. In contrast to the studies described above, it was a paper-and-pencil experiment, without auditory stimuli. In this way we hoped to trigger linguistic stereotypes, not influenced by idiosyncratic voice and speech characteristics of specific speakers. Because we wanted to obtain fairly detailed phonetic judgments, professional phoneticians served as informants. Table 2.5. Principal components resulting from a varimax rotation of ten scales rated by 113 listeners. Loadings < .10 have been omitted. Loadings > .65 have been shaded in grey. Components 1 Standard

2

3

.98

Affected

.94

Formal

.89

.27

−.21

Modern

−.91

.23

.22

Beautiful

.25

.97

Randstedelijk

−.17

.97

Not regional

.21

.68

Careful

.72

.65

−.63

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4.1 Method Twenty-three Dutch phoneticians between twenty-two and fifty-six years of age were asked to judge eight different languages, namely American English, British English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, on 21 7-point scales, as shown in Table 2.6. The scales were divided into five categories: (1) familiarity with the language judged, (2) evaluation, comprising ugly – beautiful and a number of other evaluation aspects which we expected intuitively to be part of language stereotypes entertained by the Dutch, (3) voice, (4) prosody, and (5) articulation. The latter three categories are descriptive in nature, intended to explore the phonetic component of Dutch language stereotypes. The choice of descriptive scales is based upon the protocol for the analysis of vocal profiles developed by Laver (1981). In addition to rating the 21 scales for each of the eight languages, subjects indicated the degree of confidence with which they gave each of their judgments. 4.2 Results To assess the reliability of the judgments, Cronbach’s alpha was computed, which can be interpreted as the average correlation coefficient between the judgments of all judges. It can be seen from the first column in Table 2.6 that virtually all scales have coefficients above .80, indicating that the judges agreed to a high extent as to the relative positioning of the eight languages judged. Even the reliability of not husky – husky and voiceless – voiced, with coefficients of .70 and .77, respectively, can be considered satisfactory. From this it can be concluded that all scales included in the questionnaire are relevant to distinguishing among (at least some of) the eight languages. This conclusion is corroborated by the mean confidence ratings (second column in Table 2.6), which are all above 4.8, i.e., in the positive half of the scale. This means that the judges thought they were able to differentiate among the languages in a meaningful way. The variation in the mean confidence ratings is small, the highest values being given to strange – familiar and the evaluation scales, and the lowest values being given to aspects of articulation. Finally, oneway analyses of variance were performed to determine whether the judgments varied systematically as a function of language. A significant (p < .01) effect was found for all 21 scales. However, the percentage explained variance (eta2) varied considerably, as can be seen from the third column in Table 2.6.4 The higher the eta2, the more the languages differ on the particular aspect judged. The lowest percentages are found for three dimensions of articulation, voiceless – voiced, fronted – backed, and closed – open, and two aspects of voice not husky – husky and soft – loud. Apparently, these aspects do not play a central role in language stereotypes entertained by the Dutch. On the other hand, very high values were found for some of the evaluation scales, particularly masculine – feminine and rational – emotional, some of the prosody scales, particularly monotonous – melodious, slow – quick, calm – agitated, and for slack – precise. So, the eight languages were judged to differ considerably on these points. The high values for strange – familiar point out that the subjects feel much more familiar with some of the

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Table 2.6. Reliability (Cronbach’s alpha), mean confidence score and percentage explained variance of 21 scales rated by 23 phoneticians. Scale

Cronbach’s alpha

Mean confidence score

Percentage explained variance

FAMILIARITY strange – familiar

.98

6.1

55.4

EVALUATION ugly – beautiful repulsive – attractive exaggerated – moderate masculine – feminine rational – emotional serious – funny

.93 .92 .94 .95 .96 .92

6.2 6.0 5.8 5.2 5.6 5.4

35.5 31.4 38.6 41.7 48.6 30.8

VOICE not husky – husky not creaky – creaky not nasal – nasal deep – shrill low – high soft – loud

.70 .83 .89 .88 .89 .84

5.3 5.3 5.4 5.3 5.4 5.5

10.1 13.8 24.1 28.1 28.9 17.0

PROSODY monotonous – melodious slow – quick calm – agitated legato – staccato

.96 .97 .96 .89

5.8 5.7 5.6 5.4

50.2 53.7 49.1 27.0

ARTICULATION slack – precise voiceless – voiced fronted – backed closed – open

.96 .77 .83 .80

5.5 5.2 5.0 4.8

49.5 14.5 18.4 15.8

languages than with others and that the degree of familiarity is similar for all subjects. The present study is focussed on the evaluation of ugly – beautiful. Table 2.6 shows that this scale has been rated very reliably (.93), with the highest degree of confidence (6.2) of all scales, explaining a fair amount of variance (35.5%). To establish the relationship between ugly – beautiful and the other scales, product-moment correlations were computed, based on the ratings averaged over all listeners. The resulting coefficients are given in Table 2.7. Six scales were found to correlate significantly (p < .05) with ugly – beautiful: two evaluative scales, namely repulsive – attractive and masculine – feminine (both positively), two prosodic scales, namely monotonous – melodious and slow – quick (both positively) and two articulation scales, namely slack – precise (positively) and fronted – backed (negatively).

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We are not interested here in correlations with the evaluative scales in general. We are interested though in the relationship between ugly – beautiful and strange – familiar. As the correlation is not significant, the familiarity driven hypothesis must be rejected: it is not the case that languages which are more familiar are also judged to be more beautiful. As for the correlations with the descriptive scales, it can be concluded that languages are seen as more beautiful as they are judged to be more melodious and quick-spoken (both prosodic aspects) and as their articulation is more precise and fronted. To assess more precisely to what extent the ugly – beautiful judgments can be predicted from the descriptive scales, a multiple regression analysis (stepwise procedure) was carried out with the ugly – beautiful ratings as the dependent variable (criterion) and the fourteen descriptive scales as independent variables (predictors). The results of the analysis are given in Table 2.8. This table shows that with just two predictors, namely monotonous – melodious and soft – loud, 95%, i.e., almost all of the variance in the ugly – beautiful ratings can be predicted. The contribution of soft-loud is negative. The addition of this scale mainly serves to differentiate the relative beauty of American English, German, Dutch and Russian. Where does this leave Dutch with respect to the other seven languages judged? A post-hoc test (Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference, p < .05) reveals three aesthetically homogeneous subsets of languages: (1) the least beautiful languages, American English, German, Dutch, and Russian (with values between 3.0 and 4.2); (2) an intermediate group consisting of Russian, Italian, and Spanish (with values between 4.2 and 5.3), and the most beautiful languages, Italian, Spanish, British English and French (with values between 5.2 and 5.6). To sum up the main results of this study, the relationship between the ugly – beautiful ratings and the two predictors from the multiple regression monotonous – melodious and soft – loud are presented graphically in Figure 2.3. Table 2.7. Product-moment correlations between ugly – beautiful and other scales rated by 23 phoneticians. *p < .05. Familiarity & evaluation

r

Voice

r

Prosody

r

Articulation

familiar attractive moderate feminine emotional funny

−.22 −.99* −.53 −.75* −.55 −.48

husky creaky nasal shrill high loud

−.58 −.55 −.03 −.25 −.54 −.58

melodious quick agitated staccato

.89* .61* .41 .14

precise voiced backed open

−.66* −.55 −.71* −.38

Table 2.8. Outcomes of a multiple regression analysis (stepwise) with ugly – beautiful ratings by 23 phoneticians as criterion and fourteen descriptive scales as predictors Step

Predictor

Multiple R

R square

1 2

melodious loud

.89 .97

.79 .95

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AESTHETIC EVALUATION OF DUTCH

7 Beautiful

6

Melodious Soft

Scale rating

5 4 3 2 1 Am.

Ge.

Du.

Ru.

It.

Sp.

Br.

Fr.

Language Figure 2.3. Ratings by 23 phoneticians of eight languages on ugly – beautiful, monotonous – melodious, and loud – soft. (The soft – loud ratings have been reversed, because of the negative correlation with ugly – beautiful.). Am. = American English, Ge. = German, Du. = Dutch, Ru. = Russian, It. = Italian, Sp. = Spanish, Br. = British English, Fr. = French.

5.

General discussion

Three studies were described examining different aspects of the aesthetic evaluation of Dutch across dialects, accents, and languages. In particular, the validity of the context driven, the intelligibility driven, the similarity driven, the sound driven, and the familiarity driven hypotheses was tested. The norm driven hypothesis was not investigated. All six hypotheses predict that intralinguistically the standard language will receive the most positive aesthetic evaluations. And this prediction was very convincingly borne out by the results of the first study conducted: standard Dutch was consistently judged to be more beautiful than three non-standard dialects of Dutch by seven listener groups of different ages (7-year olds, 10-year olds, and adults) and different regional backgrounds (the west and south of the Netherlands). This outcome, however, cannot be used to test the separate hypotheses. Evidence against the applicability of the context driven hypothesis was derived from

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the fact that in the first study the urban dialect was judged to be more beautiful than the two regional dialects, whereas the social connotations of the listeners with respect to the speakers’ profession and living environment pointed to the reversed order. The same study yielded positive evidence for the validity of the intelligibility and similarity driven hypotheses, correlations of ugly – beautiful with not intelligible – intelligible and not standard Dutch – standard Dutch being significant and in the right direction. So, as dialects are more intelligible and closer to the standard they receive more favorable aesthetic evaluations. The validity of the similarity hypothesis was confirmed by the second study, in which fragments of standard Dutch, differing only at the phonetic level, from different time periods were compared. Ugly – beautiful ratings, given by a large group of listeners of both sexes, varying ages, and diverse regional backgrounds, were found to correlate with three scales which are all related to standardness: not standard Dutch – standard Dutch, regional – not regional, and sloppy – careful. Of course, the similarity hypothesis does not tell us what the underlying cause of the aesthetic evaluations is. We do not think that familiarity has played a role, since in that case we would have expected the older, less familiar fragments from the fifties to have been judged less beautiful than the more recent, more familiar fragments. However, the period from which the fragments stemmed and the ratings on an old fashioned – modern scale did not correlate significantly with the aesthetic judgments. Moreover, the results of this study cannot be accounted for by the intelligibility driven hypothesis, as all fragments were perfectly intelligible. This leaves three explanations for the results of the second study, related to the aesthetic evaluation of standard Dutch across accents: the positive correlation of aesthetic judgments with the degree of standardness is either sound driven, norm driven, or context driven. In other words: it could be that fragments similar to standard Dutch are judged to be relatively beautiful because (1) they are characterized by sounds which are considered relatively beautiful, (2) they profit from the culturally imposed positive evaluation attached to the standard, or (3) they are associated with the same type of positively evaluated context variables as the standard. The last explanation is not very likely in view of the results of the first study, which disagreed with the context driven hypothesis. The relative plausibility of the two remaining hypotheses to account for the aesthetic evaluation of intralinguistic language variation will have to be assessed in future research. The predictions with respect to the relative beauty of Dutch compared to other languages, i.e., the aesthetic evaluation of Dutch by the Dutch in a crosslinguistic context, depend on the specific hypothesis. The similarity driven hypothesis is by nature restricted to the intralinguistic comparison of standard and non-standard varieties; it cannot be applied crosslinguistically. The other hypotheses will be discussed in the subsequent paragraphs. The third study specifically aimed at collecting data which could be used to test the sound driven hypothesis in a crosslinguistic context. From this study it appeared that the Dutch view Dutch as a rather ugly language, together with American English, German, and Russian. Italian, Spanish, British English, and French are seen as beautiful languages. A multiple regression showed that this rank order can be predicted almost completely by a combination of melodiousness and softness. American English, German, Dutch, and

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29

Russian are considered relatively monotonous, in contrast with Italian, Spanish, British English, and French, which are considered relatively melodious. Melodiousness is seen as a positive trait. In addition, American English and German are judged to be loud compared to Dutch and Russian, which is seen as a negative trait. From the single correlations it furthermore appeared that a fast tempo and a precise and fronted articulation are also positively related to aesthetic evaluation. These outcomes suggest that the aesthetic evaluation of the eight languages by the Dutch phoneticians may have a phonetic basis. Familiarity with the languages did not play a role, as the correlation with ugly – beautiful was found to be not significant. And it is very unlikely that the aesthetic judgments were determined by intelligibility, as the language with the lowest rating, i.e., American English, is probably the foreign language which the Dutch understand best, whereas the language with the highest rating, i.e., French, is generally not well understood. Moreover, Dutch, which should be understood best of all languages, was placed almost at the bottom of the aesthetic hierarchy. In future research the intelligibility driven hypothesis can be tested fairly easily, by having judges rate the intelligibility of the languages judged on a rating scale. The context driven hypothesis does not seem plausible to explain our results. From a number of surveys in the Netherlands it appears that the Dutch hold negative views towards Germans (Doeleman, 1998). This fits in with our aesthetic rank order, where the German language occupies a low position. Also, Doeleman found positive evaluations by the Dutch of the British, which is also in line with our aesthetic data. For the rest, however, context variables and aesthetic evaluations do not seem to agree. Americans and the United States are generally seen in a positive light, whereas the American English language occupies an even lower position than the German language. The attitudes towards France as a country (culture and nature) seem to be positive, but the people are not liked very well. So in this case context variables do not seem to be a plausible explanation for the very positive evaluation of the French language either. Finally, attitudes expressed by the Dutch about the personality of the Dutch are positive (Doeleman, 1998), conflicting with the low position of Dutch in the aesthetic order. Finally, as for the norm driven hypothesis, it is a traditionally strongly held view in the Netherlands that French is a beautiful language and that American English is an ugly language. As these views fit in with the rank order found in the present study, it may be the case that the culturally imposed norms form a valid explanation for at least part of the outcomes (of course, it remains to be explained where these cultural norms come from). Surprisingly little is known about the norms held by the Dutch with respect to their own language. There seems to be a rather strong resistance towards and fear of the introduction of too many English words into the Dutch language, which could be interpreted as a positive language attitude. On the other hand, some Dutch complain of Dutch people not being proud enough of their own language and culture. The above discussion makes clear that there are still a lot of gaps in our understanding of the nature and basis of aesthetic evaluations of languages and language varieties in general and Dutch in particular. Experimental research is especially needed to be able to choose between alternative explanations. As was stated in the introduction, we think



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language attitudes are not merely theoretical constructs which are nice to investigate. They may have serious consequences for the future of languages and language varieties, namely whether they will maintain, lose, or strengthen their positions. Notes 1. Parts of this study have been reported in Van Bezooijen (1994, 1995). 2. The Randstad refers to a densely populated area in the west of the Netherlands, including large urban conglomerations such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague. 3. The subjects were also asked to indicate the most likely geographical origin of the speakers. This part of the experiment will not be reported on here. More information can be found in Van Bezooijen (1994). 4. These percentages, also referred to as eta2, have been obtained by dividing the variation connected with the factor by the total variation in the ratings, separately for each scale.

References Boets, H. and G. De Schutter. 1977. “Verstaanbaarheid en appreciatie. Nederlandse dialekten uit België zoals inwoners van Duffel die ervaren.” [Intelligibility and appreciation. Dutch dialects in Belgium as experienced by inhabitants of Duffel.] Taal en Tongval 29: 156–177. Doeleman, R. 1998. Native Reactions to Nonnative Speech. Ph.D. Dissertation, Tilburg University, Netherlands. Giles, H. 1970. “Evaluative reactions to accents.” Educational Review 22: 211–227. Giles, H., R. Y. Bourhis, and A. Davies. 1975. “Prestige speech styles: the imposed norm and inherent value hypotheses.” In Language in Anthropology. IV: Language in many ways, W. C. McCormack and S. Wurm (eds). The Hague: Mouton. Giles, H., R. Y. Bourhis, Peter Trudgill, and A. Lewis. 1974. “The imposed norm hypothesis: a validation.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 60: 405–410. Laver, J. 1981. “A perceptual protocol for the analysis of vocal profiles.” Edinburgh University Department of Linguistics Work in Progress 14:139–155. Smakman, D. and R. Van Bezooijen. 1999. “De uitspraak van het Standaardnederlands in Nederland. Een evaluatief en descriptief onderzoek.” [The pronunciation of standard Dutch in the Netherlands. An evaluative and descriptive study.] Artikelen van de Derde Sociolinguistische Conferentie. Lunteren, 367–378. Trudgill, P. and Giles, H. 1978. “Sociolinguistics and linguistic value judgments: correctness, adequacy, and aesthetics.” In Functional Studies in Language and Literature, F. Coppieters and D. L. Goyvaerts (eds), 167–190. Gent: Story-Scientia. Van Bezooijen, R. 1988. “The relative importance of pronunciation, prosody, and voice quality for the attribution of social status and personality characteristics.” In Language Attitudes in the Dutch Language Area, R. van Hout and U. Knops (eds), 85–103. Dordrecht/Cinnaminson: Foris. Van Bezooijen, R. 1994. “Aesthetic evaluation of Dutch language varieties.” Language & Communication 14: 253–263. Van Bezooijen, R. 1995. “De esthetische beoordeling van taalvariëteiten als functie van de leeftijd en regionale herkomst van luisteraars.” [The aesthetic judgments of language varieties as a function of the age and regional origin of listeners.] Proceedings van de Tweede Sociolinguistische Conferentie, 67–82. Lunteren. Van Westerlaak, J. M., J. A. Kropman, and J. W. M. Collaris. 1975. Beroepenklapper. [SES-index of professions.] Nijmegen: Nijmegen University, Institute of Applied Sociology.



C 3 Perceptions of Languages in the Mandingo Region of Mali Where Does One Language Begin and the Other End? Cécile Canut

1.

The Spatial Delimitation of Lects

The question of spatial delimitation of languages or “dialects” has for a long time been the object of study of dialectologists. Their objective on the one hand was the geographic circumscription of speech and on the other the creation of isoglosses precisely delimiting linguistic space. In France, the goal of dialectologists was to homogenize, to unify variation within the framework of its delimitation in an “objective” control of space, providing a centralized vision (center/periphery) suited to French ideology. In fact, the descriptions of dialectologists are always elaborated in terms of a central language (the norm of Parisian French for France for example) without ever considering the place of the respondents or their own perception of variation. The criticism of Léonard (1997) with regard to the reproduction of the center/ periphery model in France and his proposal of a diasystemic approach seem legitimate: They (the speakers) use an implicit diasystem, which allows the passage of one variety to another and the control of diversity at the interior of a local norm, according to Rousselot’s paradox: everyone speaks the same language but no one speaks it the same way. This diasystem is neglected by French dialectology, which has approached dialects with a neogrammarian model in a geographist (or geomorphist) foundation in its form and content. (Léonard 1997)

Beyond a critique of methods and scientific objectives, we need to reconsider the notion of linguistic space itself in the framework of plurilingualism and, more particularly, the perception that listeners have of it. We will examine the consequences of this conceptualization of linguistic space on the naming of lects as well as the theoretical and methodological effects on linguistic analysis. The study that we report here is based on metalinguistic discourse and on the result of an evaluation test carried out in the Mandingo region of Mali in 1993. The test consisted of respondents listening to a very short text read by speakers belonging to

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CÉCILE CANUT

linguistic “spaces” considered by the researchers to be different: the Sagabari region, the Bendugu region, the Kita region, and the Bamako region. Sagabari and Bendugu are villages situated in the Kita circle. The former is located four hours by car from Kita toward the south, across the Bakoy River and near the Guinean border, while the latter is very close to Kita (twelve kilometers) to the west. Kita is a mid-sized city crossed by the Bamako-Dakar railway, and Bamako is the capital of Mali (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1. The Mandingo region of Mali.

Before getting into the heart of the subject matter, we must recognize the work of Galtier (1981) concerning the Mandingo region. If his objective is typological (classification of Mandingo languages), the dialectological perspective is rather interesting because it applies to an analysis of diasystems (and diaphones) breaking with the traditional method which relied on lexicostatistical comparisons. He outlines four sub-systems of Mandingo speech: Mandingo West (“Malinke” — from Kita toward the west, to Mali and to Senegal), Mandingo East (“Manenka” — Guinea, the regions of Birgo, Mande and Wassoulou in Mali), Bambara (the central region of Mali, including Segou), and Dioula (Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast). Beyond this breakdown based on morphological and phonetic details, the author shows that, contrary to the rural regions, creating isoglosses for cities like Kita or Bamako is impossible: However, there are contact and mixture regions where speakers belonging to different dialects do meet each other: in particular in the large cities such as Bamako, Bobo Dioulasso, Kita, Bouake, (which are not, contrary to Segou or Kankan, in the heart of a dialect region) and axes of communication, such as the Dakar-Niger train line. In these

PERCEPTIONS OF LANGUAGES IN THE MANDINGO REGION OF MALI

33

contact zones varieties we call “modern” are used, which are clearly East Mandingo but which are not typical of Manenka or Bambara, or Dyoula (…) Each one is influenced by the other important dialects. (Galtier 1981: 49)

This last point shows how the work of spatial delimitation such as that proposed by dialectologists is ineffectual — firstly, because stable unified linguistic regions never exist and, secondly, because by privileging a strictly linguistic approach, the dynamic of language itself escapes us and the diachronic dimension is affected.

2.

Polylectal Dynamics: Lects with Multiple Usages

In the 1990s, our own studies (Canut 1996) attested to a much more unstable reality with regard to the evolution of vehicular languages, contact among the lects, and different identifying positions in play in this variability. By taking linguistic categorizations into account, through the discourse of speakers, it seemed that the spatial distribution of lects could not be condensed into compartmentalization, niches where one could make a language correspond with a place, and the same is true of the rural areas as well. The method consisted of identifying the markers (elicited in a previous study) which differentiated the lects. We included four regions (Sagabari and Bendugu, two villages, and Kita and Bamako, two cities) and three types of markers (lexical, phonetic/phonological and morphological). It is impossible to include all of those factors here (see Canut 1996); we will include only a few for analysis. One important difference is found among the vowel systems. The speech of the East, like more eastern speech, has a balanced system of seven oral vowels: /a/, /7/, /f/, /e/, /o/, /i/, /u/ and seven corresponding nasal vowels: /an/, /7n/, /fn/, /en/, /on/, /in/, /un/. The Sagabari and Bendugu speakers have, on the other hand, a vowel system typical of western speech: five oral vowels /a/, /e/, /o/, /i/, /u/ and five corresponding nasal vowels /an/, /en/, /on/, /in/, /un/ without phonological distinction in average degrees of aperture. Kita speech falls between the five and seven vowel systems; according to the speakers, it’s a six or seven vowel system (with /7/–/e/ opposition), depending on whether the /o/–/f/ opposition is attested or not. It will also be observed that the open vowel (oral or nasal) is, in the Sagabari variety, backed ("). The long vowels, attested in the standard variety, don’t exist in the three other varieties: ‘think’

/miiri/ (Bko) /miri/ (elsewhere)

In addition, some differences exist in the consonant system. Palatal /ç/ and the bilabial fricative /f/, present in the Bambara of Bamako, are not found in the Bendugu and Sagabari varieties but eventually appear in the Kita variety. In the Sagabari variety, a combinatory variant of the voiceless velar stop /k/ is attested; it is realized as a voiceless velar fricative /x/ intervocalically in the environment of back vowels (/"/, /o/, /u/) as well as initially before these same back vowels: /x"x"/ ‘file’, /x"n/ ‘voice’ (elsewhere: /kaka/, /kan/).

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Intervocalically, the stops /t/ (Sagabari) and /d/ (Bendugu) are found whereas in the standard variety, but also in the Kita variety, the liquid /r/ is found: thus ‘gourd’ is /b"t"/ (Sagabari), /bada/ (Bendugu), /bara/ (Kita, Bamako). The forms of the plural pronoun “they” are /alu/, /"lu/ in Bandugu and Sagabari, /u/ in Bamako and /al/ in Kita. Notice also that the form /b6/ in (1) the affirmative present and (2) locative affirmative non-verbal statements in the standard variety corresponds freely to the forms /b7/ and /ye/ in the three other varieties: “I’m going” /n b7 taa/ (Bko), /n b7 taa/, /n ye taa/ (elsewhere). Table 3.1. Morphological variations in Mandingo (Bambara/Malinke). Sagabari Bendugu Kita Bamako English

Intransitive past marker

Transitive past marker

-t" /"lu tag"t"/ -da /alu tagada/ -ra (-la/ -da/ -ta) /al tagara/ ra /la /u taara/ “they left”

ti /"lu ti i ban/ di /alu di i ban/ ye (di/ ti) /al ye i ban/ ye /u ye i ban/ “they refused”

In the second stage of the project, these variables were presented to respondents (200 people interviewed in the Mandingo region) in the form of short identical stories which were read in the four varieties. The respondents were asked to react to the four recordings without initially giving any detail. Next, more precise questions about “pronunciation” were posed. Finally, an open discussion with the respondent about his contact with Mandingo lects and any other languages was elicited. In the third stage, we observed the actual linguistic realizations of the respondents (recorded) during the study. The results show that the breakdown of the lects used does not correspond to the initial breakdown of Malinke and Bambara, that is to say between the Mandingo West and Mandingo East dialects. Even in the rather remote Mandingo villages such as Sagabari, a certain amount of mixture is noticeable, due to the rural exodus, education in Bamako and globally, and the permanent comings and goings between the city and villages, especially on the part of young people. This phenomenon is not unique and is more pronounced by the development of education, means of communication, and so on. The influence of Bamakokan, the “Bamako variety”, as a lingua franca reaches even the smallest villages. The prestige attributed to it (language of the city, modernity, power) explains its rapid diffusion. From the usage point of view, it appears that the breakdown between West and East is clearly no longer acceptable. Depending on the communication situation and the interlocutors and location, the rate of mixture between varieties is accelerated.

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In the city, the fluctuation between verb systems very distinctly appears, so much so that it is infrequently adjusted by speakers (e.g., /woro/ (Bambara) and /wfrf/ (Malinke) ‘cola’). For the consonants and past tense morphemes the alternations are sometimes adjusted (/alu/ becomes /al/ or /u/, /t/ becomes /d/, and so on) but are not always realized. The Malinke of Sagabari have trouble adapting to the phonetic variant [x]–[k]. The realization of /f/ in the place of /h/ gives rise to hypercorrection since certain /h/–/f/ oppositions differentiate speakers, and the movement from one to the other is not systematic since the phoneme /h/ also exists in the Bamako phonological system. For example, we find the opposition /hali/ and /fali/ ‘donkey’ but the realization of /ffrfn*/ for /hfrfn/ ‘noble’ is hypercorrection. The mixture of the two systems (notably for mid-vowels) is more recurrent in the city and in formal situations when the Malinke settle in the city. Nevertheless, their communicative competence in the two (or three) Mandingo sub-systems makes their production (linguistic competence) vary when they address an older person, when they return to their village, or when they are with their family, and so on. This permanent variation makes linguistic delimitation difficult since very often they navigate between the systems without situating themselves in one or the other. The different elements are not all adjusted or realized together. In one utterance, one can find Bambara -type person markers such as /u/ but elsewhere a fluctuation between the vowels /o/ and /f/, and sometimes, in the same discourse, the /x/ and /k/, etc. forms. This mixture of systems is characteristic of the city of Kita, an urban intermediary between the rural regions and the capital. We have attempted (Canut 1996) to explore two varieties in Kita: Kitakan 1, similar to Malinke (Mandingo West), spoken by older female speakers, and Kitakan 2, similar to Bamakokan (Mandingo East), spoken by younger speakers. This variety is characterized by some local particularities (like /al/ ‘they’) but is essentially composed of forms that come from Bamakokan (past tense marker, consonants /f/, /k/, etc.). However, in this city, situated near the only Dakar-Bamako train line, differentiation between varieties is impossible. The fact that villagers (Sagabari) can frequently pass as city-dwellers (Bamako) accentuates the mixture among the varieties. For example, our research found a high percentage, above 70%, of usage of Bamako /u/ ‘they’. This phenomenon of linguistic appropriation of Bamakokan, linked to the evolution of extralinguistic factors (socio-symbolic and subjective), results in complex linguistic practices, passage above and below the level of consciousness between different dialects whose formal markers are rarely produced in a homogenous manner within either of them. At this level, the use of of variables by these respondents is symptomatic of this linguistic imbroglio. Even if the speakers claim that “the Malinkes are different because they are not spoken in the same places” (Bendugu), there are very few who can identify the variants, and the test of differentiation of varieties was not really useful. The discoursal evidence reveals a state of differences which remains rather fuzzy: “There is a difference in pronunciation” (Kita) “The manner of speaking in Malinke is more heavy, the tone is different, certain words are not easy to say” (Bamako, Bambaro speaker)

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“Bambara is like Malinke but when you stir up the language it changes a bit. Malinke is more heavy, the proverbs are different. The two languages are a pair.” (Bamako, Bambara speaker) The criteria are often founded on subjective appreciation which we have analyzed elsewhere (Canut 1996): “People from Kita speak with ease while those from behind the river speak in their throat.” “The speech from behind the river is different in the way that the language moves. It’s heavier, here, it’s more refined” (Kita) “The Malinke from Sagabari isn’t a clear language. /i kenna/ ‘hello’ becomes /i lanxasi/ there. They aren’t modest, they don’t say /a banna/ ‘he’s finished, dead’ but /a hagata/ ‘he was killed’. That’s vulgar, that’s for an animal. Malinke there is less refined than Malinke here.” (Bendugu) “There is a difference between the languages in the way of raising the language /nen korota cogo/. Some say /io/ others say /oe/ and others /awo/ ‘yes’. I don’t like the dialect from Bendugo or the one from Sagabari because I can’t understand them.” (Kita) Globally these characterizations are infrequent; the respondents insist even more on the mixture among urban dialects: “In Bamako, Bambara is a mixture.” (Kita) “Bambara in Bamako is a hybrid.” (Bamako) “In town, in Bamako, it’s a pidgin, because of the melting pot.” (Bamako) “Bambara is an open language, it has a lot of borrowings. It’s not Bambara, it’s the Bamakois dialect /bamakokan/.” (Bamako) We will see below that what is called “Bambara” (bamanankan) refers to the Kita dialect as well as the Bamako dialect. This amalgam in the names of the urban dialects corresponds to the linguistic confusion itself. “In the cities, people mix languages. In Kita, there’s a little bit of everything, Bambara is a common language.” (Kita) “For us all the languages are called Bambara, but the Kita variety is different from that of Sagabari. There’s evolution in places. But Malinke can’t transform itself, it will always be spoken.” (Kita) In view of the overlap of different linguistic systems, essentially on the Bendugu, Kita, Bamako axis, could it be said that the two linguistic systems (East/West) contrast between the Kita and Bamako regions? According to which linguistic factors? What is the Kita system? This question begs another: why create the spatial delimitation of dialects, why create isoglosses? Couldn’t we observe, in the heart of the Bambara/Mandingo-West linguistic macro-system, a series of varying micro-systems whose composition depends not on geographical space but on sociolinguistic, communication, symbolic, and intersubjective parameters?

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Before agreeing on such a proposition, we’d like to examine the delimiting parameters among the proposed lects offered by the speakers themselves.

3.

Preference for the Lects and Multiple Identities

We do not mean to say that a link between a place and a dialect does not exist. The notion of linguistic territorialization (Canut 1998) appears, on the contrary, to be fundamental in the metalinguistic discourse of speakers. “I’m here on my hill, I only like Malinke” (Sagabari) “It’s the language behind the river” (Bendugu, on the subject of the Sagabari lect) “It’s the place that determines the dialect.” (Kita) “I like my language because as soon as anyone sees you they know where you’re from.” (Kita) “I was born there, I grew up there.” (Sagabari on the subject of his native language) It seems clear that this need to connect language to a place, often that of childhood, does not impede the reality of plurilingualism and the mixture of languages. Permanent contact between the dialects, and on a higher level between the languages of Mali, forms a constant ambivalence between the desire to homogenize, to define an original state of an ancient language described as pure, true, archaic, and the desire to participate in the linguistic plurality of daily life which relies on linguistic heterogeneity as a necessity. The territorialization of the native language is found in spatial ties but is coupled immediately with the deterritorialization necessary when encountering another and his language. “When you settle elsewhere, you’re obliged to learn the language of the area.” (Bamako) This phenomenon does not, however, need to be considered as recent, i.e., connected to such events as rural exodus and departures for abroad. The tradition has existed for a long time; in the villages the young “leave for adventure” (to experience work and life elsewhere) during the seasonal break (a “bridge the gap” period in agricultural work). These absences take on, however, initiatory value which can be found in Mali oral tradition (stories, proverbs). Thus numerous Mali consider their voyage to France in the same way today — “an experience”. In this framework, it is useful again to not perceive the discourse as contradictory; the same speaker can value the language of the outside (Bambara, for example) and his own native language (Malinke) at the same time. For the Mandingo, the division between his language and that of another is not always clear. In Kita young speakers often express their membership in several communities and claim to speak Bambara in certain situations. Due to their preferential bias for Bambara and not Malinke, they subscribe to membership in the Bamako community, evoking their attraction to its social status, modernity, work, night life, and so on while at the same time not renouncing their Malinke or Kita identity.

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“Everyone comes to Bamako and the different languages lead together toward a common language: the language purifies itself, it’s everyone’s language.” (Bamako) Identity is determined and reconstructed thus at the time of each interaction with another based on the image one creates of the other in so far as he allows the recognition of this identity “of the moment”. The question is to know how one positions oneself subjectively and linguistically in relation to the interlocutor, to the location of the exchange, to interpersonal relations, to the theme of the exchange, and to the third parties present, and so on. The issue of geographic boundaries is never clearly raised by the respondents. It could materialize (“the language behind the river” Sagabari) in far away rural regions, but, as soon as one approaches urban centers, delimitation is rarely made. The only true spatial references correspond more to native language ties in a particular village, that of childhood or the childhood of parents in the case of young people born in the city. It can be seen that the necessity for territorialization has pertinence only at the level of metalinguistic homogenization, apart from real communication. On the other hand, entry into social life and meeting others implies a much more complex and moving vision of communication space in which languages necessarily blend. Speakers do not ever rely, in fact, on a stable and definitive border in order to draw lines around some geolinguistic area since they are aware of both interlinguistic fluctuation (contact regions, evolution of languages) and the intrinsic diversity of linguistic systems. Their linguistic perception is heterogeneous and forms a part of the dynamic of linguistic systems. We claim that the entanglement of lects varies according to interaction situations, contact regions, and the metalinguistic activity of speakers. Geographic data can only be obtained in the heterogeneity vs. homogeneity dynamic. By taking into account discourse and the perceptions of speakers, much more can be learned with regard to intralinguistic structuring than by geographically cutting up the desired “homogenous” spaces. Languages are not entities that geographically expand and contract as a result of extralinguistic factors only. Languages rely more on the evaluation of these extralinguistic factors by the subjects who, through interpersonal strategies and as a function of the particular metalinguistic dynamic of their situation, adjust their behavior within plurilingualism or polylectal variation.

4.

Conclusion

Thus it seems impossible to create isoglosses among Mandingo dialects, and the same could be said for the languages of Mali. Closed communities and unified identities no longer exist; neither do homogenous linguistic areas. Even if speakers could lay claim to their native community, or indeed do claim it, it exists only in relation to the other communities with regard to which any Mali must position himself in the course of interaction:



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“When I’m in Paris, I’m a Mali, when I’m in Bamako, I’m Peule, and when I’m in my own village, I’m a Guimbala Peule.” (a female Peule) For the linguist, then, spatial delimitation of dialects cannot be an efficient parameter in the study of dynamic linguistics. On the other hand, at the interior of a macro-system that includes several diasystems in contact, the linguist’s interest will be, on the one hand, to understand the fluctuation of use in relation to extra-linguistic parameters (social, but above all subjective across discourse) and, on the other hand, as a result of these observations, to show how regulation of variation between the sub-systems operates. In Kita, it is interesting to note that Mandingo East, throughout Bamakokan, reaching even to Segou, dominates more and more widely. The objective is no longer to describe abstract entities (language), so-called fixed and rooted systems situated one next to the other, but rather to show that communicative practice is composed of an ensemble of varying subsystems in contact and in the process of permanent transformation and evolution.

References Canut Cécile. 1996. Dynamiques Linguistiques au Mali [The Dynamic Linguistics of Mali]. Paris: Didier Erudition. Canut Cécile. 1998. “Perception des espaces plurilingues ou polylectaux et activité épilinguistique” [The perception of multilingual or multilectal areas and metalinguistic activity]. In Language and Location in Space and Time, Petr Zima and Vladimir Tax (eds), 155–72. München/Newcastle: Lincom Europa. Galtier, Gérard. 1981. “Problèmes dialectologiques et phonographématiques des parlers mandingues” [Dialect problems and written representations of spoken Mandingo]. Mandenkan 1:39–58. Léonard, Jean Léo. 1990. Variation Dialectale et Microcosme Anthropologique: L’île de Noirmoutier (Vendée, France) [Dialect Variation and Microcosmic Anthropology: The Island of Noirmoutier (Vendée, France)]. Doctoral dissertation. Aix-en-Provence: University of Provence. Léonard, Jean Léo. 1991. “Distances et dialecte: approches des représentations ethnolinguistiques à Noirmoutier (Vendée)” [Distances and dialect: An approach to enthnolinguistic belief on Noirmoutier (Vendée)]. In Les Français et leur Langues [The French and their Languages] Claudes Martel (eds), 59–83. Aix-en-Provence: Publication Université de Provence. Léonard, Jean Léo. 1997. “Diasystème et diglossie périphérique: Le cas gallo-roman” [Diasystem and peripheral diglossia: The case of Gallo-Romance]. Paper presented at the conference Y-a-t-il une exception sociolinguistique française? [Is there an exceptional French sociolinguistics?], University of Brest.



C 4 Gender Differences in the Perception of Turkish Regional Dialects Mahide Demirci

This study looks at gender differences and the interactions among the three factors of gender, age, and social class in the perceptions of regional dialects in Turkey as revealed through respondent hand-drawn maps. Although much work has been done on the perceptual dialectology of people in the United States and in other countries for the last decade (see Preston [1999], for extensive studies done in various countries), there is no research that focuses on gender differences in the perception of dialect boundaries. My goal is to find out whether a study of the conscious awareness of language varieties, as shown in Turkish mental maps, will reveal gender-based patterns as have been discovered in many attitude and production studies (e.g., Labov 1972, Trudgill 1972, 1974; Milroy 1980). I also try to see how the factors of age and social class interact with gender in the perceptions and judgments of Turkish speech areas. The use of a hand-drawn or mental map technique in sociolinguistics was pioneered by Preston in his 1982 study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and was further developed in his 1985 and 1988 studies with Michigan and Indiana respondents. In these studies, the respondents were asked to draw boundaries around the areas where they believed people spoke differently on a blank map of the U.S. Preston’s work showed not only the folk boundaries established by these perceptual maps but also a very rich set of descriptive and evaluative labels for the areas distinguished. According to Preston, the hand drawn maps can provide for more accurate data on language use and varieties in a speech community, and also show how the speakers themselves view language varieties relative to the standard language and other stereotyped judgments.

1.

Respondents and Method

Turkey, located in the Middle East, borders on the west with Greece and Bulgaria, while to the east, it has borders with Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The Black Sea in the north, the Aegean in the west, and the Mediterranean in the south also border Turkey.

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A small part of Turkey, called Trakya (to the west of Istanbul in the ‘Balkan’ region), is located in Europe. Due to its location and its rich history, both European and Asian cultures have structured Turkish cultural and social life, and, therefore, it is very diverse. The respondents in this study were all natives of Bursa, the fifth largest city and an industrialized area which lies in the Western part of Turkey on the Sea of Marmara to the southeast of Istanbul. There were a total of 142 respondents, divided into twelve subgroups according to age, social class, and gender. Both male and female respondents were divided into three age groups (17–25, 35–45, and 50+) as well as two social classes (middle-class and upper-class). Each subgroup had a total of 12 subjects. Respondents were given a map of Turkey with names and borders of 72 cities. They were asked to outline the areas where they believe people speak differently. Respondents were also asked to write labels for each speech area they drew and give comments about the speech and the people living in those labeled areas. The map that was used in this task is shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1. The map used in this task.

2.

Analysis

Since the respondents were free to draw lines wherever they wished, some of the maps included only a very few lines while others were covered with lines and detailed information. The variation in these hand drawn maps can be seen in Figures 4.2 and 4.3. In order to convert individual maps into two general ones, one for female respondents and one for males, following Preston (1988), the rough limits of each map’s outline of the region were copied onto a separate map. A tally was kept of where the lines overlapped.

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Figure 4.2. An upper-class female hand-drawn map with minimal distinctions.

Figure 4.3. An upper-class male hand-drawn map with several distinctions.

The bundle representing the greatest number of respondent-drawn boundaries was taken to be a speech area boundary.

3.

Results

Since I focus on gender-based patterns, the respondent subgroups were combined into two; a female and male group. The composite of these maps shows that overall there are five perceived regional speech areas for female respondents, as shown in Figure 4.4. 1. 2. 3.

Eastern Black Sea East Trakya

(Ordu, Giresun, Trabzon, Rize) (Hakkari, Sirnak, Mardin, Batman, Diyarbakir, Siirt, Bingol, Mus) (Tekirdag, Kirklareli, Edirne)

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Figure 4.4. Perceived dialect areas by female respondents.

4. 5.

Marmara Region Bursa

(Bursa, Istanbul, Izmit, Sakarya, Balikesir, Canakkale) (respondents’ hometown)

In contrast, there were fourteen perceived dialect areas for male respondents, as shown in Figure 4.5. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Eastern Black Sea East Trakya Marmara Manisa and Izmir Aydin and Mugla Aydin, Usak and Denizli Afyon Denizli Ankara and Konya Yozgat and Sivas Erzurum Hatay Urfa

4.

Discussion

(Ordu, Giresun, Trabzon, Rize) (Agri, Van, Hakkari, Sirnak, Mardin, Batman, Siirt) (southwest) (southwest) (southwest) (southwest) (southwest) (central Anatolia) (central Anatolia) (northeast) (south-central) (southeastern)

Male respondents perceived more dialect areas than female respondents. Furthermore, no female group singled out a dialect area in the west, in the southeast, or in central Anatolia,

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Figure 4.5. Perceived dialect areas by male respondents.

whereas male respondents perceived five areas in the Aegean, two in the southeast, and two in central Anatolia. Unlike male respondents, no female group singled out Erzurum (a northeastern city) as a dialect area. Unlike female respondents, on the other hand, no male group perceived Bursa (the respondents’ hometown) as a separate dialect area. Only one male group (UMM) singled out Trakya as a dialect area as opposed to four female groups. The most salient areas drawn by both female and male groups are the same; the eastern Black Sea and the east. Surprisingly, no male group singled out Bursa as a dialect area. In fact, very few male subjects selected the city. I believe that female respondents exemplify linguistic security by regarding their hometown as a distinctive dialect area. Their written comments show that female respondents are very enthusiastic, confident and exaggerated in their praise for their hometown. According to them, “Bursa is the center of Turkey, very industrial, developed and westernized”; “people in Bursa use a very modern technology in their daily lives”; “people are more cultured, liberal, admirable, and educated than people in other cities.” Females perceive the Turkish spoken in Bursa as being the best, most correct, beautiful, polite and intelligible. Men, on the other hand, seem much more humble and realistic in their praise. According to male respondents, the apparently linguistically insecure group, Bursa is a developed area in terms of culture and literacy, but the city has a lot of immigrants from the eastern part of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece, which affects the language in a very negative way. Another area that female respondents praise intensively is Trakya, the European part of Turkey bordering with Greece and Bulgaria. Their comments — “people reflect their inner world sincerely through their language”; “their language is a result of the mixture of

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two cultures”; “they have been squeezed between Greek, Bulgarian and Yugoslavian cultures; therefore, they developed their own specific Turkish” — reveal that this area is a doorway to western culture, and these women apparently want to identify with it. On the other hand, men are very critical of this area and appear to distance themselves from it. They think that Trakya is an undeveloped area and also a place of gypsies and immigrants from Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. To male respondents, people in this area are strange, cold and unfriendly. Their speech is difficult to understand because of the negative influences of Greek and Bulgarian. Men call the language spoken there the “Rumelian” accent. Male respondents also distinguished Erzurum, a northeastern city, as a distinct speech area. They appear to separate this area from a general “eastern dialect area” and call it “the area of dadaslar (brotherhood).” Male respondents think that the language of this area is harsh but intelligible, and the people in Erzurum are very patriotic and good-natured. The separation of this city from the “eastern dialect area” by males is important if we consider the fact that both female and male groups used the harshest and most negative terms to refer to people in the southeast and also to their language. Both groups think that Kurdish is dominant in the southeast, and it is the most unintelligible and harshest language in the country. Almost all respondents report that they feel antipathy towards the area because of social unrest there. However, male respondents try to separate a so-called Kurdish area (southeast border cities) from the rest of the east, and they also try to show that they do not perceive the east as just one uniform Kurdish area. If we look at the respondents’ comments, we see that males have a softer and more understanding attitude toward this area and its language, unlike the female respondents, who are extremely prejudiced against it and harsh in their judgments of it. Males report that the country has a language problem there, and they believe that the government is mostly responsible for this problem and for the lack of industry and schools in the region. They say that these people are also citizens of the country and that they are their siblings. On the other hand, females think that the area is the source of terrorism and that the people are illiterate, vulgar and primitive. They have corrupted the Turkish language, according to several female respondents. Many male respondents tended to subdivide certain regions. For example, several divided the Black Sea region into western and eastern areas. Additionally, several divided the east into three dialect areas, some even into four and five. By contrast, almost no female respondents did this. As mentioned above, male respondents show very intensive and detailed perception of dialects in the eastern region, dividing them into several areas that seem to indicate a continuum. Several male respondents drew a dialect area that included three southeastern border cities (Mardin, Sirnak, Hakkari) and three other cities to the north (Bitlis, Siirt, Batman). It should be noted that these are the cities where most of the Turkish Kurds live. These same male respondents drew other dialect areas in the region encompassing these eastern and northeastern cities, indicating that Erzurum is a distinct dialect area. Some respondents divided the east into five dialect areas: the first includes the three southeastern border cities and the other three cities in the north (the core Kurdish area); the second area includes six eastern interior cities (Maras, Malatya, Elazig, Diyarbakir, Adiyaman); the third area has the south-central cities toward the west

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(Adana, Hatay); the fourth area includes the eastern border cities (Kars, Agri); and the last dialect area has only one city, Erzurum. According to the written comments of male respondents, the first dialect area uses the most unintelligible and vulgar language; the second area has an eastern accent and “they speak from the throat”; the third area shows the influence of Arabic; the fourth area has an Azerbaijani accent, and Erzurum has a harsh but intelligible language. The Kurdish area, which includes the cities in the first dialect area, is the ‘core area’ since it was drawn by almost all male subjects. While male respondents appear to separate a so-called Kurdish area from the rest of the east, the female respondents seem to perceive only one dialect area in the east; the one that is dominated by the Kurdish people and language. Some of the male drawings appear to reveal some sort of isoglossal layering. For these males, there often exists a most concentrated area (or a ‘primary dialect area’). For example, the primary dialect area on the Black Sea is “Rize”, perceived by nine upperclass older male respondents. Next “Ordu, Giresun, Trabzon” is a secondary area perceived by eight males, then “Artvin” perceived by seven and “Corum” by four. Therefore, one may speak of primary, secondary, and even lesser dialect areas based on the number of respondents (Carver 1987). Men had a tendency to include Artvin, a northeastern border city with Georgia, in the eastern Black Sea area while women tended to leave it out. Since these same male respondents think that people in Artvin speak Georgian, not the Laz dialect (a dialect spoken on the eastern Black Sea), they appear to include this city in the eastern Black Sea area for nonlinguistic reasons. The inland city of Bayburt in the northeast is included either in the Black Sea dialect area or the eastern dialect area by male respondents. However, female subjects excluded this city from both these areas, apparently unsure about what dialect area the city belongs to. Several male respondents included the northern interior cities (Cankiri, Corum, Tokat, etc.) in the Black Sea dialect area, creating a large and undifferentiated northern dialect. Some of these respondents divided the region into two dialect areas, the western and the eastern Black Sea areas, and they included the central Anatolian cities in the west. Some males drew a large dialect area that stretches from the interior of Anatolia all the way to the cities of the eastern Black Sea, including even the easternmost cities. These male respondents appear not to notice a distinction between the dialects on the Black Sea and those in the interior of Anatolia and in the east. There are also differences between males and females in terms of their sensitivity to influence of foreign culture and language. Men, unlike women, did not mention either the Greek and Bulgarian effect in Trakya, or the Russian and Pontos Greek Empire effects on the eastern Black Sea, or the Armenian effect on the eastern border cities. On the other hand, women do not mention Circassian and Tartar in the western interior, the Ottoman Turkish minority in Trakya, Syriac in the southeast, Turkmenistan in the east, or Alauti in the eastern interior. Both groups mention Kurdish in the southeast, Georgian in the northeast, Arabic in the south-central, and Azerbaijani in the east. It seems that men are more sensitive to and less tolerant of religious differences than women, since most men associated the central east with Alauti and the south-central area with the Syriac religion.

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It should be noted that Turkey has experienced severe social unrest and numerous killings due to the conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites in the central east area. On the other hand, men are less sensitive to the European effect in Trakya. Another contrast between females and males is that men use more linguistically descriptive comments about labeled areas, such as, “they drop sounds from the words and they add affixes to them”; “the back vowels are replaced with front vowels”; “they use certain Kurdish structures in their Turkish because their first language is Kurdish.” Women use more prescriptive expressions and appear to express more of how they felt about the speech areas: “I cannot stand their language”; “I love their accent; it makes me feel warm”; “they cannot speak Turkish because they are stupid and primitive.” 4.1 Subgroups and the factors of age and social class Table 4.1 shows the distribution of perceived dialect areas according to gender, age, and class. With respect to age, we do not see much variation among the female subgroups. Older upper-class female respondents did not single out Trakya, while younger upper-class respondents did not recognize Bursa. Older middle-class females did not perceive Trakya (just like the upper-class female respondents of the equivalent age), while middle aged middle-class respondents did not single out Bursa (like younger upper-class ones). The younger upper-class females and the middle aged females of the middle-class differ from other age groups of the same class since they did not perceive Bursa as a speech area. The older upper-class and middle-class females differ from other age groups of the same class because they did not identify Trakya. With respect to class, both upper and middle-class females singled out the same two speech areas: the eastern Black Sea and the east. Middle aged upper-class female respondents perceived four areas, whereas the same age middle-class females noted only three; the difference was in their perception of Bursa as a speech area. Young upper-class females singled out three speech areas while young middle-class females perceived four; again, the difference was Bursa. The male respondents showed much more variation for both age and class. There is a big gap between older male subjects and the other age groups, and between middle aged and younger males. Older males of both classes perceive many more areas than the other groups, and middle aged males more than younger ones. With regard to class, older males of the upper-class perceived more speech areas than their middle-class equivalents, and middle aged upper-class males perceived more dialect areas than their middle-class counterparts. Overall, females appear not to exhibit either class or age related differences nor any interaction between these two factors in perceptions of speech areas, whereas there appears to be both class and age related differences in the perceptions of male respondents as well as the differences in terms of age and class interaction. Both upper-class and middle-class older males perceived more dialect areas than their female counterparts; for example, older upper-class males perceived nine dialect areas whereas equivalent female respondents noted only three. Middle aged upper-class males

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Table 4.1. Perceived dialect areas by each subgroup. Female Upper Class

Middle Class

50+

Eastern Black Sea; East; Marmara Region

Eastern Black Sea; East; Bursa.

35–45

Eastern Black Sea; East; Trakya; Bursa.

Eastern Black Sea; East; Trakya.

17–25

Eastern Black Sea; East; Trakya.

Eastern Black Sea; East; Trakya; Bursa.

Male Upper Class

Middle Class

50+

Eastern Black Sea; East; Marmara Region; Manisa and Izmir; Aydin and Mugla; Konya; Yozgat and Sivas; Hatay, Erzurum.

Eastern Black Sea; East; Marmara Region; Manisa and Izmir; Denizli; Erzurum.

35–45

Eastern Black Sea; East; Trakya; Afyon; Aydin, Denizli and Usak.

East; Manisa and Izmir.

17–25

Eastern Black Sea; East.

Black Sea; East; Urfa.

recognized six dialect areas, equivalent females only four. With regard to the interaction between gender and age, younger upper and middle-class female respondents and middle aged middle-class females perceived more dialect areas than their male counterparts. The first three groups which singled out the greatest number of dialect areas are male; UMO (9), MMO (6), and UMM (5), followed by two female groups; UFM and MFY (4). The least number of dialect areas perceived belongs to two male groups; MMM and UMY (2). The difference between younger females and their male counterparts is not large; younger females singled out only one more area than their male counterparts. However, there is a big gap between older male respondents and older female ones.

5.

Conclusion

When asked to draw boundaries around regions where different dialects are spoken, the Bursa respondents, regardless of gender, age, and class, gave similar responses, but with interesting variation. Almost all respondents drew a border around some territory in the east and on the Black Sea. However, depending on gender, age, and class, the east itself was divided into subregions such as the southeastern “Kurdish” part, the southern “Arabic” part on the border with Syria, as well as a northeastern non-Kurdish region. Similarly, many respondents selected the entire coast of the Black Sea, whereas others separated this area into two parts, an eastern and a western part. Given the far larger number of cases where only the eastern Black Sea region was circled, it might be



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concluded that this region is more salient for respondents than the western Black Sea area. Many male respondents circled several speech areas in the Aegean and both west-central and interior Anatolian regions. Almost all female respondents selected a home region that also varied in size, either Bursa itself or a Marmara region extending from Istanbul to Bursa. Almost all female respondents circled an area west of Istanbul (Trakya). It is natural to expect that there will be gender, age and class-based differences in the perception of language varieties (e.g., Demirci and Kleiner 1999). This study shows that there is a close connection between and interaction among the social factors of gender, age, and class and the perception of language varieties. The differences between the mental maps of men and women (and of different age groups and social classes) is a reflection of a combination of the linguistic, geographical, social, political and economic realities of Turkey and a reflection of which ones are most salient to these respondents. Turkey is still a traditional and male-dominated society; therefore, it is difficult for women to have full access to educational, social, and political institutions, and this may play a large role in the difference in male and female perceptions. On the other hand, some other differences here correspond to those found in other areas where such cultural conditions do not obtain (e.g., women’s preference for the standard). Research in sociolinguistics and social psychology has been done to compare men and women in their subconscious evaluations of language varieties, and the results show a differential distribution of language use and attitudes with regard to gender. The results of this study may prove that there are gender, age and class differences even in conscious evaluations and perceptions of language.

References Carver, Craig M. 1987. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Demirci, Mahide and Brian Kleiner. 1999. “The perception of Turkish dialects.” In Preston (ed.), 1999, 263–81. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Milroy, Lesley. 1980. Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Preston, Dennis R. 1982. “Perceptual dialectology: Mental maps of United States dialects from a Hawaiian perspective.” Working Papers in Linguistics (University of Hawaii) 14: 5–49. Preston, Dennis R. 1985. “Southern Indiana perceptions of ‘correct’ and ‘pleasant’ English.” In Methods/ Methodes V (Papers from the 5th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology), Henry Warkentyne (ed.), 387–411. Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria. Preston, Dennis R. 1988. “Methods in the study of dialect perception.” In Methods in Dialectology, Alan Thomas (ed.), 373–395. Clevedon, Avon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Preston, Dennis R. 1999. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 1. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Trudgill, Peter. 1972. “Sex, covert prestige and language change in the urban British English of Norwich.” Language in Society 1:179–95. Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



C 5 Mental Maps Linguistic-Geographic Concepts Willy Diercks

Translated by Meghan McKinnie The tendency for dialect speakers to circumscribe the area in which they speak their own dialect and to cut themselves off from dialects spoken in the surrounding area makes it interesting to determine the boundaries of that circumscription. Thus far, little attention in dialectology has been paid to the question of what effects geographically-restricted regional identification has on dialect use, whether such use is guided by spatial and linguistic distance from the neighboring dialects as well as by social and psychological motivations, and whether or not the dialect speakers include spatial and linguistic concepts in their interpretation of the entire situation. In this study, concepts which dialect speakers have of the spatial distribution of their dialect, ones which come from the value of dialect in terms of social meaning, will be differentiated from the geographic distances among neighboring dialects. In short, in this investigation, the concept of distance and actual distance will not be seen as identical. Individuals as well as groups differ in their perceptions of distance phenomena. Individuals “discover” the concept of the linguistic distance of their dialect in relationship to those of the neighboring villages, incorporate the stereotypical orientations of their community, and pass them on. The number of possible evaluations about a neighbor’s dialect depends, in part, on the regional mobility of the speaker. Differences between those evaluations passed down by the group and those individually experienced might cause considerable problems for analysis, but those possible differences will not be explored in this study. The starting point of the analysis here is, quite simply, the individuals who have knowledge about their linguistic environment. Individuals have an orientation in which linguistic and spatial distance in relation to the surrounding environment creates the idea of the “linguistic homeland”. This allows for the classification of neighboring regions as well. The distances, or better, the concepts or perceptions of distance, are related to a number of dialectological questions. From this point of view, a specific function of dialects is a socio-psychological identification of

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one’s own territory (Greverus 1972: 48ff.). The perception and definition of dialect characteristics contribute to an estimation of distance which is important in determining the subjectively-perceived home area (Greverus 1972: 51ff.). At this point, reference to place and regional mockery — to regional shibboleths which guarantee a region’s linguistic identification with relatively rough, not entirely numerous, characteristics (e.g., well-known expressions such as “über den ss-spitzen SS-tein ss-tolpern” which characterize the Hanseatic pronunciation) — should suffice as examples.1 Since “dialect” is used in situations of familiarity (with a group, person, or social class) (Stellmacher 1980: 204), familiarity/unfamiliarity with other dialects, with neighboring dialects, and antipathy/sympathy toward particular pronunciations or the neighboring dialect in general help determine whether the standard language or the dialect is chosen in a conversation. “Dialect”, therefore, can demarcate boundaries and indicate what the speaker/ listener interprets as home. The perception of space can also be the starting point for the definition of the term “home” itself, one of the terms with which a dialect can be classified. It is important to note, however, that differences in age, status, and education also bring about variation in these conceptual rather than actual notions of language varieties. Ideas we acquire about a place, an area, or a space which are influenced by experiences are described by Gould and White (1974) with the term “mental map”. Language/ dialect is, from this perspective, both a characteristic which creates distance as well as an element which is influenced by geographic distance. This suggests, both individually and socially, that there are affective concepts of the surrounding areas. “Our views of the world, and about people and places in it, are formed from a highly filtered set of impressions, and our images are strongly affected by the information we receive through our filters” (Gould and White 1974: 48). The origin and effect of these filters (and therefore also the perceptions received through them) are clearly related to experience, to the molding of individuals and their social norms. Peter Orleans discovered, for example, that the perception of the city of Los Angeles was strongly determined by class. “Upperclass, white respondents from Westwood had a very rich and detailed knowledge of the sprawling city and the wide and interesting areas around it (…), while black residents had a more restricted view” (Gould and White 1974: 34). Spanish-speaking residents knew only a tiny area of the city. In their lives the bus station played an extremely important role as the place at which they arrived in the city or as one which served them as a meeting place. These concepts of space, the projections of pictures onto geographic reality which Gould and White call “mental maps”, are made up of established relations to geographic spaces based on personal and social experiences. Places, areas, and inhabitants are not compared in terms of physical distance from each other; rather, the distances between the places are defined through relationships which are strengthened and carried out in economic, cultural, and familiar areas.2 Dialect boundaries, as parts of a filter that contributes to the delimitation of close surroundings, are particularly dependent on the dialect competence of the speaker/listener and on his or her ability to perceive linguistic differences. This ability to perceive linguistic differences, however, is not primarily associated with dialect competence. It is

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partially based on personal experience with various dialects but also includes popular opinions about the linguistic area (identifying words, identifying sounds). The concepts which are handed down and sanctioned by the group are of great importance. For example, it is possible to discover opinions of a neighboring region which refer to previously existing economic differences between the two areas — differences, for example, which, through advances in agrarian technology or political intervention, no longer exist. The opinions survive longer than the actual existence of the cause of the attitude toward the neighbor’s language/dialect; the language cliché stays the same.3 Just as resistant to change are stereotypes about one’s own dialect; at amateur performances of dialect poetry and stories, at presentations of collections of dialect texts which interested lay people have collected, and on the occasion of village and regional celebrations, the loss of the “old”, “traditional” elements of the dialect are mourned. The older “typical” forms are used during the presentation. In everyday speech, however, the regional elements which, according to the opinions of the speakers, are characteristically archaic and restricted geographically, often no longer exist. In reality, awareness of the environment through various types of filters corresponds more to the quality of the prejudices (stereotypes) than to differences which can be objectively verified (Katz and Katz 1972: 361). Experiences with stereotypes can, when confirmed through actions and reactions, attain the rank of individual and social norms. In situations of competition between the dialect and standard language, i.e., in a situation in which ideological conflicts with regard to language come about, these norms are of incalculable importance when compared with so-called “objective” considerations (Katz and Katz 1972: 362). Since the existence of dialects is in jeopardy, due to the increasing acceptance of Standard German and the influence of the media, and since sociology and public opinion research supply relevant instruments for examination, a number of studies of the perception of dialects by dialect speakers and speakers of Standard German have been carried out. The model which is presented here should be understood to be a portion of an extensive battery of methods which has been used in a study of linguistic relationships in the city of Schleswig,4 and data from other portions of this study (which will not be further described here) will be included in the interpretation of the results.5 A careful control of attitude studies is absolutely necessary because of the high construct dependency of the data collected. This is especially true for those portions of the study which do not refer to attitudes based on the behavior of participants but refer only to self-evaluation. In German dialectology in the last few years, attitudes toward dialect as a guiding factor for linguistic behavior have been methodically discussed and studied (Mattheier 1983a: 271). Language attitudes were addressed in earlier investigations6 which took into account socio-psychological attitude research (e.g., Dittmar 1973). The study of multilingualism in two Swiss cities by Kolde (1981), the research report on the Erp-Project (Besch et al. 1981), and the Mannheim (Kallmeyer et al. 1982) and Berlin projects (Dittmar et al. 1986) opened the way for American attitude research methods. The spectrum of methods ranges from correlative studies using questionnaires to participantobservation of networks. In all of the newer investigations of the function of language and

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dialect, various models of analysis are used side-by-side in order to address the dangers of a one-sided approach to complex issues (Mattheier 1981: 16–42, Kolde 1981). Any concern with the variation between dialect and standard language in a city demands multiple approaches. Any attitude analysis should, for example, be expanded upon with an understanding of the participants’ actual language behavior.7 In addition, the types of questions in the interview must be varied so that the probability that the participant will see through the intention of the interview is reduced. Work from Besch et al. (1981) has fundamental significance for German dialectology. A second volume of the research reports is dedicated to the evaluation of dialects by subjects (Hufschmidt et al. 1983). The questions of how individuals go about making social assessments of a speaker based on different dialect usages and how they identify social status with linguistic status on a scale ranging from dialect to standard language are the essential concerns of this important study (e.g., Klein 1983: 169ff.). The speaker/ listener takes on various attitudes toward the dialect and standard varieties, attitudes which control his or her linguistic and non-linguistic actions (e.g., Mickartz 1983). The problem of dialect orientation on the basis of affective concerns was discussed as early as the 1960’s and was treated alongside questions about dialect awareness. Alongside objective methods such as isogloss measurement and assessment of dialect level, experiments in Dutch dialect geography were undertaken to employ subjective dialect divisions for the establishment of dialect boundaries (Weijnen 1966: 196ff.). On the basis of subjective awareness of proximity to particular neighboring dialects and the feeling of solidarity, dialect maps which show subjective boundaries were produced. These maps are not based on language tests, but rather on the answers to questions about the estimated linguistic connection with neighboring places (Mattheier 1983b: 233). In this study of dialect use and attitudes toward dialects in the city of Schleswig, a geographical area was selected which helped examine spatial awareness from the city toward the surrounding countryside. The presentation of recorded dialects from these immediately neighboring areas brought forth reactions which revealed evaluations of and attitudes toward dialects. Further, this test helped clarify whether individual dialects in the area surrounding the Schleswig dialect were considered a part of it or of some other dialect area. Finally, the folk geographic distribution of dialects and the preference for particular dialects was examined. With recorded data, of course, it is possible to question the subjects on their opinions about dialects and to play tape recordings of dialect samples for evaluation. This ensures that all subjects and the interviewer refer to the same phenomenon and that an authentic text can be evaluated. In addition, the interviewer can take note of mimicking and gestures on the part of the subjects (reactions to foreignness, making fun, staring). One way of measuring attitudes is with the use of polar opposite scales, e.g., “fast – slow”, “happy – sad” (Osgood et al. 1957, Hofstätter 1964). While Osgood’s semantic differential technique can be used for measuring attitudes in general, sociolinguistics has adopted the method by developing polarities which refer to the evaluated topic itself, i.e., languages and language varities (Solmecke and Boosch 1979). In sociolinguistics, the “matched-guise technique”, developed by Lambert, has proven

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55

to be particularly effective for the comparison of varieties of a language or languages (Lambert et al. 1960). The fundamental advantage of this method is that the goal of the study remains hidden from the individuals so that none of the questioning strategies is seen through and cannot, therefore, interfere with the test. In this procedure a multilingual speaker produces several varieties onto a tape; these samples can be compared with each other and evaluated. The methodological deceit is that the subject who evaluates the speech samples is required to evaluate the character of the supposed various speakers on a scale. The speaker evaluations are carried over to the dialect itself (e.g., Kolde 1981: 386ff.). This original testing method has been repeatedly criticized and changed,8 not solely because the responses appeared to be too general. It is also not possible to guarantee that the purpose of the test (that the subjects were distracted by the dialect of the speaker) was not seen through. In the examination of dialect samples from the area surrounding Schleswig, a comprehensive, universal polarity profile is not used. Some of the questions clearly refer to the dialect and some to the speaker. Affective evaluations are achieved in various ways and should mark proximity to or distance from the dialect under evaluation.9 For various reasons Lambert’s “matched-guise technique”, used also by Kolde in his investigation of attitudes toward language groups in Switzerland, could not be completely carried over to the circumstances of the Schleswig study.10 It was impossible to find a speaker who had equal competence in all four dialects, so the method of comparison of different dialects from the mouth of one speaker could not be applied. The dialect samples were therefore obtained from four different speakers. In terms of content, the speech samples are similar, and, before recording, the speakers were given advice on speed, intonation and volume in order to produce comparable recordings. The speakers are of similar age, but according to the estimation of the age of the speaker by the subjects, one of the speakers, on the basis of his voice quality, is believed to be insignificantly older than the others. This difference does not appear to have any consequences for the comparison of the dialect samples. For the samples, four speakers were chosen whose dialect appears to represent the respective local dialect according to the opinion of fellow residents and that of the experimenter. The fifty-second-long recordings are typical of the dialects of the villages Löwenstedt (west Geest) = (1), Thumby (Angeln) = (2), Treia (west, near Schleswig) = (3) and Jagel (southwest, near Schleswig) = (4). In order not to reveal the goal of the interview, affective evaluations were mixed with questions about geographic orientation. Requests for rankings of the speakers according to social status as well as provocative questions about the aesthetic quality of the speech samples in the pilot study did not prove to be effective. Status rankings were often declined or else deemed to be impossible. The participant group was made up of subjects who have lived in Schleswig for at least fifteen years. The test portion also allowed the experimenter to judge the subject’s listening comprehension. The Low German speech samples were prepared so that they would not cause comprehension difficulty for a competent Low German speaker; rather they would primarily show phonetic differences among the samples and between the samples and High German. The following shows schematically what was tested.

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Figure 5.1. The city of Schleswig and the places from which the dialect samples used in the test were obtained.

Polarity assignment 2…1…0…1…2 1 old young 2 far near 3 north south 4 west east 5 rural urban 6 own dialect foreign dialect 7 first language second language 8 old dialect modern dialect 9 perception of distance (distant place) 10 estimation of age (of the speaker) In addition, the capacity of the test subjects to solve problems (their ability to make correct spatial distribution) was evaluated on a scale from 1 to 6. The varied order of the questions served to disguise the intention/purpose of the study so that the subject’s judgment would be independent of the interview design. The polarities change

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in their focus — in the first polarity the focus is on the person, as with the “matched-guise technique”; in the second polarity, however, the focus is on the linguistic distance. The first polarity — the question about the age of the speaker — is a simple lead-in to the interview portion. The perspective changes with the second polarity: a judgment about proximity of the dialect area is expected, i.e., a spatial concept of the area is addressed rather than the linguistic characteristics of the Low German dialect sample. This evaluation is sought even more precisely in the third and fourth polarities which call for an orientation to the direction of the dialect (from Schleswig). With the fifth polarity an attempt is made to address an opposition between rural and urban dialect, between farm and city. This serves to reinforce the sixth polarity where the dialect in question will be identified as the same as one’s own or as foreign. This opposition will show, in particular, if newcomers, who come from Schleswig’s surrounding countryside, identify themselves more with the Schleswig dialect or with the dialect spoken in their place of origin. In the seventh polarity, the focus is directed back to the speaker. The subject is to judge the competence of the speaker with the opposition “first language – second language”. With the eighth opposition, the evaluation of the dialect sample as “old” and “pure” or as “modern” and “closer to the standard language” is the focus. In the ninth question, the use of a scale with two opposing terms was abandoned; here it was asked which of the four dialect samples is most similar to the subject’s own dialect. Analyses were carried out on the data from the 129 subjects who were questioned in this interview. The following groups are examined in relation to the accuracy of their dialect orientation (as revealed in several of the polarities): 1. age, 2. place of residence, 3. occupational status, and 4. sex. In addition, the distance and direction of the dialects from Schleswig and the reliability of such concepts are examined in 5. general dialect orientation, 6. spatial perception, and 7. perception of distance.

1.

Age of the Subjects and Dialect Orientation

It is, as expected, the younger subjects who often admit that they do not understand the task or who show any reaction suggesting “foreignness” of any of the speech samples. A correlation is presumed between the age of the subject and his or her ability to recognize dialects of the surrounding area and to classify them regionally. This thesis may appear trivial in that the result is predictable. On the one hand, the thesis generally corresponds with our expectations and knowledge about the decrease in dialect usage among youth. On the other hand, there are no longitudinal or “cohort” (Rosenmayr 1976: 206) studies of youth and their dialect knowledge available from this century. For this reason it is not possible to know what the youth of earlier generations knew about neighboring dialects and to relate that information to the more recent general decline in dialect use, to more limited communication with others outside of the region, and to increased mobility. This means that, for example, it cannot be predicted whether all youth learn about dialect areas later in life or whether only modern youth, in contrast with those in earlier eras, lack this type of knowledge.

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The influence of the media, the high rate of mobility, especially among the urban population, and the changing ways of spending free time may have leveled off the geographical differences which are still known by the older subjects (ca. 70–80 years old). Typically, the youth who displayed competence in Low German in other test sections11 are not usually, in the spatial orientation test, able to name even once the direction from Schleswig of the dialect sample played to them. For all four of the dialect samples, all of the subjects under the age of thirty, as well as those born in Schleswig, score lower in terms of assignment ability than the other subjects. 2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 15-29 30-64

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

Löwenstedt

Thumby

Treia

Jagel

Figure 5.2.
Age and dialect orientation.

As shown in Figure 5.2, the 15–29 year olds,12 although they grew up in the city of Schleswig, have a significantly lower than average ability to recognize dialects. The “knowledge of regional dialects” data are divided into two different age groups in Figure 5.2. The bar which shows the results for the youth reveals a most inaccurate classification of the Jagel sample. Youth have, alongside their developed standard language competence, only a limited functional knowledge of Low German, which they use with only a few (usually familiar) contact people. If they leave the private, familiar area, they switch to High German. When they indicate dialect regions in the test, they refer mostly to the areas from which parts of their family originate. An examination of the entire protocol of the youths’ interviews in terms of individual cases results in a remarkable coincidence; in other test portions, youth name only a few situations and persons which connect them to Low German. The age of the subject is one of the most accurate

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determiners of correct orientation and classification. Although proof based on poor cohort comparisons with earlier generations is not available, it can be assumed with great probability that these youth do not gather information about dialect distribution based on experiences, as the earlier generations did, and, based on their mobility and urbanization, they will not acquire as precise a dialect orientation. 2.

Place of Residence and Dialect Orientation

Requirement for inclusion in the participant group was a minimum residency of fifteen years. One could have, justifiably, specified a longer period of residency in Schleswig, but the youngest people who leave vocational schools are fifteen years old, and they were selected as participants. This selection is also justified because this study is not about the analysis and description of the oldest available Schleswig Low German; rather, it is about spoken Low German and its transition toward High German. It is assumed that there is a close connection between place of residence and dialect orientation ability with regard to the dialects of the surrounding countryside. In order to prove this correlation, a relationship between the subject’s place of origin and his success in dialect identification was shown. The factor “Place of residence” is very reliable in dialect orientation. The old, established people of Schleswig recognize the dialects better than the newcomers, with the 2.5

2 Schleswigers Newcomers 1.5

1

0.5

0

Löwenstedt

Thumby

Figure 5.3.
Residence and dialect orientation.

Treia

Jagel

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exception of the fourth dialect sample (Jagel), which tends toward Holsteinisch (Figure 5.3). Since this geographic orientation is not dependent on being in contact with monolingual Low German speaking customers/clients, a longer residence period does not lead to an improvement in orientation among newcomers. The “place of residence factor” does not prove to be as important as the subjects’ age. Older subjects still know the after-effects of a previously-existing and functioning dialect orientation system (with the “delay in attitude” described above). In the case of younger Schleswig natives, access to this type of knowledge has already been interrupted. It is possible that youth also reject the passing down of these types of geographically restricted stereotypes. Newcomers are, of course, far less successful than the Schleswigers, particularly in their orientation to the Schleswig dialects (Löwenstedt, Thumby, and Treia). Knowledge of the southern dialect (Jagel) which is close to Holsteinisch is apparently equal among the Schleswigers and newcomers. A considerable percentage of the newcomers originate from Holstein (32%), so that the correct assignment of dialect sample 4 may be traced back to the selection of participants. At the same time this finding is a confirmation of the testing method in that it shows that those who moved from Holstein to Schleswig actually classify the dialect from their home region as being to the south (the direction in which their home town lies) and thereby make a correct classification.

3.

Occupation and Dialect Orientation

Without getting into a discussion here of the term ‘status’, ‘status divisions’, and the meaning of status for perceptions of languages/dialects, a model of division is used which takes the following aspects into consideration: (a) level of education; (b) level of qualification for the occupation; (c) economic independence — dependence; (d) manual — non-manual occupation. The following groups were defined: (a) blue collar workers and manual workers; (b) white collar workers and civil servants; (c) highly-qualified white collar workers and civil servants (academics); (d) sales people; (e) housewife/house-husband. Blue collar workers, white collar workers (and civil servants) are, as shown in Figure 5.4, equal in their ability to describe the geographic location of the dialects. Their accuracy is considerably less than that of the sales people (Figure 5.5), whose familiarity with dialect criteria is documented also in their remarks about the speech samples. The marked difference in the assignment of the third dialect sample (Treia) among sales people is possibly the result of a mistake in testing or of a peculiarity of sales people (see the academics’ behavior). In comparison with all the other groups, the group of academics scores lower in dialect orientation. Although many members of this group are sure that they know Low German well and although many maintain that they speak Low German often and also do so in the speech practice portion of the interview, limited mobility and their failure to use Low German in everyday situations as well as their lack of Low German contacts with people from the country hinder their dialect orientation.

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2

1.5 Blue-Collar Workers White-Collar Workers 1

0.5

0

Löwenstedt

Thumby

Treia

Jagel

Figure 5.4.
Occupation and dialect orientation (1). 2.5

2

1.5 Students Salespersons 1

0.5

0 Löwenstedt

Thumby

Treia

Figure 5.5.
Occupation and dialect orientation (2).

Jagel

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A claimed use of dialect in occupational contexts by some subjects (e.g., lawyers) suggests that, although such contacts seldom occur, exhaustive attention to content (rather than form) means that these contacts do not suffice for perception and classification of dialect characteristics. At the same time the traditional stereotypical dialect markers which make classification easier can be accessed by the academics. In light of these results a recapitulation of the discussion about “restricted” and “elaborated” code would be useful because, from this test portion, it is shown that dialect usage requires knowledge and brings with it knowledge which is not automatically part of an elaborated system (Dittmar 1973: 1–330). Regional orientation is part of a series of strategies which are observed (or able to be observed) only by dialect speakers.

4.

Sex and Dialect Orientation

Dialect orientation of the sexes is very controversial; females are seen as poor dialect experts because, in rural areas, they maintain almost exclusive contacts with family members (Meertens 1953: 41–42). Females are, however, also characterized as the actual protectors of the dialect (Hotzenköcherle 1934: 27). This portion of the interview attempted to show whether males and females have stereotypical gender-specific knowledge about regional dialects and if they react differently to them. Figure 5.6 shows that males and females are similar: they perceive the individual dialect samples in similar ways, as shown in the parallel diagram lines. However, the level of correct answers is, for males, on average, lower — lowest among male academics, a tendency further supported in individual examinations. Attempts to study the difference in response behavior of the sexes did not lead to clear results. The majority of women are housewives from Schleswig and the surrounding area, and their residence stability supports the dialect orientation results. Urban residence 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1

Men Women

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

Löwenstedt

Thumby

Figure 5.6.
Gender and dialect orientation.

Treia

Jagel

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does not necessarily mean reduction in family ties, because in cities there are often close familial ties to the surrounding countryside, and that increases the probability of a good knowledge of dialect relationships.13 Since place of residence or regional origin contributes to place orientation, it is impossible to conclude that there are differences in dialect orientation and dialect knowledge typical of the sexes, because, in this sample, the different distribution of the sexes in relation to the regional stability of residence brings about the differences in accuracy, reflected in the different mobility of men and women. 5.

Dialect Orientation and Dialect Evaluation

The dialects are compared with each other affectively and according to various aspects of authenticity and familiarity. The subject’s evaluation of the dialect sample as (a) rural or urban, (b) old or new, (c) close to or far from one’s own, and, finally, (d) first or second language leads to conclusions about their familiarity with Low German dialects and makes their preferences for individual differences apparent. a. Urban/rural contrast This polarity did not lead to considerable differences; the dialects were overwhelmingly described as rural. The number of those dialect samples which are heard to be urban or close to urban, however, increased from the first to the last dialect sample; the first sample (Löwenstedt) is characterized by most of the subjects as rural. The last dialect sample, from southern Jagel, is perceived as most urban. b. Old and new dialect Similarly, the Löwenstedt dialect (the first) was, by far, recognized as having the “old”, “true” quality of a dialect; the southern Geest dialect (Jagel, the fourth) was evaluated as more modern. c. Own and foreign dialect Löwenstedt Low German appears to the Schleswigers to be particularly foreign. Upon hearing the recording, most of the subjects showed a reaction to its foreignness (laughter, head shaking). The three other dialects were more familiar to the Schleswigers. d. First or second language Most of the listeners believe that the Löwenstedt speaker learned Low German as his first language. Two results of this portion of the test require explanation; upon comparing the four dialects, there are obvious linguistic differences in the Löwenstedt Low German and fewer, minor ones in the Jagel dialect. The dialects which geographically lie close to the city were consistently close to each other in evaluation and differed markedly from the evaluation of the Löwenstedt dialect. In contrast with the others, the Low German in Löwenstedt was seen as a foreign, old, rural dialect. In different methods of questioning, the distance of the Löwenstedt dialect is shown. Among the individual characteristics, there are interdependencies: estimation of age and authenticity of the dialect are in direct correlation with approximation of distance and

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foreignness. The correlation to the learning of Low German as a first language was, likewise, related to this collection of features. The connection between the three evaluations “old”, “foreign”, and “first language” was the opposite of that which was expected; namely, that the dialect of one’s own place of residence would have been evaluated as “real”. The subjects believe, however, that the original Low German is not spoken in their own place of residence, but in a place which is furthest from the city. Confidence in one’s own Low German competence does not appear to be widely held; urban dialect speakers are not certain about their own dialect competence. They assume that their own, and the urban dialect on the whole, is faulty in comparison with an imagined Low German norm. The dialects with which they are familiar appear to them to differ from this assumed norm. The frequent High German interference in urban Low German in comparison to other Low German dialects makes dialect speakers unsure. For this reason, they assume that dialects which have different sounds and forms from their own are older and more true to the original. These doubts about the original nature of urban dialects also bear on the evaluation of the Jagel (southern Geest) dialect. Schleswigers perceive this Holstein dialect as “new”, an evaluation which may carry with it an implication of its urbanness.

6.

Spatial Perception

The individual’s ability to indicate the direction from which the recorded dialect originates was also tested. The ability of city-dwellers to understand various varieties of the Low German dialect or to classify the dialect environment is probably based on contacts with inhabitants in the surrounding area. In the city, reflections about the dialect landscape can be awakened because contrast is experienced through contact, and the places of origin of the people with whom one comes into contact are perceived as points of departure for dialects. Reactions to foreignness are frowned upon in commercial and administrative contexts. Knowledge about variety increases through contact with the public and is spread throughout the city through the administrative and commercial user circles in cultural institutions (theater, adult education centers) and other organizations. In the directional evaluation of the dialect samples in relation to Schleswig, 83% of the subjects indicated the Löwenstedt dialect as clearly west, and 54.9% placed it at the same latitude (not north/south) as the city (54.9%). The spatial distance from the city was seen as “far” by 82.9%. Thumby (Angeln) appears to be more familiar in terms of dialect and geography and was evaluated as “far” by only 19.3% in comparison with 61.4% as “near”. The correct assignment to the north was given by 65.1%, and to the east by 60.5%. 60.5% estimated Treia (in Geestrücken at the latitude of Schleswig) as “near” and 45.9% believed that the dialect lies at the same latitude as Schleswig. 44.1% thought that the dialect sample lies so close to the city that there was no assignment of spatial distance. 65.7% suspected that Jagel is near the city. With regard to direction, there is greater uncertainty, and problems common to such evaluation tasks may be to blame. The obligation on the part of the individuals to differentiate and distribute the dialect samples in the interview situation led possibly to over-differentiation in view of the difficult classification of the

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dialects in Geestrücken, despite their phonetic differences. Still, 43.1% of the subjects believe that Jagel (the last dialect) is to be found south of Schleswig. Dialect orientation is most exact with regard to the Löwenstedt and the Thumby dialects. Both of the Geest dialects of Mittelrücken are, despite marked phonetic differences such as “gode” (Jagel) and “chude” (Treia), not as precisely assigned.14 The percentage of the subjects who indicated the Jagel dialect as southern shows that direction corresponds with the linguistic findings — even if, at 43.1%, it is not statistically significant. Its inclusion in the group of dialects which are close to the city provides grounds for the assumption that Holstein phonetics are not found to be as “disturbing” or foreign as the Löwenstedt dialect. This fine line confirms that the north-south course of the dialect boundaries is parallel to the coast of the North Sea (Foerste 1966: 1865–1866). The dialects are accurately identified differently. The correct classification of the first (Löwenstedt) dialect sample may have resulted from a high level of attentiveness at the beginning of the test, which, then, because of repetition, could have declined. Contrary to such a “tiring of interest” interpretation, however, was the subjects’ observed excitement while working on the dialect samples. The large decline in response accuracy from the first to the further three speech samples is probably due to the Schleswigers’ change in perspective. The first sample does not belong to the immediate neighboring dialects of Schleswig. The linguistic distance is recognized in the “foreignness” of its sounds and forms. These dialect markers point the subjects’ evaluations to the west. “Mental maps” consist of geographic as well as linguistic elements. The dialects which are close to the city are not identified as well because the linguistic filters for closer areas must be considerably better differentiated than those for the classification of dialects which are further away. In the city, more Low German varieties exist close to one another (due to arrivals from the surrounding countryside, business interactions, and general mobility). The number of subjects who are competent in their orientation to the near-by areas is smaller; even if no principled explanation of these differences in competence can be given, it can be assumed that more frequent use of the dialect is necessary to acquire this competence. In fact, of the competent subjects, over 80% were daily dialect speakers. However, not all subjects who speak dialect on a daily basis were successful. It might also be thought, for example, that the ability to classify dialects is different for each individual. Frequent contact with dialect speakers from the surrounding countryside is definitely assumed. The inhabitants of the city of Schleswig recognize, it appears, all of the dialects in the near-by regions. Many types of contact have resulted from the mixture of dialects in Schleswig, and a tendency exists to tolerate these dialects. The consequence of these two tendencies could be the leveling of various geographically restricted dialects. The uncertainty of the subjects — including even the older ones — in deciding which forms and sounds correspond to the Schleswig norm often leads, in the interview, to self-doubt and self-correction. If speakers who are competent in the dialect discover that the form produced by them is only one possibility among various Low German varieties, they often add more versions without deciding upon a norm. One example of this is with the second person plural pronoun “ihr”, for which the majority of subjects have two versions. In the city “ji”, “i” and “ju” are named (Bock 1933: 175).

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Impression of Distance

In this portion of the test, a modified form of Weijnen’s methodology was incorporated, one which implies that it is possible to order dialects on a map using familiarity reactions toward them. The fundamental criterion is the feeling of solidarity (Weijnen 1966). In order to secure the subjects’ decision through a concrete replicable choice, they were presented with the assignment of ordering the four dialects, which they should evaluate only on the basis of their phonetic structure, on a four point scale based on proximity to their own dialect. The impression of foreignness should bring forth different linguistic concepts of space, and attitudes towards the samples will contribute to distancing. In this test, each place was not treated as the starting point of the dialect continuum so only those born in Schleswig were treated because newcomers (from the various areas) cannot be expected with certainty to refer to the city and not to their region as the place of origin in the distance estimation. When one compares the two diagrams, it is obvious that the perception filters, depending on the stimulus, trigger different experiences. The dialect from Treia is seen as geographically further away than the dialect from Thumby or Jagel; in terms of actual dialect, however, it is closest to the Schleswig Low German. Dialects call forth then not only a linguistic concept of the area, but also a mixture of different concepts (linguistic, geographic, psychic, social). The competent dialect speaker, with an ability in spatial orientation, is able to develop a geographic-spatial concept of his or her area and a separate linguistic concept — both on the basis of a dialect sample. Without naming 0.6 0.5 0.4 Geographic Distance

0.3

Dialect Distance

0.2 0.1 0 Löwenstedt

Thumby

Treia

Figure 5.7.
Geographic distance and dialect orientation.

Jagel

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places, a respondent has the ability to identify dialects as being further or closer to his or her own location, to provide a relative geographic distance, and, thereby, to create a “mental map”. 8.

Summary

With help of the testing methods shown above, it appears possible to provide explanations for the existence and quality of the concepts of dialect regions. Playing recorded texts as opposed to asking for opinions elicits natural reactions, even if limited. This technique obviously limits the effects of stereotypes. Although subjects name stereotypes in a number of cases, they are usually unconsciously based on linguistic markers which are meaningful for orientation. Because the subjects are not asked about the linguistically differing characteristics about the areas, it is probable that they actually made their judgments on the basis of the impression which the speech samples made. The relation of dialect speakers to their surrounding linguistic area may be summarized as follows: 1. Without defining linguistic specifics, without discarding one’s own explanations about the evaluations and findings about other dialect speakers, many subjects identify dialects which are played for them according to different perspectives. Their linguistic-geographic daily knowledge (their “mental map”) is unclear but serves the purpose of an approximate orientation and helps to define their own linguistic area. The frequent description of three dialects as “close to the city” but not exactly “ours” points toward an essential characteristic feature of dialect — namely, to the marking of one’s own dialect through reactions to the foreignness of others. In the city, however, this evaluation does not have the result that one’s own dialect is classified as “superior”, “good”, “real”, or “old”. These characteristics are recognized here as being ones of the geographically furthest dialect. 2. Without naming the stereotypes individually, the dialect speaker often bases his or her ideas on traditional stereotypes of dialects which he or she recognizes in the phonetic continuum. Key sounds are registered in the dialect samples which are played, and their effect contributes to the formulation of evaluations. There is a tendency to recognize connections between individual areas of the city and each rural neighboring area; the data studied here, however, do not allow a study of these connections. 3. With reference to the younger respondents, it is possible to ask whether the previous generations’ geographical orientation, the detailed “mental map”, will be maintained. It is doubtful whether these former concepts, in view of the changing mobility of youth (both for jobs and in free time) will play a role in the future or whether they will be replaced by other more geographically expanded “mental maps”. 4. It is methodologically significant, considering the tests used here, that the existence of “mental maps” can be successfully exposed. With various types of questions, different components of a linguistic-geographic “map” were elicited, although the starting points for all of the evaluations were only the dialect samples. For example, the linguistic distance suggested by the respondents for Thumby and Treia is the opposite of their geographical

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location. The multidimensionality of the “mental maps” which are based on experiences of everyday contexts and traditional evaluations is made clear through this method.

Acknowledgments This article originally appeared in 1988 as “Mental Maps: linguistisch-geographische Konzepte”, in Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 55: 280–305.

Notes 1. In my research location the people of Angeln are made fun of by saying that they come from the “Chechend, who de chälen Cheorchinen so chräsig chud chedeihen.” 2. These relationships have, for example, been taken into consideration recently in city planning. Perceptions of neighborhood, contacts, sense of familiarity and foreignness are taken into consideration in plans for residential areas; for this discussion see Lynch (1975). 3. Compare, for example, the social differentiation between farmers in Geest and in Marsch or Angeln due to ground quality. Ground quality has not maintained the old meaning due to changes in farming practices. Nevertheless, sayings which address the distinctiveness of the speakers of the Angel dialect (e.g., “sie sprechen mit einem spitzen Mund” [they speak with a “sharp mouth”]) continue to circulate. 4. The entire study is an extensive one of Schleswigers’ attitudes toward High and Low German, their use of both varieties, and transfer from High to Low German as well as the linguistic orientation test reported on here. The methods of this entire investigation include various interview types, studies of narratives, measurement scales, and listening samples. 5. The method and evaluation were developed and carried out with help of the EDP. The goal of the study is to show a connection between individual case study and frequency analysis methods. Of course, it is always possible to include the frequency analyses of individual data. Both exceptions and groups can be described in detail. At the same time, multiple approaches allow comparisons. 6. All studies which are based on self-reporting about dialect use in particular domains or self-evaluation in general contain a large percentage of attitudinal elements — often unrecognized — in their results. 7. Language use is not taken into account in Kamp and Lindow (1967) nor in the GETAS investigation of language use in the Low German provinces; see also Stellmacher (1987); language use is taken into consideration, for example, in the Besch et al. (1981), Kallmeyer et al. (1982), and Dittmar et al. (1986). 8. See the discussion about “general and context-specific polarities” in Werlen 1984: 180ff. 9. Subjects remain interested in the linguistic concept and do not suddenly refuse to participate when they do not consider the question to be relevant. 10. See the comprehensive discussion on “Attitude differential” in Kolde (1981: 383ff.) The Schleswig study is not about the establishment of an attitude differential but about the relationship to the regional dialects. 11. An overall view of individual cases is always possible through comparison of the subjects’ complete coded record as part of the overall investigation. 12. The age divisions are not the customary divisions (e.g., Schäfers 1982: 12, who describes the “true” youth as the 13–18 year olds, the 18–21 year olds as the adolescents, and the 21–25 year olds as the young adults — for the most part with status of youth. The age divisions reflect the experience from the completed interviews, that those up to 30 years of age show the most marked deficit in dialect competence. 13. The comparison of the coded data shows here many familial relationships with the surrounding countryside. 14. The first two dialects are apparently more conceptually fixed.

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References Besch, Werner, Jochen Hufschmidt, Angelika Kall-Holland, Eva Klein, and Klaus J. Mattheier (eds). 1981. Sprachverhalten in ländlischen Gemeinden. Ansätze zur Theorie und Methode, Forschunsbericht Erp-Projekt, Band 1 [Language behavior in rural areas. The starting points of theory and methods, Research report on the Erp-Project, Vol. 1]. Berlin: E. Schmidt. Bock, Karl Nielsen. 1933. Niederdeitch auf dänischem Substrat [Low German on the Danish substratum] (Deutsche Dialketologie [German dialect geography], Vol. 334). Marburg/Lahn: Elwert. Dittmar, Norbert. 1973. Soziolinguistik [Sociolinguistics]. Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum. Dittmar, Norbert, Peter Schlobinski, and Inge Wachs. 1986. Berlinisch: Studien zum Lexikon, zur Spracheinstellung und zum Stilreportoire [The Berlin dialect: Studies on the lexicon, language attitudes and style repertoire]. Berlin: A. Spitz. Foerste, William. 1966. “Geschichte der niederdeutschen Mundarten” [History of the Low German dialects]. In Deutche Philologie im Aufriß [A sketch of German philology], Vol. 1. (1st unchanged reprinting of the 2nd edition). Wolfgang Stammler (ed.), 1729–1898. Berlin: E. Schmidt. Gould, Peter and Rodney White. 1974. Mental Maps. New York/Baltimore: Penguin. Greverus, Ina-Maria. 1972. Der territoriale Mensch [The territorial human being]. Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum. Hofstätter, Peter R. 1964. Sozialpsychologie [Social psychology], 2nd edition. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf. 1934. Die Mundart von Mutten: Laut- und Flexionslehre [The dialect of Mutten. Studies in phonetics and inflection] (Beiträge zur schweizerdeutschen grammatik [Supplement to the Swiss German grammar] Vol. 19). Frauenfeld: Huber & Co. Hufschmidt, Jochen, Eva Klein, Klaus J. Mattheier, Heinrich Mickartz, eds. 1983. Sprachverhalten in ländlichen Gemeinden: Dialekt und Standardsprache im Sprecherurteil. Forschungsbericht ErpProjekt, Band 2 [Linguistic behavior in rural areas. Dialect and standard language in speaker evaluation. Research report of the Erp Project, Vol. 2]. (introduction by Werner Besch). Berlin: E. Schmidt. Kallmeyer, Werner, Inken Keim, Pantelis Nikitopoulos. 1982. “Zum Projekt ‘Kommunikation in der Stadt’” [On the project “Communication in the city”]. In Mehrsprachigkeit in der Stadtregion [Multilingualism in the urban region] (Jahrbuch 1981 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache; Sprache der Gegenwart 56 [Yearbook of the Institute for the German Language; The Language of the Present]), Karl-Heinz Bausch (ed.), 391–423. Düsseldorf: Schwann. Kamp, Klaus and Wolfgang Lindow. 1967. Das Plattdeutsche in Schleswig-Holstein: Eine Erhebung des Statistischen Landesamtes Schleswig-Holstein [Low German in Schleswig-Holstein. An investigation by the regional administrative office for statistics in Schleswig-Holstein]. Neumünster: Wachholtz. Katz, David and Rosa Katz, eds. 1972. Kleines Handbuch der Psychologie 3 [Small handbook of psychology, extended edition 3]. Basel: Schwabe. Klein, Eva. 1983. “Situation und Sprachlage: Unterssuchungen zu subjektiven Einschätzungen der Sprachverwendungen unter wechselden Situationsbedingungen” [Situation and language register: Studies on subjective evaluations of language use in changing situation conditions]. In Hufschmidt et al. (eds), pp. 117–199. Kolde, Gottfried. 1981a. Sprachkontakte in gemishtsprachigen Städten: Vergleichende Untersuchungen über Voraussetzungen und Formen sprachlicher Interaktion verschiedensprachiger Jugundlicher in den Schweizer Städten Biel/Bienne und Fribourg/Freiburg [Language contact in multilingual cities. Comparative studies on conditions and forms of language interaction of youth who speak different languages in the Swiss cities Biel/Bienne and Fribourg/Freiburg ]. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. (Supplements, new edition, Nr. 37). Weisbaden: Steiner.



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Kolde, Gottfried. 1981b. “Mehrgliedrige Interviewanordnung” [Multifaceted interview protocol]. In Kolde, 1981a. Lambert, Wallace E., R. C. Hodson, R. C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum. 1960. “Evaluational reactions to spoken language.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60:44–51 (Reprinted in Language, Psychology and Culture, W. E. Lambert, 80–96. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.) Lynch, Kevin. 1975. Das Bild der Stadt [Picture of the city]. Translated by Henni Korssakoff-Schröder and Richard Michael. Braunschweig: Vieweg. Mattheier, Klaus J. 1981. “Chronologischer Überblick über Planung und Durchführung des Datenerhebund” [Chronological overview of planning and implementation of the data collection]. In Besch et al. (eds), 16–42. Mattheier, Klaus J. 1983a. “Sprachbewertungen im Kommunikationsprofil von Erp” [Language evaluations in the communication profile of Erp]. In Hufschmidt et al. (eds), 265–280. Mattheier, Klaus J. 1983b. “Sprachlage und sprachliches Kontinuum: Auswertung des Tonbandtests zur Sprachlagen-Differezierung” [Language register and linguistic continua. Evaluation of the test on language register differentiation based on tape recordings]. In Hufschmidt et al. (eds), 226–264. Meertens, P. J. 1953. “Le point de vue des femmes vis-à-vis des dialects” [The opinion of women toward dialects]. Orbis 1:41–42. Mickartz, Heinrich. 1983. “Einstellungsäußerungen zur Verwendung von Hochsprache und Mundart in der Kinderziehung” [Attitudinal remarks on the use of standard language and dialect in the raising of children]. In Hufschmidt et al (eds), 60–116. Osgood, Charles S., G. J. Suci, and P. H. Tannenbaum. 1957. The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rosenmayr, Leopold. 1976. “Jugend” [Youth]. In Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung [Handbook of empirical social research], Rene König (ed.), Vol. 6: 206. Stuttgart: Enke. Schäfers, Bernhard. 1982. Soziologie des Jugendalters [Sociology of the age of youth]. np. Solmecke, Gert and Alwin Boosch. 1979. “Entwicklung eines Einsdrucksdifferentials zur Erfassung von Einstellungen gegenüber Sprachen” [Development of an attitude differential on the capturing of attitudes toward languages]. Linguistische Berichte 60:46–64. Stellmacher, Dieter. 1980. “Bestimmung der sozialen Verwendung des Dialekts” [Rules for the use of social factors in dialectology]. In Dialekt und Dialektologie. Ergebnisse des Internationalen Symposions “Zur Theorie des Dialekts”, Marburg/Lahn, 5.-10. September 1977. [Dialect and dialectology. Results from the International Symposium “On dialect theory”] (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Supplements, new edition 26), Joachim Göschel, Pavle Ivicˇ, and Kurt Kehr (eds), 199–213. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Stellmacher, Dieter. 1987. Wer spricht Platt? Zur Lage des Niederdeutschen Bundesländern [Who speaks Platt? On the position of Low German today] (Reports of the Institute for Low German, Series: Documentation 14). Leer: Verlag Schuster. Werlen, Erika. 1984. Studien zur Datenerhebung in der Dialektologie [Studies on data collection in dialectology]. (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Supplements, new edition 46). Wiesbaden: F. Steiner. Weijnen, Antonius Angelus. 1966. Nederlandse dialectkunde [Dutch dialectology] (2nd printing). Assen: Van Gorcum.



C 6 Attitudes of Montreal Students Towards Varieties of French Betsy E. Evans

1.

Introduction

Sociolinguistic studies in the sixties and seventies revealed that Francophones in Québec suffered from linguistic insecurity; that is, they felt that their variety of French was inferior to the variety spoken in France. Research in the eighties and early nineties points to an emerging Québecois standard. By using perceptual dialectology methods established by Preston (1986, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2002), this study aims to gain insight into the current popular status of Québecois French among Montrealers with regard to other varieties of French, including an examination of the perceptual dialect boundaries of Québec. Following a brief explanation of perceptual dialectology, the sociopolitical situation in Québec, dialect and attitude studies that have been carried out in Québec, the research methods and results are presented. In addition to information on the status of Québecois French, this study aims to provide perceptual dialect maps of Québec, as currently, none exist.

2.

Perceptual Dialectology

Perceptual Dialectology has as its main goal the establishment of speakers’ awareness of linguistic differences. This information is typically obtained directly from speakers via questionnaires, interviews, or reactions to recorded voices. In the past, linguists have focused on the perceived boundaries, that is, the outer reaches of dialects, and these perceptual boundaries were then compared to known linguistic boundaries. More recently, linguists have sought to establish dialect areas, focusing on the core of the perceived area by considering the overlap of perceptions of those areas. Rather than comparing the perceived dialect area to linguistic boundaries, linguists seek the linguistic and social factors that are related to respondents’ geographical perceptions of dialects (Long 1999). This type of research provides such valuable information as the socio-psychological image of a dialect (Inoue 1999), language vitality, attitudes toward speakers of other varieties,

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and the economic or political effects of speakers’ regard for languages and varieties. Preston (1998) explains very clearly why perceptual dialectology research is important: [T]his work in the folk perception of language variety provides valuable feedback to linguists, especially to those who are concerned with describing and accounting for language change. In addition to its providing questions and directions for further research among linguists, I believe it also supplements and brings new issues to light in the general areas of anthropology, social psychology, and communications, particularly the branches of those other social sciences which focus on intercultural communication, perception, and understanding.

3.

Linguistic Situation in Canada

The complex political situation in Québec has been the subject of many studies in the last thirty years. I can provide here only the broadest outline in order to establish the background of the linguistic situation. Since the conquest of the French army and subsequent establishment of British rule in 1760, Francophones in Québec have struggled for survival in an Anglophone-dominated economy and government. In the 1960s, as the rural population moved to urban areas in search of jobs, Francophones became resentful of their inferior status in comparison to the Anglophone minority. This growing frustration developed into a Francophone nationalist movement in the 1970s. A series of legislative moves in the province (Bill 63 in 1969, Bill 22 in 1974, Bill 101 in 1977, also known as the Charter of the French Language) were enacted to establish French as the official language of the province. In addition, the Office de la Langue Française (OLF) was established in order to carry out language planning policies. Sociolinguistic studies, some of which will be discussed below, have shown that the effect of the political situation and language planning policies has resulted in feelings of linguistic insecurity on the part of Québec Francophones. Bourhis and Lepicq (1993: 366) describe three important factors that account for the Québec Francophone linguistic insecurity that was documented in language attitude studies in the sixties and seventies. First, the efforts of the French government to establish Standard European French as the prestige norm in the Francophone world reinforced notions that Québecois French had inferior status. Second, Québec Francophones widely accepted the belief that the quality of written and spoken French in Québec schools was poor. Third, language planning policy and publications of the OLF stipulated acceptable language use, thus supporting the notion of an inferior Québecois French. “The [OLF] policy also stigmatized regional and urban varieties of Québec French, thus contributing to the feeling amongst Montreal working class Francophone speakers that they spoke a lowly joual patois, while regional speakers were made to feel that they only spoke a dying form of archaic French” (Bourhis and Lepicq 1993: 368). After the adoption of Bill 101 in 1977, a more tolerant view of language variation has emerged: “At both the primary and secondary school level, students are introduced to sociolinguistic notions, which fosters the awareness and appreciation of various regional,

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class, and ethnic styles of spoken French found locally and in the Francophone world” (Bourhis and Lepicq 1993: 370). More recent research, discussed below, has provided evidence of an emerging Québecois standard.

4.

Dialectology in Canada

Dialectology has been pursued in Canada since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Most of the projects carried out have been of a regional nature; John Squair, an American, conducted a study in St. Anne de Beaupré in 1888, A-F Chamberlain in Granby, and James Geddes in the Gaspé in 1908, for example (Verreault & Lavoie 1996). Larger projects like the Atlas dialectologique de la province de Québec and the Glossaire du parler Français au Canada were also carried out in the early part of this century (Lavoie 1979). Geneviève Massignon conducted a study of the dialects of Acadie in the latter part of 1940 (Verreault & Lavoie 1996). With regard to internal variation from a more traditional perspective, the work of Dulong and Bergeron (1980) aimed to have as one of its goals the creation of a linguistic atlas of eastern Canada (ALEC). Their main objective was the description of “parler populaire” in Québec and its neighboring regions. They interviewed older rural residents and obtained lexical, phonetic and geographic data on regional speech with regard to “Français general”. An isogloss map of /r/ appeared in Volume 1 of their publication. Verreault and Lavoie (1996) used the ALEC data to create a map of the principle linguistic regions of eastern Canada. They illustrate the linguistic variation among the Québec and Acadian regions but also within Québec itself by mapping the responses from four questions from ALEC. Work on ALEC continues, but it is as yet incomplete; thus few current dialect boundary maps of Québec exist.

5.

Language Attitude Studies

Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillenbaum (1960) examined the status of Québec French, asking 64 Anglophone and 66 Francophone respondents to evaluate Canadian French (CF) and Canadian English (CE). This study used the “matched guise” technique for the first time, a technique which involves presenting the respondents with voices which they then judge on various traits. For example, in this study, the respondents believed that they were hearing ten different speakers, but, in fact, they heard five speakers who spoke both French and English. This technique allows researchers to obtain reactions to different varieties of language rather than to the speakers themselves. Respondents rated the voices on fourteen traits using a six-point scale. Table 6.1 shows what Lambert and his colleagues found: Anglophone respondents rated the English guises significantly more favorably on seven traits (height, good looks, intelligence, dependability, kindness, ambition, and character). Anglophones rated the French guises significantly more favorably on only one trait (sense of humor), but this finding must be considered with caution as one speaker’s English guise was rated significantly more favorably on this trait.

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Table 6.1. t values for significance of differences in the evaluation of English and French guises of speakers (Lambert et al. 1960: 46). Trait

English subjects’ judgment of speakers Overall

French subjects’ judgments of speakers Overall

Height Good looks Leadership Sense of humor Intelligence Religiousness Self-confidence Dependability Entertainingness Kindness Ambition Sociability Character Likeability

−8.83** −5.78** −1.20 −2.16* −2.40* −.27 −.69 −3.11** −.84 −3.37** −2.83** −1.44 −3.0** −1.22

−4.58** −9.77** −11.06** −1.40 −10.22** −2.94** −8.28** −6.44** −.21 −2.96** −5.89** −3.72** −8.51** −2.00*

* significant at .05 level; ** significant at .01 level, two-tailed tests; positive entries indicate that English guises are evaluated more favorably than French and minus entries indicate a more favorable evaluation for French guises.

The most surprising result was that the CF speakers rated CE more positively than CE speakers did. That is (as shown in Table 6.1) Francophone respondents rated English guises significantly more favorably on ten traits (height, good looks, leadership, intelligence, self-confidence, dependability, ambition, sociability, character, and likeability). Francophones rated French guises significantly more favorably on religiousness and kindness. Thus CE was rated higher than CF for positive attributes by both CE and CF speakers. The results were interpreted as self-denigration on the part of the CF speakers due to their inferior position in that society. In addition to these results, the researchers also found that, among the French guises, Anglophone and Francophone respondents gave the French guise that was most like Parisian French more favorable responses than the other French guises. This suggested that the respondents made a distinction between Canadian and Parisian French. An early study that examined Canadian French with regard to Continental French was carried out by d’Anglejan and Tucker (1973). They examined, among other issues, the awareness of regional and social dialect variation, attitudes toward speech styles, and the acceptance of Continental French as a standard. The respondents, who were students, teachers and factory workers in three regions of Québec, were asked to respond to questionnaires containing semantic differential scale items and recordings of upper- and lower-class French Canadian and Continental French speakers. The reactions to speech

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samples, whose mean scores are reported in Table 6.2 below, show that respondents consistently rated Continental French as better for all traits except ‘tough’. D’Anglejan and Tucker concluded: “The Ss [subjects] perceive weaknesses in Québec style French, particularly with respect to its phonology and lexicon; and they regard standard European French as the prestige form of the language” (1973: 25). Thus linguistic insecurity on the part of these respondents was confirmed. The results of other studies evaluating context- (Rémillard, Tucker and Bruck 1973) or class-related styles (MéarCrine & Leclerc 1976, Goavert-Gauthier 1978, Lappin 1981) of Canadian French also pointed to a preferred European standard. Table 6.2. Subjects’ mean ratings for five adjective traits of spontaneous speech samples (d’Anglejan and Tucker: 1973: 22). Trait

F ratio (2,234 df)

Mean score Mean score Standard European Upper-class French Canadian French

Mean score Lower-class Canadian French

Intelligent Educated Ambitious Likable Tough


517.64 7999.9
276.07
125.97

74.58

2.31 2.02 3.09 2.55 5.94

4.30 4.95 4.77 3.58 5.15

3.05 3.13 3.68 2.76 5.64

More recently, Tremblay (1990) assessed the linguistic attitudes of Québec Francophones in the late eighties. She surveyed the attitudes of 57 respondents from a small town near Montreal using questionnaires and auditory stimuli. The results from the questionnaires (shown in part in Table 6.3) indicated that the feeling of inferiority with regard to Continental French was still present among the francophone respondents; 58% agreed with the statement “The French spoken in France is better than that spoken in Québec.” Nevertheless, 72% of the respondents in this study considered the French of Québec “as valid as that spoken in France.” Tremblay considered this to be a “doubleallegiance” to Québec French and Standard European French which, for her, indicated a change in attitude in progress: “The ambivalence of linguistic feelings of Québecers — i.e., the tendency to, at the same time, value and devalue the French spoken in Québec — is perhaps an indicator of a change in attitude in progress: thus the fact that more of our subjects found Québecois French as valid as the French of France confirms it [translation mine]” (205). Responses to the auditory stimuli, spontaneous discourse recorded from Radio Canada, revealed that respondents were not sensitive to specific phonetic variables characteristic of Québecois French (lowering of high back vowels, /d/ and /t/ affrication) whereas others were stigmatized (/"/ realized as /f/, /wa/ realized as /w6/). Acceptance of phonetic forms characteristic of Québecois French indicated to Tremblay that a Québecois norm existed. Thus, although the respondents seemed to prefer the model of France, Tremblay concluded that the Québec variety was gaining prestige. Sociolinguistic studies in Québec in the 60s, 70s and 80s have shown that Québecois

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Table 6.3. Responses to statements 2a, b, and c [translation mine] (Tremblay 1990: 203). Statement

Agreement Percentage

2a. The French spoken in France is better French than that spoken in Québec 2b. Québecers speak badly 2c. Québec French is as valid as the French spoken in France

58 61 72

Francophones were, at that time, linguistically insecure. Given recent research, we would expect to find evidence of a Québecois standard. The lack of dialect maps of this area and the indication of a possible change in Québecer attitude toward Québecois French call for more studies of this region. Since nearly ten years have passed since Tremblay’s study, assessment of these attitudes in 1999 is very important for conclusions about the possible changing status of Québecois French. In what follows, the methodology and results of the present study are discussed.

6.

Methods

Respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire consisting of three parts (Preston 1993). Part I was an unlabeled map of eastern Canada including Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. Respondents were asked to indicate on the map those regions where people speak differently and also to indicate any name used to designate that variety of French or the people who speak it. Part II consisted of demographic questions. Part III asked respondents to rate varieties of French on correctness, pleasantness, and degree of difference from the local area by answering questions I, II, and III shown (in English translation) below. Respondents were given scannable answer sheets on which to record their answers and, as a result, could not give answers between points on the scale such as ‘1.5’. I. Using the following scale rate the regions listed in terms of level of correctness of the French spoken there. 1 most correct

2

3

4

5 least correct

II. Using the following scale rate the regions listed in terms of the level of pleasantness of the French spoken there. 1 most pleasant

2

3

4

5 least pleasant

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III. Using the following scale rate the regions listed in terms of level of difference of the French spoken there from the French that you speak. 1 no difference

2 a little different

3 very different

4 unintelligible

A group of major Francophone regions of the world were included in order to ascertain how these respondents rate Québecois French with regard to those regions. The regions included in the questionnaire are listed below. In approximately half of the questionnaires, the order of presentation of the regions was reversed. T-tests performed on the responses from the two questionnaires showed that the order of presentation of the regions did not have a significant effect on the responses except in a few cases. 1. France: Ile de France 2. France: Province 3. Belgium 4. Switzerland 5. Luxembourg 6. Northern Africa 7. Southern Africa 8. Southeast Asia 9. The Antilles 10. The US: the northeast

11. The US: Louisiana 12. Nouveau Brunswick 13. Prince Edward Island 14. Nova Scotia 15. Newfoundland 16. Québec: Laurentides 17. Québec: Gaspé 18. Québec: New Québec 19. Canada: Ottawa

The respondents were Francophone students of English at a Montreal CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionel). The students enrolled in CEGEP are at a stage of education between secondary and university levels; thus all respondents were under 20 years of age. Their average level of self-assessed ability to speak English was 2.49 on a 4 point scale ranging from “not at all” to “fluently”. Forty-eight were male and fifty-nine were female.1

7.

Results

7.1 Maps Some examples of respondents’ hand-drawn maps are shown below. Many respondents, as in Figure 6.1, indicated areas on the map by circling regions and labeling them. This respondent has indicated that the region of Montreal is where “Français normal” is spoken, indicating satisfaction with the variety of the respondent’s home area, similar to Preston’s (1993) Michigan respondents who indicated that Michigan is the place where ‘normal’ English is spoken. In Figure 6.2, in addition to the varieties of French (“français mississippi”, “français québecois”), the respondent has included other languages spoken in eastern Canada (“Anglais” and “Inuit”). Figure 6.3 also indicates the influences of English and

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Native American languages (“Français anglicisé”, “accent amerindiens”). “Français correct” is, for this respondent, the region of Québec City. Jouale, a traditional label, was attached to the mid-south Québec region, but was mentioned by only three of the respondents in this study A number of respondents simply indicated cities with a point on the map, as in Figure 6.4. For this respondent, the cities themselves are perhaps focal points of dialect regions, as is indicated by the respondent’s comment “different accent in each city.” Others had a minimalist approach to the task such as Figure 6.5. This respondent has marked only the Lac St. Jean and Gaspé, areas which turn out to be the two most salient areas in the map task. This dichotomous perception was also present in Preston’s work (e.g., 1996a) where U.S.respondents often subdivided only a “south” from the remainder of the country. As Figures 6.1–5 show, a variety of responses appeared on the maps, but general trends, some discussed further below, did emerge.

Figure 6.1. Hand-drawn map.

A composite map including regions indicated on at least 15% of all maps was created by placing a transparent map over the respondents’ maps and tracing the boundaries they drew, the method used in Preston 1986. This map is shown below in Figure 6.6. The Gaspé peninsula was the most frequently marked region. Of 107 respondents, 74 indicated the Gaspé region on the map; in fact, on fourteen maps Gaspé was the only area marked. Two areas of the Gaspé are salient for these respondents: the northern tip of the peninsula and the stretch of land bordering New Brunswick from the northern tip to the border of

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Figure 6.2. Hand-drawn map.

Maine. This division may reflect the Gaspé/Bas St. Laurent division, an administrative division. The Lac St. Jean/Saguenay region, indicated on fifty-six maps, was the second most frequently marked region. This region was also found by d’Anglejan & Tucker (1973: 10) to be different: “Relative to other groups, workers from Alma reported slightly more difficulty in making themselves understood which suggests that the Lac St. Jean dialect differs noticeably from that of Montreal or Québec.” Other regions marked by 15% or more respondents were New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. “Acadie” appeared on nineteen maps, but there was disagreement among the respondents as to which region on the map “Acadie” identifies. Eleven respondents considered “Acadie” to be the region of Gaspé. New Brunswick was “Acadie” for five respondents, it was the northeast arm of Québec for two respondents, and one respondent considered “Acadie” to be the northern part of Nova Scotia. As indicated above, in addition to regions, cities were indicated on the maps. Montreal was noted by thirty respondents and Québec City was noted by twenty-four.

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Figure 6.3. Hand-drawn map.

7.2 Linguistic Maps Figure 6.7 is the composite map created by Verreault and Lavoie with the ALEC data. Although they caution that definitive conclusions should not be made from this small extraction of the ALEC corpus, as it is based on twenty-some lexical variants of four concepts, the map shows that the dialects of eastern Canada are diverse. Region A, Acadia, is composed of the maritime provinces. The region designated as A’ is a region where Verreault and Lavoie found the coexistence of Acadian and Québec lexical items. The Québec region is divided into four areas: the western region (B), the eastern region (C), the central region (D), and the north-western region (E). The arrows in the central region indicate that it is a transition zone where variants from (B) and (C) can be found. The north-western region is an area of mixture where many variants can also be found elsewhere in Québec. The dotted circles indicate other linguistic regions that can be identified on a smaller level and need more study. Figure 6.8, the map published in the ALEC report Le Parler populaire du Québec et de ses régions voisines, shows the

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Figure 6.4. Hand-drawn map.

distribution of /r/. It indicates that there are three types of /r/ in eastern Canada: trilled, uvular and English. The trilled /r/ is found in the south-western Québec region (very similar to the Verreault/Lavoie map region B), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The uvular /r/ is found in the eastern Québec region. In the north-western Québec region (the Verreault/Lavoie map region E), the uvular and trilled /r/ coexist. The English /r/ is documented in Ontario and the North Coast. Comparison of the two production maps, both based on ALEC data, shows that they correspond in three areas: north-western Québec (Verreault/Lavoie map region E), western Québec (Verreault/Lavoie map region B) and in the north-eastern part of the Gaspé peninsula (part of Verreault/Lavoie map region A). The /r/ map does not indicate a transition zone between the west and north-east (Verreault/Lavoie map region D). In addition, it does not indicate any sub-regions like Lac St. Jean, Beuce and Bois-France or a Québecois/Acadian division of New Brunswick. Comparison of the production maps to Figure 6.6 reveals that folk perceptions of where people speak differently do not correspond with production boundaries based on ALEC. There are a few similarities, such as the Verreault/Lavoie map sub-region of Lac St. Jean which is also salient for the respondents in this study (region 2 in Figure 6.6).

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Figure 6.5. Hand-drawn map.

The north-eastern region of the Gaspé peninsula, for some of the respondents, corresponds to both of the production maps. The east/west regions of the production maps could be said to be reflected in Figure 6.6 by the indication of the Montreal and Québec City regions (numbers 3 and 5 in Figure 6.6) as different. In addition, these respondents seem to be aware of the Québec/Acadia distinction, as they indicated New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland as different. These respondents’ perceptions of dialect boundaries in eastern Canada seem to be broad and distinct at the same time in comparison with production boundaries; they are unaware of distinctions like the Verreault/Lavoie map regions A′, D and E, but they are aware of sub-regions like Lac St. Jean (the second most salient region for these respondents). Preston (1996a) also found little correspondence among production and perception maps. A lack of correspondence between production and perception maps does not render perceptual maps useless; in addition to the attitudinal information perceptual maps reveal, cognitively real speech boundaries can certainly serve as starting points for other research. They can also reveal non-linguistic boundaries such as those found by Sibata (1999), who concluded that perceptual maps created in Japan seemed to represent former administrative boundaries and patterns of interaction among communities.

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7

2

1 6

5

4

3

1 Gaspésie 2 Lac St. Jean 3 Montréal 4 New Brunswick 5 Québec City 6 Prince Edward Is. 7 Newfoundland

Figure 6.6. Composite of hand-drawn maps.

8.

Correctness, Pleasantness and Difference

8.1 Correctness Figure 6.9 shows that the mean scores for correctness for Ile de France (1.66) and Province (1.83) indicate that the French of France is still perceived as most correct. Following closely behind are Laurentides (1.86) and New Québec (1.93). Next on the scale are Belgium, Gaspésie and the remaining European varieties of Switzerland and Luxembourg. The maritime varieties were rated as less correct than the home and European varieties but fared better than the American, Asian and African varieties, which were rated as least correct. These respondents perceive their French as more correct than their maritime neighbors and some European varieties. The mean scores were subjected to a K-means cluster analysis, a statistical procedure that shows relationships among the items examined by grouping them together based on like and different mean scores. In this cluster analysis, Laurentides (LT) and New Québec (NQ) load into a group that includes Province and Ile de France. Although Continental French is rated as more correct,

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Figure 6.7. Regional map from ALEC data (Verreault and Lavoie 1996: 462).

the assignment of LT and NQ to the same cluster as the Continental French varieties indicates that the difference in the mean scores for correctness is not statistically significant. Thus these raters perceive the French of their region to be as correct as Continental French. The three K-means clusters are indicated by identical shading of the members of the groups in Figure 6.9. It is interesting to note that Luxembourg, although European, does not cluster with the first, “more correct” group. The appearance of Luxembourg as a single cluster may be a result of the respondents’ unfamiliarity with that country. A Multi-Dimensional Scaling analysis (MDS) was also carried out. An MDS, which compares the distance of the rating of every region rated to every other one and places each region’s rating in two-dimensional space based on this calculation, reveals whether or not another factor (or factors) other than the one specifically sought (in this case ‘correctness’) may be at work. The MDS of the scores for correctness is shown in Figure 6.10. The encircled regions indicate those which were grouped together by the three-way K-means cluster analysis. The MDS demonstrates an interaction of the respondents’ linguistic and geographic perceptions. Dimension 2, the vertical dimension, is the sociolinguistic dimension of correctness which was specifically sought in this elicitation; the most correct regions are found toward the bottom of the axis and the least correct regions are found toward the top. Dimension 1, the horizontal axis, is a second dimension which appears to be a geographical one. The home region and regions of proximity, that is, North America, are located on the right-hand side while the European, Asian and African regions are located on the left-hand side. This geographic dimension is, perhaps, a reflection of physical distance with respect to the respondents or a reflection of their familiarity with those countries. It is not implausible that they would be more familiar with Canada, North

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Figure 6.8. ‘r’ isogloss map from ALEC data (Dulong and Bergeron 1980: 31).

America and France than smaller European countries, Africa and Asia. This may explain why Luxembourg is located farthest to the left on the MDS and is a singleton in the K-means analysis. This geographical dimension, therefore, masks in the MDS the relationship of Québec and Continental French indicated by the K-means analysis.

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4. 5 4 3. 5 3 2. 5 2 1. 5 1 0. 5 0

FR PR LT NQ BE GS SW LX NB OT PE NS TN AN NA AS AF LA US

AF=S.Africa AN=Antilles AS=Asia BE=Belgium FR=Ile de France GS=Gaspé LA=Louisiana LT=Laurentides LX=Luxembourg NA=Northern Africa NB=New Brunswick NQ=New Quebec NS=Nova Scotia OT=Ottawa PE=Prince Edward Is. PR=Province SW=Switzerland NF=Newfoundland US=Northeast US

Figure 6.9. Correctness means scores.

Figure 6.10. MDS for correctness.

8.2 Pleasantness The bar graph reflecting the mean scores in Figure 6.11 shows that Laurentides (1.67) and New Québec (1.74) are associated with the most pleasant French of the regions evaluated by these respondents. In fact, these two regions seem to be set apart from the rest; the region scoring closest to them is Gaspé (2.21). The European varieties of French received

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ratings indicating that they are less pleasant than the Québec regions, but the maritime regions were rated even less pleasant. The African, United States and Asian varieties are the least pleasant for these raters. These preferences are reflected in a three-way K-means cluster analysis again shown by shading patterns in Figure 6.11. As in the case of correctness, these respondents seem to be aligning themselves with Europe more so than with their neighbors. It is no surprise that these respondents see their home area as most pleasant. High ‘pleasantness’ ratings for the respondent’s own variety indicate that this variety serves them well in terms of solidarity, as described by Ryan, Giles and Sebastian: “The important symbolic dimension operating orthogonal to status is that of in-group solidarity or language loyalty” (1982: 8). Preference for the local variety on affective dimensions has also been found by Preston (1996a). 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

LT NQ GS BE FR SW PR OT LX NB PE NS NF LA AN AF US NA AS

AF=S.Africa AN=Antilles AS=Asia BE=Belgium FR=Ile de France GS=Gaspé LA=Louisiana LT=Laurentides LX=Luxembourg NA=Northern Africa NB=New Brunswick NQ=New Quebec NS=Nova Scotia OT=Ottawa PE=Prince Edward Is. PR=Province SW=Switzerland NF=Newfoundland US=Northeast US

Figure 6.11. Pleasantness means scores.

The MDS of the scores for pleasantness in Figure 6.12 reveals again the importance of geographic notions for these respondents. Dimension 2, the vertical dimension, reflects pleasantness; the most pleasant varieties are located toward the bottom and least pleasant toward the top. On the right-hand side of Dimension 1, the horizontal dimension, are located all the regions of North America. On the left side is Europe and in the middle are Asia, Africa and The Antilles. Thus Dimension 1 seems to reflect a geographic perspective held by the respondents. Again, K-means clusters are indicated on the graph by lines encircling the groups. These clusters also reflect geographical perceptions consistent with the MDS. European regions comprise one group. The largest cluster includes most of the North American regions, Asia and Africa. The third cluster, Laurentides, Gaspésie, and New Québec, are all part of Québec, the raters’ home region, which they perceive as more pleasant than the rest.

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Figure 6.12. MDS for pleasantness.

8.3 Difference In the case of the degree of difference, the bar graph in Figure 6.13 shows that the mean scores for Laurentides (1.31) and New Québec (1.4) distinguish them from Ottawa (2.01) and Gaspé (2.2) which is distinguished from the rest of the regions whose mean scores steadily climb from 2.6. The three-way K-means cluster analysis, however, is more complex in this case. Although Laurentides, New Québec, Ottawa, and Gaspé are cut off from all the other regions (by shading patterns as before), Provence and Ile-de-France were selected as a second group in contrast to all remaining areas. Note that the cluster analysis is sensitive to their similarity even though their means are not contiguous. In Figure 6.14, the MDS plot, the three K-means groups are shown more clearly. Here the Maritime regions of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick are perceived as more different from the respondents’ variety than regions within Québec and Ottawa. This distinction is reflected in the perceptual maps by the number of respondents who marked New Brunswick (26), Prince Edward Island (18) and Newfoundland (17) as a place where people speak differently. A geographic dimension is also present in the MDS of the scores for difference as shown in Figure 6.14. Dimension 2 is a difference dimension, placing the regions most similar to the home region toward the bottom and those least similar toward the top. Dimension 1, again, is a geographic one placing the regions closest to Québec and North America on the right hand side, and the European, Asian and African regions on the left.

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AF=S.Africa AN=Antilles AS=Asia BE=Belgium FR=Ile de France GS=Gaspé LA=Louisiana LT=Laurentides LX=Luxembourg NA=Northern Africa NB=New Brunswick NQ=New Quebec NS=Nova Scotia OT=Ottawa PE=Prince Edward Is. PR=Province SW=Switzerland NF=Newfoundland US=Northeast US

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

89

LT NQ OT GS NB TN NS PR PE BE SW FR LX AN LA US AF AS NA

Figure 6.13. Difference means scores.

Figure 6.14. MDS for difference.

90

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Concluding remarks

The mean scores of the pleasantness and correctness ratings show that the change in attitude of Francophones toward Québec French noted by Tremblay (1990) is now complete, and no “double allegiance” to Québec French and Continental French exists for these respondents. The results indicate that these respondents are, in fact, not experiencing the linguistic insecurity found in earlier studies. They consider their variety of French as more pleasant than and as correct as Continental French and more pleasant and more correct than all other varieties of French surveyed. At the same time, they perceive their relatively local variety to be different from all others, as indicated by the maps and mean scores for ‘difference’. The small number of dialect maps and complete lack of perceptual maps in the Québec region demonstrate that there is more information to be collected about Québecois French. The hand-drawn maps described in this study provide information that has not been collected before about the cognitive dialect boundaries that exist for these respondents. They show in particular that the Lac St. Jean and Gaspé areas are most salient for these respondents. For the moment we can only speculate that this salience reflects the Montrealers’ prejudices towards more rural varieties (like prejudices towards the U.S.south and New York City, as shown in Preston 1996a), in spite of the fact that the attitudinal survey (e.g., ‘correctness’) does not confirm this. A more detailed study of the Gaspé and Lac St. Jean regions would help determine the salient aspects of the speech and culture of those regions that led the respondents to rate them the way they did.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Christine Brassard at the Collège de Valleyfield for her assistance and for administering the questionnaires for this study.

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Appendix Summary of comments and markings made on maps Region

Marked on map & labelled

Marked on map but not labelled

Mentioned on map

Total

Gaspesie Lac St. Jean Montreal New Brunswick Québec City Prince Edward Island Terre Neuve L’Acadie Schefferville Halifax Goose Bay St. John’s Fredericton Ottawa Nova Scotia Gander Sydney Inuit Nord du Québec Abitibi Cote Nord Laurentide Charlottetown Ile de la Madeleine Beauce St. Pierre & Miquelon Bas de fleuve Hull Jouale Québec (country) Anticosti Island Bas St. Laurent Sept Ile Labrador Grand Nord West Coast Nord-ouest Cantons de l’est Chicoutimi Amerindien Sherbrooke

54 50 21 20 20 13 12 15
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
6
6
6
2
5
4
5
3
4
3
3
3
3
3
3

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74 56 30 26 24 18 17 16 11 10 10 10 10 10
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References d’Anglejan, Alison and Richard Tucker. 1973. “Sociolinguistic correlates of speech style in Québec.” In Language attitudes: current trends and prospects, Roger Shuy and Ralph Fasold (eds), 1–27. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Bourhis, Richard and Dominique Lepicq. 1993. “Québecois French and language issues in Québec.” In Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology, Rebecca Posner and John N. Green (eds), 345–373. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dulong, Gaston and Gaston Bergeron. 1980. Le Parler populaire du Québec et de ses régions voisines [Quebec popular speech and the speech of neighboring regions] (Atlas Linguistique de l’Est du Canada). Québec: Ministère de Communications. Goavert-Gauthier, Suzanne. 1978. Jugements et attitudes de Montréalais francophones sur le Français parlé au Québec [Judgments and attitudes of Montreal francophones of the French spoken in Quebec]. M. A. thesis, University of Montreal. Inoue, Fumio. 1999. “Classification of dialects by image.” In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 161–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lambert, Wallace, R. C. Hodgson, R. C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum. 1960. “Evaluational reactions to spoken languages.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60 (1): 44–51. Lappin, Kerry. 1981. “Attitudes des Montréalais vis-à-vis des traits phonétiques du Français parlé à montreal: étude sociolinguistique” [Attitudes of Montrealers with regard to phonetic characteristics in the spoken French of Montreal: A sociolinguistic study]. Doctoral thesis, University of Montreal. Lavoie, Thomas. 1979. “Le projet de l’latlas dialectologique de la société du parler Francais au Canada” [The linguistic atlas project of the Society for Spoken French of Canada]. Protée 7(2):11–45. Long, Daniel. 1999. “Mapping non-linguists’ evaluation of Japanese language variation.” In Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 199–226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Méar-Crine, Annie and Thérèse Leclerc. 1976. “Attitudes linguistiques des adolescents canadiens-français québecois et du français académique” [Language attitudes of French Canadian adolescent Quebecers and those of the French Academy]. Cahiers de linguistique 6:155–170. Preston, Dennis. 1986. “Five visions of America.” Language in Society 15, 2:221–40. Preston, Dennis. 1993. “Two heartland perceptions of language variety.” In “Heartland” English: variation and transition in the American Midwest, Tim Frazer (ed.), 23–47. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Preston, Dennis. 1996a. “Where the worst English is spoken.” In Focus on the USA, Edgar Schneider (ed.), 297–360. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Preston, Dennis. 1996b. “Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5 (1): 40–74. Preston, Dennis. 1998. “Why we need to know what real people think about language.” The Centennial Review 42 (2): 255–284. Preston, Dennis. 2002. “Perceptual Dialectology: Aims, methods and findings.” In Present-day Dialectology: Problems and Findings. Jan Berns and Jaap Van Marle (eds). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Rémillard, L., G. Tucker and M. Bruck. 1973. “The role of phonology and lexicon in eliciting reactions to dialect variation.” Anthropological Linguistics 15:383–397. Ryan, Ellen Bouchard, Howard Giles, and Richard Sebastian. 1982. “An integrative perspective for the study of attitudes toward language variation.” In Attitudes towards language variation: Social and applied contexts, Ellen Bouchard Ryan and Howard Giles (eds), 1–19. London: Edward Arnold. Sibata, Takesi. 1999. “Consciousness of dialect boundaries.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 39–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



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Tremblay, Louise. 1990. “Attitudes linguistiques et perception sociale de variables phonétiques” [Language attitudes and the social perception of phonetic variables]. Revue Québécoise de linguistique 9 (3): 197–221. Verreault, Claude and Thomas Lavoie. 1996. “Genèse et formation du Français au Canada: L’éclairage de la géographie linguistique” [Birth and development of Canadian French: The enlightment from linguistic geography]. Révue de linguistique romane 60 (239): 413–462.



C 7 An Acoustic and Perceptual Analysis of Imitation Betsy E. Evans

1.

Introduction

Imitation has received little attention from linguists because it is not considered to be vernacular speech, and the “vernacular principle” tells us that the most regular speech is that which is given the least amount of attention (Labov 1972: 112). Clearly, imitation is a case in which the speaker is paying a great deal of attention to his/her speech. In addition, for many years, linguists have assumed that it is not possible for a speaker to modify his/her speech in a systematic way. Labov (1972: 215) has stated that he doubts if a speaker can master more than one dialect: Although one can achieve a certain amount of insight working with bilingual informants, it is doubtful if as much can be said for “bidialectal” informants, if indeed such speakers exist. We have not encountered any nonstandard speakers who gained good control of a standard language, and still retained control of the nonstandard vernacular. Dialect differences depend upon low-level rules which appear as minor adjustments and extensions of contextual conditions, etc. It appears that such conditions inevitably interact, and although the speaker may indeed appear to be speaking the vernacular, close examination of his speech shows that his grammar has been heavily influenced by the standard. He may succeed in convincing his listeners that he is speaking the vernacular, but this impression seems to depend upon a number of unsystematic and heavily marked signals.

More recently, it seems that the conclusion is still the same: “Ash…did a test survey of individuals who were asked to disguise their voices over the telephone. The subjects modified tempo, voice quality, and intonation, but none modified the segmental features specific to their geographical dialect” (Labov 1994: 111). In a study of European American imitation of AAVE and African American imitation of European American speech, Preston (1992) found that “both performances, with the exception of white uses of pronunciation and voice characteristics, may be said to make limited use of low-level linguistic features” (337). Imitation would seem to be ineffective even when it involves “learning”. When children with even one “non-native” parent in the Philadelphia area were tested for their acquisition of the local and very complex “short-a raising rule”, they were found to be

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lacking (Payne 1980). The failure of imitation in second and foreign language learning (especially for pronunciation by adults) is well-known. Nevertheless, there is recent documentation to the contrary. In Schilling-Estes’ (1998) study of Okracoke “brogue” (the traditional speech of Okracoke Island, NC), she found regular patterning in the “performance” and “normal” speech of an informant named Rex. She examined the first and second formants of the diphthong /ay/ in his “performance” and “regular” speech. In both styles she found systematic patterning in phonological environments in relation to both the height and backness of /ay/. Her findings “suggest that the patterns of linguistic variation observed in self-conscious speech are not necessarily different from, or less regular than, those observed in non-self-conscious speech” (1998: 64). What is the truth of this matter? Are imitations the employment of only a few stereotypical linguistic features, either easily adapted from lexical or morphological caricatures, as Preston (1992) suggests or, if at a phonological level, are they simply inaccurate (at least at the level of acoustic realization and/or detailed contextual specification). Before I investigate actual data, some clarification is necessary with regard to what is meant by imitation. For the purpose of this study, imitation refers to the conscious use of a variety which is not the speaker’s usual vernacular. Some might call such speech activities “performance”, “style”, “imitation”, or even “metaphoric shift”. Although defining imitation is an important problem, sorting out this theoretical issue is not the primary goal of this study, and further discussion on this point goes beyond the scope of this paper.

2.

Acoustic Analysis

2.1 Methods This is a preliminary study, and samples from only a single respondent are analyzed. He (“Noah”) is a 29-year-old male born in Morgantown, West Virginia who lived there until the age of 23. His parents are natives of Detroit. Because the respondent has had adequate input of both “South Midlands” (or, more exactly, “native Morgantown”) and “non-South Midlands” speech, there is good reason to believe that he could have control over both varieties. However, it is not unpredictable that his “usual” vernacular speech reflects a conservative northern system, as will be shown below, given the social status of South Midlands speech in the community of Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University. The question to be addressed here is how accurate his command of those elements of South Midlands speech that do not appear in his ‘usual’ speech is. The recordings examined were made with a Sony TCM-81 cassette tape recorder using a lavaliere microphone. The respondent read a word list and a reading passage with items deliberately selected to reflect differences between “Northern” and “Southern” U.S.speech. After some discussion, he was asked to re-read the word list and reading passage in the “West Virginia” style of the people from his home town. This word list/reading passage format prevented Noah from assuming a persona such as “good ole boy sheriff” or using a catch phrase like “y’all come back now”. It has been observed by Preston (1993, 1996) that a

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respondent’s performance was improved by the use of a catch phrase or persona: “nonperformed’ performances reflect a rather more systematic knowledge of the variety” (1996: 63). The acoustic characteristics of Noah’s readings were analyzed using Signalyze, a sound analysis software program for Macintosh computers, and the first and second formants were mapped using Plotnik, an acoustic vowel display program developed by William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania. Noah’s performances were compared first to a “conservative” Northern (or “Midwestern”) vowel system, presumably not unlike his parents’ (and not unlike one he would have learned as a “university-oriented” child in Morgantown, in spite of South Midland surrounding speech). Of course, his Detroit parents might have shown some incipient tendency towards the “Northern Cities Shift”, and that possibility is taken into consideration here. Figure 7.1 shows the conservative “Midwestern” vowel system for United States English (with no influence of either the Northern Cities or Southern Vowel Shift).

Figure 7.1. “Normal” or “Midwestern” American English vowels, based on F1 and F2 scores from Peterson and Barney (1952).

Noah’s vowels were then compared to the configuration of the so-called “Southern Vowel Shift” (Figure 7.2). If the vowels in both his normal and imitation systems correspond to the conservative system, we may conclude that there is little low-level skill in imitation (apparently the claim in most earlier research). If, however, his normal performance conforms to the conservative system and the imitation system conforms (or at least in part conforms) to the Southern Vowel Shift system, then we may conclude that his imitative or performance ability is rather more precise than expected.

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Figure 7.2. The Southern Vowel Shift (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 1997).

2.2 Results A comparison of various subsystems of Noah’s normal and imitation speech reveals the systematic differences between them. Figures 7.3 and 7.4 display the mean scores for the front vowels of Noah’s two systems. The highest and most front vowel in the normal system is /iy/; /ey/ is more front than /I/, and /6/ is the lowest, most back of the high and mid-front vowels. This is the system we would expect in a conservative speaker, and the correspondence with Figure 7.1 is clear. The imitation front system (Figure 7.4) is quite different. The highest, most front vowel in this system is /I/; /iy/ is lower than /I/, and /ey/ is the lowest most back high-front vowel. The /6/ tokens are split into two groups. The nasalized tokens are quite high, but the others aren’t. This could be due to Noah’s imitation of the I/6 merger before nasals; perhaps he has grouped “pen” with the /I/ tokens (which, as indicated above, are raised), but that would not explain the position of “neck”. Nevertheless, even the non-nasalized /e/ tokens are higher than the /ey/ tokens. In essence, the positions of /I/ and /ey/ and /e/ and /ey/ have flip-flopped when compared to his normal system, exactly the characteristics one finds in these vowels in the Southern Vowel Shift system seen in Figure 7.2. Noah’s imitation and normal back vowel systems are represented in Figures 7.5 and 7.6. In the normal system, the highest back vowel is /uw/. It is somewhat fronted, which could be due to an overall trend among younger speakers of Midwest American English (Ash 1996). The remaining back vowels examined in Noah’s normal readings reflect a typical conservative system. His imitation back vowel system, on the other hand, is

AN ACOUSTIC AND PERCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF IMITATION

Figure 7.3. Noah’s “normal” front vowel system.

Figure 7.4. Noah’s “imitation” front-vowel system.

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marked by a dramatic fronting of all the vowels examined excepting /f/. For example, the F1 and F2 for “good” in the normal system are 520 and 1380 respectively whereas in the imitation system they are 376 and 1839. Again, Figure 7.2 shows that such fronting is characteristic of the Southern Vowel Shift.

Figure 7.5. Noah’s “normal” back-vowel system.

Figures 7.7 and 7.8 show the low vowels and diphthongs of Noah’s imitation and normal systems. The normal system is, again, a rather conservative one; there is a low front /æ/ that seems to share some space with /ay/, /aw/ and /a/, although they are more back than /æ/. In the imitation system, /æ/ is raised and fronted; compare the F1 and F2 of the normal “hat” (807, 1440) to that of the imitation “hat” (558, 2201). In the imitation system, /æ/ no longer shares space with /ay/, /aw/ and /a/. Since both the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Southern Vowel Shift show low-front vowel fronting and raising, little can be concluded from this fact. On the other hand, some /ay/ tokens, such as “hide”, are fronted as in the Southern Vowel Shift. In general, if we compare the mean scores of the vowels of Noah’s usual speech to a conservative “Midwestern” system, such as that represented in Figure 7.1 (or Kurath and

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Figure 7.6. Noah’s “imitation” back-vowel system.

McDavid, 1961), we find a great deal of correspondence. For example, [iy] “peel” is higher and more front than [ey] “paid”; [æ] “apple” is in a low front position, and [ow] “hope” is mid and back. The only significant deviation is the fronted position of [uw] “food”, which is higher but more front than [ow]. The imitation system, on the other hand, bears a great resemblance to the Southern Shift (Figure 7.2), as described by Labov (1994), a vowel rotation occurring in the South Midland as well as other southern regions in the U.S. This shift consists of the backing and lowering of the tense front vowels [iy] and [ey], the fronting and raising of the lax front vowels [I] and [e], the raising and backing of low vowels, the fronting of the back vowels [ow] and [uw], and the reduction of the diphthongs [ay], [aw], and [fy]. We would expect the respondent’s imitation of West Virginia speech, if it is accurate, to reflect characteristics of the Southern Vowel Shift. As can be seen in Figures 7.4, 7.6, and 7.8 and the discussion above, Noah’s imitation speech demonstrates just such elements. This accuracy can be observed more clearly in Figure 7.9 where an “X” marks the position of the mean score of Noah’s vowels in his normal system, and an arrow points to its position in the imitation system. Figure 7.9 shows not only the similarities of his imitation system to the Southern Shift but also the very wide range of differences between his normal and

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Figure 7.7. Noah’s “normal” low-vowel system.

Figure 7.8. Noah’s “imitation” low-vowel system.

imitation systems. Noah’s normal system mean scores are indicated by boxes. Arrows point to the imitation mean score.

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Figure 7.9. Noah’s normal and imitation systems.

3.

Perceptual Analysis

3.1 Methods A “matched guise” (Lambert et al. 1960) tape was created with Noah’s ‘normal’ and ‘West Virginian’ speech and five other male speakers; three from West Virginia (Keyser, Charleston and Parkersburg), one each from the South Midlands and Inland North. Each speech sample was the same excerpt from a reading passage (see appendix for text). The home towns of the speakers from West Virginia are indicated on the map in Figure 7.10. Respondents (n = 69) were recruited at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, WV. All information was obtained via a questionnaire. The demographic information included sex and age. In addition, respondents were asked if they grew up in West Virginia or not. If the respondent answered ‘yes’ to this question, s/he was asked to indicate whether they grew up in the eastern, southern, western or northern region of West Virginia. After completing the demographic questions, respondents listened to the tape and were asked to indicate whether they believed each speaker was from West Virginia or not using a five-point scale. The voices were played again so that they could indicate on the scan sheet why they rated each speaker the way they did (see appendix for questionnaire). The data was scored mechanically and subjected to statistical analysis. The difference in mean scores of native (n = 40) and non-native (n = 29) West Virginian respondents’ ratings for each speaker was not significant except in the case of the South Midlands speaker (.03); thus data from all respondents was combined. Ratings by men and women showed no significant difference in mean scores for any speaker except, again, for the south midlands speaker. All respondents were between age 18–30. There was no significant

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Figure 7.10. Location of speakers’ home towns in West Virginia.

difference in mean scores by age group except for the Charleston speaker (.02). The sixteen to twenty age group (n = 13) mean score is 1.31. The mean score of the twenty-one to thirty age group (n = 55) is 1.75. It seems that the younger group was more sure about the West Virginia status of the Charleston speaker than the next older group. Given the small number of the sixteen to twenty age respondents and the fact that both groups rated him as being from West Virginia, speculations about this difference may not yield useful information. 3.2 Results 3.2.1 Quantitative Results Mean scores for respondents’ ratings of speakers on the following five point scale: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

“you “you “you “you “you

are sure that the speaker grew up in West Virginia” think the speaker grew up in West Virginia” don’t know if the speaker grew up in West Virginia” think that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia” are sure that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia”

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4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Charleston

Imitation

Parkersburg Noah's normal South midlands Keyser Inland north

Figure 7.11. Mean scores for all speakers.

Figure 7.11 shows the mean scores for all speakers. The mean score for the Charleston speaker (1.67) indicates that respondents felt sure that he grew up in West Virginia. The mean score for Noah’s imitation 1.93) shows that the respondents believed that the imitation was also the speech of a native West Virginian. T-test results showed the difference between the mean scores for the imitation and Charleston speaker to be not significant (.08). Thus it seems that the respondents perceived the imitation to be as likely to be from West Virginia as the Charleston speaker. A K-means cluster analysis, shown in Table 7.1 with two groups and with three groups, supports the notion of perceived similarity of the Charleston speaker and the imitation. The mean score for the Parkersburg speaker (2.69) shows that respondents were unsure about his West Virginian status. Mean scores for the other speakers on the tape show that respondents weren’t sure or perceived those speakers to be from elsewhere, even for the Keyser speaker who is from West Virginia. The cluster tree in Figure 7.12 shows the closeness/difference relationship of each speakers’s mean score. On the lowest level, Charleston and the imitation and Keyser and the inland north form two separate clusters. Noah’s normal and Parkersburg then form a cluster. The south midlands joins the Keyser/inland north group to which the Noah’s normal/Parkersburg group joins. The last group to join, shown by the highest branching nodes of the tree, is the imitation/Charleston group. The pattern of the groupings and the

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Figure 7.12. Cluster tree.

branching nodes reflect the respondents’ confidence in their judgment about the West Virginia status of the Charleston speaker and Noah’s imitation, their hesitation to judge the Parkersburg speaker and Noah’s normal and, again, confidence about the non-West Virginia status of the Keyser, inland north and south midlands speakers. Although there was no significant difference in mean scores for Charleston and the imitation, more respondents rated the imitation as 3, 4, or 5 (as shown in Table 7.2) than the Charleston speaker indicating, nevertheless, some sort of difference between the reactions to these two speakers. More respondents, it seems, were sure about the Charleston speaker than the imitation. 3.2.2 Qualitative Results Comments from respondents who rated the imitation as a 1 or 2 (55/69) show that their judgments were based on impressions (“southern twang”, “I know people who talk like this” “sounds like Uncle Jesse”) as well as specific details (“´‘u’ sound”, “sounds like its mixed with the ‘a’ in ‘cat’”, “the pronunciation of ‘hand and spilled’”). “Has a definite southern twang of a West Virginian” “I know people who talk like this from WV: accent, speed” “Man sounds like Uncle Jesse. Likely to be from this region. Yee haw.” “strong drawl, especially his ‘u’ sound” “slices. sounds like its mixed with the ‘a’ in cat” “A heavy southern dialect. The pronunciation of ‘hand & spilled’” “The way he says slices. His words are drawn out and his speech is not rapid”

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AN ACOUSTIC AND PERCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF IMITATION Table 7.1. Two- and three-way K-means cluster analyses. 2-Way cluster analysis Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Charleston Imitation

Parkersburg Noah’s ‘normal’ South Midlands Inland North Eastern Panhandle

3-Way cluster analysis Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Charleston Imitation

Parkersburg

Noah’s ‘normal’ South Midlands Inland North Eastern Panhandle

Table 7.2. Respondents’ ratings for the Charleston speaker and the imitation (n = 69). Rating Charleston Imitation

1

2

3

4

5

32 33

33 22

1 4

1 6

2 4

Qualitative data from those who rated the imitation as a 3, 4, or 5 (14/69) reveals that many felt the imitation speaker was from another southern region but few (2) perceived the imitation as inauthentic. Some of those respondents who perceived the imitation as from some other southern region said: “drawl is tricky-maybe more southern” “has a southern accent but I don’t recognize it” “Southern drawl maybe from Texas” “he has a very strong southern accent-too strong to be from WV” Although the imitation received more 3, 4 and 5 ratings, as shown in Table 7.2, those ratings were a result of respondents perceiving it as another southern dialect rather than inauthentic or from a non-southern region. Given the acoustic accuracy of the imitation, it was not expected that many respondents would perceive the imitation as false. The two respondents who perceived the imitation as inauthentic said: “sounds too much like a hick to be one” (native West Virginia respondent) “Tries to sound southern but does not keep tone consistent” (non-native West Virginia respondent)

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3.2.3 Acoustic analysis of the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers An acoustic analysis of the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers was conducted in order to compare Noah’s imitation system to the other native West Virginia speakers (no acoustic analysis was conducted for the Keyser speaker as respondents overwhelmingly found him to not be from West Virginia). Mean scores of F1 and F2 for the Charleston speaker show (in Figure 7.13) some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/, /ow/ and /aw/ but no reversal of /iy/ & /i/1 and /ey/ & /e/. Mean scores for F1 and F2 for the Parkersburg speaker also show (in Figure 7.14) some characteristics of the Southern Shift such as fronting of /uw/ and /ow/ but no reversal of /iy/ & /i/ and /ey/ & /e/. Noah’s imitation (see Figure 7.9) demonstrates more features of the southern shift than the native speakers, thus it could be said that Noah’s imitation was more ‘southern’ than the West Virginia natives. This could explain the difference in ratings for the imitation and the Charleston speaker noted in Figure 7.13. Twelve of those fourteen respondents who gave the imitation a 3, 4, or 5 felt that it was ‘too southern’ to be West Virginian.2 These respondents reacted to very minute details of the imitation (perhaps reversal of /iy/ & /i/ and /ey/ & /e/ as this was a major difference between Noah’s imitation and the Charleston and Parkersburg speakers). Yet how can we explain the majority of respondents who were convinced by Noah’s imitation? It must be that their perception of West Virginia speech is speech with many southern features. This perception must have been the same perception that Noah drew from when he did the imitation thus leading him to create speech with many (too many?) southern features.

4.

Conclusions

Acoustic analysis of the vowel formants of Noah’s normal and imitation speech styles shows consistent patterning in both. LePage and Tabouret-Keller (1985: 182) maintain that speakers can proactively assert a style if they have the motivation and ability: We can only behave according to the behavioral patterns of groups we find it desirable to identify with to the extent that: i. we can identify the groups ii. we have both adequate access to the groups and ability to analyze their behavioral patterns iii. the motivation to join the groups is sufficiently powerful, and is either reversed or reinforced by feedback from the groups iv. we have the ability to modify our behavior The analyses of Noah’s normal and imitation systems and Schilling-Estes’ Okracoke study of Rex demonstrate that at least some do have the ability. It is not clear, however, that the remaining motivating characteristics of LePage and Tabouret-Keller apply to Noah’s “Southern” imitative abilities. More likely, he was aware of some “covert prestige” value of the variety during his upbringing or had other motivations which were sufficient for the acquisition of accurate, low-level characteristics, which he was able to perform even in

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Figure 7.13. Acoustic analysis of the Charleston speaker.

reading-passage and word-list tasks and which convinced native speakers that he was from West Virginia. Naturally, additional research must be conducted in order to more clearly understand both the levels of accuracy of imitation, such as identification of the phonological features that triggered “too southern to be West Virginian”, and the social contexts and motivations for both acquisition and performance. In addition, this type of language contact should be examined in more detail to determine what kinds of effects it has on speech communities. Such research could provide insight on “attention to speech” models of style, variation and change, and perception. It is clear that we need to reconsider previous notions about the character of imitation speech and the utility in studying it. This study should make it clear, however, that imitation speech is not just the ability to evidence a few gross caricatures or stereotypes.

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Figure 7.14. Acoustic analysis of the Parkersburg speaker.

Notes 1. Unfortunately only one token of /iy/ (‘peeled’) was available in the data for the Charleston and Parkersburg speaker. The high front position of this token leads to the conclusion that it and other tokens like it have likely not lowered or backed. 2. It is interesting to note that Noah, himself, upon hearing his imitation sometime after the interview said that he “overdid” the imitation.

Appendix A Questionnaire The following survey is part of a sociolinguistic study of dialects. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Your participation is voluntary and you may discontinue your participation at any time. Your privacy will be protected to the maximum extent allowable by law and no participant will be identified in any way in the reporting of the results. You indicate your voluntary agreement to participate by completing and returning this questionnaire which should take no more than twenty minutes. Please mark your answers on the answer sheet using a pencil.

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1. First, tell us your gender a. male b. female 2. How old are you? a. 16–20 b. 21–30

c. 31–40

d. 41–50

e. 51 +

3. Did you grow up (spend most of your childhood) in West Virginia? a. yes b. no 4. If you answered yes to number three above, what region did you grow up in? a. The northern region (the northern panhandle, Weirton, Wheeling, Clarksburg) b. the eastern region (the eastern panhandle, Elkins, Martinsburg) c. the southern region (Charleston, Beckley) d. the western region (Huntington, Parkersburg) Now, you will hear seven speakers. We would like for you to indicate whether or not you think the speakers grew up in West Virginia. For each speaker you hear, check the letter that corresponds with your opinion as follows: you you you you you

are sure that the speaker grew up in West Virginia think that the speaker grew up in West Virginia don’t know if the speaker grew up in West Virginia think that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia are sure that the speaker did not grow up in West Virginia

“a” “b” “c” “d” “e”

If If If If If

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

SPEAKER SPEAKER SPEAKER SPEAKER SPEAKER SPEAKER SPEAKER

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12. You will hear the tape again. On the left side of the answer sheet, tell what there was about each person’s speech that made you rate them the way you did. Try to be specific.

Appendix B Reading passage A Bad Day for Ducks Tom and Bob were supposed to meet at Tom’s house. They planned to go to a nearby pond and watch the ducks. While waiting for Bob to get there, Tom picked up around the house. He put the electric fan away for the winter and did the dishes. He wanted a snack before he left, so he peeled an apple and cut it into slices. He bit into one, but it was awful, probably rotten. He spit it out and tried to rinse his mouth out with hot black coffee. He poured it into a tin cup, but when he put it up to his lips he spilled it on his hand. His hand puffed up and hurt a lot, so he stuck it under the faucet to make it feel better. He grabbed a dusty hat out of the closet and shook it, but he couldn’t get the dirt off. He got a cap instead and put a scarf around his neck and put on his socks and boots. There was a big hole in his sock, and Bob was really late. It was already past 2:00. Nothing was working out. Just then Bob phoned and said he wanted to talk. He told Tom that the flock of ducks had left the pond. A pack of dogs had chased them off. Tom was sad; he had really wanted to see the ducks, but Bob said that they could go shoot some pool instead. Tom thought that was a good idea and forgot all about the ducks and his burned hand.



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References Ash, Sharon. 1996. “Freedom of Movement: /uw/-fronting in the Midwest.” In Sociolinguistic Variation: Data Theory and Analysis. Selected Papers from NWAV 23 at Stanford, Jennifer Arnold, Renée Blake, Brad Davidson, Scott Schwenter, and Julie Solomon (eds), 3–25. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Kurath, Hans and Raven McDavid. 1961. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 1997. A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English. Retrieved from University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Website: http://www.ling. upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html. Lambert, Wallace, R. C. Hodgson, R. C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum. 1960. “Evaluational reactions to spoken languages.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60: 44–51. LePage, R. B. and Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Payne, Arvilla. 1980. “Factors controlling the acquisition of the Philadelphia dialect by out-of-state children.” In Locating Language in Time and Space, William Labov (ed.), 143–178. New York: Academic Press. Peterson, Gordon E. and Harold Barney. 1952. “Control methods used in a study of the vowels.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24:175–84. Preston, Dennis. 1992. “Talkin’ Black and talkin’ White.” In English Old and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, J. H. Hall, N. Doane and R. Ringler (eds), 327–355. New York: Garland. Preston, Dennis. 1996. “Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5 (1): 40–77. Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. “Investigating “self-conscious” speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English.” Language in Society 27: 53–83.



C 8 California Students’ Perceptions of, You Know, Regions and Dialects? Carmen Fought

1.

Introduction

Despite the fact that California has a population of over 32 million residents, relatively little research has been done on the speech of Californians. Hinton et al., 1987, Luthin 1987, and Partin 1999 provide some data on specific aspects of the phonological systems of California Anglos, but the dialects spoken by mainstream middle class Californians have not been comprehensively studied since the early dialect mapping was done, and even then the West received relatively little attention (cf., Carver 1990: 219).1 Nonetheless, California is the home of one of the most lampooned dialects in the nation: ‘Valley Girl’ speech, immortalized by Frank Zappa in a song from 1982, and featured in popular movies such as Clueless and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the late 1990’s, a sitcom, set in Los Angeles, had the title It’s like, you know. There is also the ‘surfer’ stereotype embodied by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. These highly recognizable stereotypes are likely to play a role in how people in other parts of the country perceive Californians. California has emerged in previous perceptual dialectology research as a desirable state in which to live. Preston, for example, gives maps of desirability of residence based on the responses of students from Minnesota and Alabama (1989: 21). These maps show enormous differences. Each group rates its own area very highly and gives a low rank to the other’s area, yet one of the few things the maps share is a high evaluation of California. North Dakotans, another group Preston reports on, also agree with this evaluation. In linguistic terms, the attitudes towards California are more difficult to categorize. Perceptual dialectology studies have found California speech to be rated highly by those outside the region, on measures of both ‘correctness’ and ‘pleasantness’ (Preston 1989). On the other hand, there are the aforementioned linguistic stereotypes (Valley Girls and surfer dudes) which are associated with a carefree lifestyle and a presumably low level of intelligence. There is, as far as I know, no published research on the linguistic perceptions of Californians themselves (although Preston gives a desirability of residence map for them in which their home state is rated highly).

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This study uses the methods of perceptual dialectology to examine how Californians view themselves and how they view others, particularly in light of these conflicting messages about linguistic prestige. It looks at the ways in which Californians categorize the geography of the United States, and the linguistic perceptions and stereotypes that they attach to different regions, including their own.

2.

The Data

The data were collected on the first day of an undergraduate class in linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara. The class has no prerequisites, and most students had no previous linguistics background. There were a total of 122 students who participated. I handed out a blank map of the U. S. A., with state boundaries drawn but no state names, and followed the instructions in Preston 1993. I asked the respondents to draw lines separating all the areas where they thought people spoke differently. I also said if they had a name for that area or that way of speaking to indicate this, and if they had any impressions about the way of speaking, they should note these as well. I did not ask them to use the terms correct English, proper English, or other specific labels; therefore where any such evaluative labeling appeared, it was chosen solely by the respondent. There was also an area at the bottom where respondents were asked to indicate their place of origin and their sex. The vast majority of the 122 respondents were from somewhere in California. There were only 8 students from other states, and two foreign students. The non-Californian students were excluded from all parts of this analysis. In this preliminary study, I did not have the respondents indicate which places they had actually visited. The northern/ southern California distinction will be discussed in more detail below. However, for most parts of the study, I did not separate the California students into northern and southern Californians, although the data are available and could add an interesting dimension for future analysis. Finally, I have not addressed gender differences here, though again the data are available for future study. The 112 maps drawn by Californians included 36 where the respondents drew lines around geographic areas but did not label them in any way, or labeled them only with neutral regional terms like South. There were also two students (seated next to each other) who did not circle or mark anything on the map, but wrote comments at the top to the effect that ‘all places speak differently’, presumably interpreting my instructions as some sort of trick question. However, a majority of the students chose not only to mark certain geographic regions as linguistically salient, but also to provide evaluative descriptions or labels for some of these regions.

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An overview of California perceptual boundaries: Individual maps

A brief look at a few of the individual maps drawn by Californians reveals some interesting trends, particularly in identifying areas about which the students seem to have little or no information, and which they therefore do not describe or stereotype. The first individual map, Figure 8.1, is one of the simplest ones that actually had some labeling. It divides the entire country in half with a north-south line running from the North Dakota/ Minnesota border to the Eastern border of Texas. There is a label for each half: ‘Right side has a slang’ and ‘left side speaks good English except Texas’. The student has also identified Alaska as being different from either ‘side’ of the country. This is perhaps the most extreme possible example of a ‘radiation effect’, where the positive evaluation of the respondent’s own location (California) spreads out over adjoining communities. This effect will be seen again later in the determination of where the ‘best’ English is spoken.

Figure 8.1. Hand-drawn map.

Figure 8.2 shows a more detailed analysis. Here we find a positive value (‘Good dialect’) associated with California, and some predictable geographic labels, identifying a southern accent region, two specific cities, New York and Boston, and the more original

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Cowboy accent covering Texas, Oklahoma, and the lower Southwest. Perhaps of most interest on this map is the labeling of several states in the northwestern region as unknown. It is difficult to tell whether this view has some basis in linguistic reality, since traditional dialect maps tend to show few salient distinctions in the West, or whether it simply represents the lack of clear stereotypes for people from these states.2 It is interesting, nonetheless, that the area is labeled unknown, rather than being described as similar to California, which is what one might expect if the lack of linguistic differences were at the root of these perceptions.

Figure 8.2. Hand-drawn map.

The third map, Figure 8.3, has a somewhat parallel distribution of regions, marking East, South, and Midwest as well as a country-sounding area around Texas and Oklahoma. However, there are some notable differences. This respondent has labeled California with the less positive term West-Coast California slang, and included with it the states of Oregon and Nevada. She also identifies more subtleties of dialect distinctions, including labeling Washington state as having Canadian influence. Her Midwest region gives an actual example of a dialect difference (‘pop’ instead of soda). The unknown region for her falls farther south than for the student who drew Figure 8.2. She has the four southwestern states plus Colorado labeled with a large question mark, although she does have a small note on this region that suggests spanish influence. The physical proximity of California

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to the region does not appear to promote familiarity or stereotyping, which in general is much more prevalent for the farther regions such as the South.

Figure 8.3. Hand-drawn map.

Figure 8.4, like the previous two, shows the Midwest, East and South, marks Texas separately, and has some indications of awareness of the Northwest. Here we see some common stereotypes, such as slower and more rural for the Midwest, unsophisticated, slurred and drawn out for the South, and Darlin’ for Texas. There is also the intriguing statement ‘Heavy rich accents, rough’ for the East. This is the first individual map to mark out northern and southern California as distinct, a boundary drawn by a total of 39 of the respondents. The speaker himself is from San Diego, and gives specific lexical items for southern California (which he labels ‘Sunny’ language); these items include Dude, like, and stoked. This map is perhaps the most dramatic in terms of the ‘unknown’ effect: the respondent sets aside an area of 9 states centered around the Southwest and attaches the comment ‘Do these people even speak?’ While these individual maps do not cover the entire range of variation in responses, they give a preliminary picture of the attitudes and mental geography of young Californians.

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Figure 8.4. Hand-drawn map.

4.

The mental geography of regions: Perceptions of the Midwest and South

Before moving on to specific issues of language, it is worth looking at the ways in which some of the geographic regions of the country were identified by Californian respondents. The individual maps reflect the main regions that Californians tended to label: the Midwest, the East (with some large cities and the New England area commonly noted), the South (often with a separate label for Texas and/or Florida), the North or Northwest, and California. Of these, I have chosen to focus here on the Midwest and the South. A trend in reporting data from studies of perceptual geography has been to chart bundles of perceptual isoglosses, i.e., marking off the northern, southern, eastern, and western boundaries of a region for various individuals and determining which boundaries are the most frequent. However, in looking at the California data, I found this approach very difficult to apply. The individual maps that have been presented reveal the difficulties involved. With respect to the Midwest, for example, the boundaries do not generally line up into neat north-south or east-west lines. On Figure 8.2, the southern boundary appears to run basically below Kansas, Indiana and Ohio, but dips down to include Arkansas as well. On Figure 8.3, the western boundary of “Midwest accent” runs a diagonal zig-zag

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pattern from Idaho to Arkansas, taking a detour to the north in order to exclude Wyoming. While boundaries for the South were somewhat more regular, there were aspects of the individual maps that made these difficult to classify using straight boundary lines as well. Two individual maps might have the same latitude for the northern boundary, but one might include only Oklahoma and Arkansas as the northernmost states, while the other might have only Tennessee and North Carolina. Using a single line labeled ‘North’ for these two non-overlapping areas seems misleading. I have decided instead to report on the number of individuals who included a particular state within the areas that they labeled as the Midwest or the South, since respondents overwhelmingly followed state lines in making their judgments. In the few cases where a boundary did not follow state lines, I counted the state as included if half or more of it fell within the demarcated area, and did not count it otherwise. I did not take data from maps that had what was clearly e.g., a southern region drawn in, but that did not specifically label it as such, or used an ambiguous label such as twang or Georgian. 4.1 The Midwest The areas that Californians considered to be the Midwest were extremely variable. In fact, there were a number of individuals who identified non-overlapping and even noncontiguous regions with this label. Figure 8.5 shows the areas which four different respondents identified as being The Midwest. I have put the city of origin of the individual over the area he or she labeled. A single state, Iowa, was included in the maps of both the Los Angeles respondent and the Santa Maria respondent; other than this, there is no overlap among the different perceptual regions. Preston (1989) noticed much variation in the designation of a Midwestern area with Hawaiian respondents also, as well as its conflation with the label northern. Among the Californians, I had cases where the label Midwest clearly encompassed a large northern region (as with the Los Angeles respondent on Figure 8.5), cases where Midwest and Northern were used for separate areas, and many cases where the distinction between Midwest and Northwest was made. Figure 8.6 shows the number of respondents who included a particular state in an area which they labeled Midwest or Midwestern. The data are drawn from a total of 45 individuals (out of the 112 Californian respondents) who included such a label on their maps. In this composite view, Iowa emerges as the center of the Midwest for Californians, appearing on 5 more individual maps than the next most frequent states, although 11 individuals did not include it in their Midwestern region. The states that border Iowa, particularly those to the west, north and south, make up a central Midwestern block in the perceptual maps of many Californians, with Kansas, Illinois and Wisconsin included as slightly more peripheral participants. I have included these states in the ‘core’ shaded area. From there, there is a more or less equal spread to the east and west, encompassing the Ohio Valley region on one side and the High Plains area on the other. I was surprised by the number of respondents who included a southwestern region (e.g., Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico) in the Midwest, such as the Los Altos respondent on Figure 8.5. This is particularly surprising in light of the available label

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Los Angeles

(both)

Santa Maria

Los Altos

San Diego

Figure 8.5. Areas identified by 4 respondents (from the cities shown) as being The Midwest.

Southwest for this area and its proximity to California. Also interesting is the very small number of states that were never identified as being in the Midwest: California itself, Oregon and Washington to the west, five of the southern states, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, New York and the New England region. Alaska and Hawaii were also, not surprisingly, excluded. The large number of states that were included highlights the geographic ambiguity of this region for Californians. These data are not unlike Preston’s data for Hawaiians. It would be interesting to see, however, if a pool of the same number of respondents from e.g., Minnesota, Pennsylvania, or Georgia would produce the wide variation in defining the Midwest region that was shown in Figures 8.5 and 8.6. 4.2 The South The identification of a region as the South contrasted with the use of the label Midwest in a number of ways. First, this label was used much more frequently by the respondents, appearing on 71 of the 90 Californian maps that contained any geographic labeling at all. Secondly, the amount of agreement on which states might be included in the South was much higher. Of those who had used a label South or Southern, 6 had done it in such a way that

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Figure 8.6. Number of respondents who identified a state as being in The Midwest.

it was impossible to tell what region was selected, e.g., because the label appeared outside the map with a vague arrow pointing toward an unmarked region. The other 65 provided the data for Figure 8.7. The more concentrated geographic perception of this region is clear. Mississippi and Alabama are the prototypical southern states for Californians, included by 62 and 61 of the respondents respectively, and Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina follow them closely in identification with the South. Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina are just a bit less central, forming the rest of the southern core (which is shaded). After North Carolina, which was included by 45 respondents, there is a sharp drop off for the next group: Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. These states are only about half as strong in their identification with the South as Mississippi and Alabama, with Florida, the most frequent, included by 34 respondents. The relatively weak identification of Texas and Florida with the South was surprising to me at first, but might be analyzed in light of the fact that these two states are often identified as separate geographic or dialect areas. Preston (1989) has noted the possibility of correlations between perception of an area as a distinct speech region and other types of perceptions, such as correctness. It should be noted that among the people who included Florida or Texas in their Southern regions, many nonetheless labeled them ‘southern but different’ or something to this effect.

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Figure 8.7. Number of respondents who identified a state as being in The South.

Within the southern core, the eastern states tended to be included at a slightly lower rate than their western counterparts (e.g., Georgia vs. Mississippi, or South Carolina vs. Tennessee). This appeared to stem from a tendency among some Californians to include in the area covered by the label East Coast all of the eastern seaboard including the southern states. Although I have chosen not to present here the data on perceptions of the East, a number of California respondents did include e.g., New Jersey and South Carolina in the same region, and even labeled it in a way that indicated that they perceived it as a single speech area. The peripheral southern areas, from the Californian perspective, included Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, with small numbers of respondents including the various states that border on the ones that have been mentioned, e.g., Kansas, Indiana, or Ohio. The respondents did not include any of the more western or northern states or the midatlantic region, except for a few respondents who included New Mexico and Maryland, and a single response each for Colorado and Delaware. Whether this effect of greater agreement on the South is due to a larger number of available stereotypes and media portrayals (as compared with the Midwest) is not clear.3 For whatever reason, the geographic perception that Californians have of the South seems to be more centralized and less gradual in its radiation out from a core area.

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4.3 Geographic labels and semantic indeterminacy In the introduction to this section, I implied that the distribution of geographic regions is not a specific issue of language, but of course that is only partially true. The semantic interpretation of regional terms is very much a linguistic issue. No native speaker of English in the U. S. will say that he or she does not know what the word Midwest means. Yet when the denotation of the word is tested, we find that individuals in the same community produce vastly different answers. It is enlightening to look at the lexicographer’s definition of Midwest as well. Merriam-Webster’s Tenth Collegiate does not have an entry for this item at all. Webster’s Third New International Unabridged gives the following: Midwest … n, usu cap 1: regions lying somewhat to the west of a specified or implied point of orientation 〈the farmlands of the Midwest〉 2: something (as people, culture, or institutions) characteristic of the Midwest 〈the Midwest strongly favored the new policies〉

In a sense, this dictionary entry, which I found very amusing when I first encountered it, is quite accurate in reflecting the semantic indeterminacy of this term for speakers of English. Nonetheless, speakers tend not to be conscious of (or comfortable with) this ambiguity. I presented the data from these maps to a small seminar group at Pitzer College, and pointed out the non-overlapping views some UCSB students had of the Midwest. In discussing the maps, many of the seminar students made comments like “Well, I’m not sure where the Midwest is either, because I’m from California, but you’re going to tell us the answer, right?” I had one student from Illinois, a state many considered to be in the Midwest region, who simply could not accept my view that there was no single right answer to this question, since he, being from the region himself, was convinced that it had specific boundaries. When I asked him, he was unable to tell me exactly which states were in the Midwest, but was nonetheless confident that the answer could be found. He came to the next class session armed with economic data illustrating the level of corn production and export for every state in the U. S., and showed me how the states with more than a certain level of production formed a clear group. Even after I had pointed out to him the relative arbitrariness of selecting corn production as a determiner of a region, and also setting the level of corn production at ‘more than X percent’, he was extremely reluctant to give up, and suggested that we add other types of data to make the determination more accurate. Surprising differences between the cognitive maps of individuals from what we regard as ‘the same’ community (such as those shown in Figure 8.5) often provoke amusement or alarm in professionals and nonprofessionals alike. A common immediate reaction is that respondents are simply revealing their ignorance. But perhaps the problem lies instead in our expectation, nourished by linguistic theory and general education, that ‘a language’ is endowed with a uniformity which governs our use of it and is revealed by our studies of it. And yet, many areas of lexical semantics and even morphology display patterns of uncertainty and mutual contradiction very similar to the manifestations of perceptual geography. For instance, asking an American classroom group to define ‘second cousin’ reveals that two distinct definitions are represented, though unevenly, in

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almost every group, and also that some students cagily refuse to commit themselves or openly confess their inability to answer.4 Color terms, like the regional designations inferred from the maps for this study, also have one or more focal or prototypical areas surrounded by a fringe of less definite character. But men and women, for example, reputedly disagree with each other rather often on the color term appropriate for a specific object. Indeed, Keith Allan (1999: 146) noted the following, in reviewing a recent study of Mesoamerican color terminologies (MacLaury 1997): Speakers of the same language, even within the same generation and from a small community, may differ in the number of basic color terms they manifest. […] This raises a serious question about how people can (apparently) succeed in communicating when talking about color (and much else besides).

It could well be the fear of a potential breakdown in communication that makes speakers (and linguists) so unwilling to accept evidence of vagueness in the language.

5.

Notions of the standard: Views of proper or good English

5.1 Proper English As was mentioned earlier, the use of evaluative labels (e.g., terms like slang or good English) was entirely at the discretion of the individual respondent. Though this means that the numbers for some parts of the analysis are small, they have the corresponding virtue of being generated from within the community. Only 36 of the respondents avoided all evaluative labeling completely, marking off and labeling only geographic regions. Since one question that perceptual dialectology studies often seek to address is the perceived location of the ‘Standard’ version of the language, I decided to look at the spontaneous positive labeling of regions to explore this issue from the point of view of Californians. Previous studies have asked the respondents to rank states in terms of correct English (e.g., Preston 1989); I was somewhat surprised to find that the term correct English did not appear on any of the maps I collected. On the other hand, proper English, which sounds somewhat old-fashioned to me, was a common label, with the other most common positive label being good English (or what I have treated as a variant thereof: better or best English). The less frequent terms of this type, which I will not deal with here, included clear English, TV English, and normal, regular, or plain English. There were also some curious individual labels such as enunciates vowels more clearly (for an ambiguous northern region), and the puzzling more pronunciation as a label for the East Coast. There was also a single respondent who identified Midwestern speech as being most accurate. Figure 8.8 shows the number of respondents who included a particular state in an area which they labeled proper English. There is a clear association of this term with New England (possibly for historical reasons as discussed in Preston 1989: 55, or even through

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an association of the region’s name with England).5 Here we see also what I referred to earlier as a ‘radiation effect’. The prestige of New England seems to extend in diluted version to the Mid-Atlantic states, thereby, against all expectations, encompassing New Jersey. The eastern part of the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, etc.) and the upper South also were identified by a few respondents as locations for proper English. These admittedly small numbers nonetheless contain a suggestion that the so-called ‘southern trough’ may not have the same sort of force for Californians as for residents of other places; this will be discussed in more detail below. It is also difficult to imagine that respondents from places closer to highly stigmatized areas such as West Virginia would ever give them specifically positive linguistic labels. However, Californians seemed to think of these areas as ‘eastern’ and in fact, many of them specifically labeled them as such; for example, one respondent labeled an area of 10 states extending roughly from Michigan to South Carolina as proper eastern English.

Figure 8.8. Number of respondents who labeled an area including this state as Proper English.

Despite evidence that outsiders rate California very high on the scale of ‘correct English’, not a single respondent in this study applied the term proper English (which would seem to be related) to California or any other western state.6 Preston has suggested that among Indianans there is a “shift west in modes of correctness” and that

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If ‘correct English’ and ‘proper English’ represent the same idea, and this is a claim that would need to be tested independently, Californians do not appear to be following this same trend. However, the results for other evaluative labels show a somewhat different distribution. 5.2 Good, better or best English One of the interesting elements of perceptual maps is the frequency with which they reveal unpredicted trends that might otherwise be obscured. My assumption would have been that proper English and good English would represent more or less the same thing in the minds of respondents. For Californians, however, this assumption turned out to be erroneous. Figure 8.9 shows the number of respondents who included a particular state in an area which they labeled good, better, or best English. It differs strikingly from Figure 8.8 in that the states which received the most positive rankings were on the West Coast. California was labeled good English more often than any other state, a result which is not

Figure 8.9. Number of respondents who labeled an area including this state as Good, Better, or Best English.

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in itself surprising, but does contrast with the earlier data on proper English. Again there is a radiation out from California to other western states, and less strongly to the closest parts of the Midwest. Despite the fact that the western areas were labeled unknown on some of the individual maps seen earlier, those who do feel they know these areas give them positive rankings. New England draws a small contingent of votes under this label as well, although only about half as many as with proper English. There was a single respondent who made a note that the ‘best’ English was spoken in the southern states, but she is not represented on this map because she did not identify any particular group of states as the South. I believe that this distinction between Figures 8.8 and 8.9 represents the intersection of the conflicting linguistic stereotypes that were discussed in the introductory section. On the one hand, California is a high prestige region linguistically, for respondents from across the country; furthermore, respondents often rate their own local area highly regardless of the attitudes of others, which Preston (1989) calls the ‘local preference factor’. On the other hand the specific linguistic stereotypes with which California is associated, e.g., Valley speech and surfer lingo, seem inconsistent with the idea of correctness. There may be an issue of covert versus overt prestige in play here as well. The native respondents split the difference, by considering California to have ‘good’ or even ‘the best’ speech, even if it is not ‘proper’. One individual actually voiced this idea, writing of California: It sounds the best to me, but not necessarily the most accurate.

6.

Specific stereotypes for the speech of different regions

6.1 Regions outside California In addition to the quantitative data presented above, it is worth looking at what qualitative data, in the form of labels for different regions, might reveal about linguistic stereotypes held by Californians. The regions that were most often evaluatively labeled by Californians included the South, the Midwest, the East or East Coast, New York and California itself. Northern areas or western areas outside California were rarely labeled unless they were included as part of one of the other selected regions. In the latter case, this may well be due to the sense of unfamiliarity that western regions caused in respondents such as the authors of Figures 8.2 and 8.4. As was mentioned earlier, the South was labeled as a separate geographic area more frequently than any other region. The evaluative labels given to this region are presented in Table 8.1, along with any comments or linguistic examples given. Terms in boldface were used by more than one respondent, with the number of occurrences in parentheses. In this and subsequent tables, the terms represent labels the respondent used for an area that he or she identified as being The South, The East, etc., regardless of whether his or her geographic boundaries for these regions coincided with those of other respondents.7 As might be expected from previous research, a majority of the terms associated with the South are negative. The notion of a southern twang or drawl was fairly prevalent, as was

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the use of terms like redneck or hillbilly. There are numerous explanations for the association of negative stereotypes with the South, which I will not discuss here, but one possibility, the association of African-American speech with the South, is actually commented on by a respondent in Table 8.1. Perceptual maps seem to reveal prejudices of this type that might not be expressed in other formats. Table 8.1. Terms associated with the South. Terms

Comments

Examples

country talk (2) drawl (6) drawn out (2) slurred (2) slow (3) slang (2) twangy heavy crude redneck unsophisticated rancher hillbilly terrible lazy

“put more words together” ol’ “dragging of vowel sounds” darlin’ “Southern gentleman” y’all “fried chicken and marshed potatoes” “African-Amer. influence”

On the other hand, comments like southern gentleman suggest a positive value that some Californians place on the South and that might explain its occasional association with proper English. It should also be noted that some Californians chose to include the Southern Coastal region with East Coast, rather than the South. One such individual used the label elite sounding, seeming to attach it mainly to North and South Carolina and Georgia. Because these states fell within this person’s version of East Coast, however, that term does not appear in Table 8.1. This southern/East Coast ambiguity is an interesting one which perhaps merits further study. The East (or East Coast) itself was not discussed in the earlier geographic section, but as with the Midwest, the perceived boundaries of this region varied a great deal for Californians. Despite some indications of prestige associations in Figure 8.8 on proper English, specific labels for the region (Table 8.2) tended to be negative. In particular, eastern speech was seen as harsh, rough or even violent.8 To some extent, this effect may stem from an association with large urban centers located in the East, as suggested by the respondent who used the label big city types. Nonetheless, the terms in Table 8.2 are taken only from respondents who clearly indicated that their label was associated with an entire eastern area, and not a specific city or state. For instance, the respondent who provided the example that begins ‘you fuckball…’ attached it to a region that extends from Maine to

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South Carolina. In contrast, Table 8.3 gives those terms that were connected specifically with New York (the city or the state, since in many cases it was ambiguous which was meant). There is a large amount of overlap with labels for the East, including tough, fast, and rude, suggesting that in fact stereotypes of big cities do affect the perception of the entire East Coast for Californians. Table 8.2. Terms associated with the East or East Coast. Terms

Comments

Examples

harsh (2) slang (4) rough (2) tough (2) more formal pretentious faster rude violent language

“more pronunciation” (2) “heavy rich accents” “tough guy talk” “big city types” “elite-sounding” (SC, etc.)

leave out ‘r’ (4) you fuckball, I’ll bust your fuckin’ balls

Table 8.3. Terms associated specifically with New York. Terms

Comments

Examples

slang (2) tough nasal fast abrupt rude

“use different words” “New Yorker drawl” “coffee talk”

leave out ‘r’

A large number of Californians labeled some region as belonging to the Midwest, although as was discussed in the geographic section, the boundaries of these regions were highly variable. This area also tended to be conflated with a region that other respondents might label northern, a pattern which can be seen on the individual maps presented earlier.9 The frequency of identification of this region was somewhat higher than I had expected. Studies of perceptual dialectology often assume a correlation of cultural stereotypes of various regions, such as one might find in the media, with linguistic and other evaluations. One piece of evidence for the influence of media can be found in the fact that the movie Fargo was mentioned specifically seven times in association with the region around the Dakotas (also frequently labeled Midwest). It is difficult to gauge how many students who singled out this region geographically and/or linguistically might not have done so before the movie was released, but its influence is clear. Some respondents were able to identify specific linguistic features for this area, e.g., a respondent who commented on the [o] in Minnesotan.

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Overall the labels for the Midwest, seen in Table 8.4, are a good deal less negative than for the previous two regions. There are certainly some negative stereotypes as evidenced by the terms hick and flat. However, other labels, like downhome, earthy, and laid back seem more likely to be neutral or positive. Just as this region occasioned the greatest geographic disagreement, it also revealed a division in linguistic perceptions among the respondents. There were two respondents who said that the speakers of this region had no distinguishable accent, and two who said they had a heavy accent. There is a tradition of associating the Midwest with the mythical General American, and consequently with Standard English. While there are some vestiges of that idea here, as with the respondent who called Midwestern speech the most accurate English pronunciation, this concept does not seem to have a strong influence on the perceptions of Californians, and was rarely commented on. There are some suggestions of it in the map of proper English, Figure 8.8, but they are relatively weak, since the states included in this category were somewhat East of the core Midwestern states indicated on Figure 8.6. Table 8.4. Terms associated with the Midwest. Terms

Comments

(farm) slang (4) “Fargo,” “Fargo-like” (5) heavy accent (2) “most accurate English pronunciano distinguishable accent (2) tion” earthy “Minnesoooootan” hick laid back country downhome rural flat slow clear accurate

Examples pop vs. soda (2) say y’all” (TX, etc.) pronounce vowels like “o” differently

There were also terms that were applied across a number of regions. The terms fast and slow came up repeatedly, and while there was agreement that southerners talk slow, and East Coast dwellers talk fast, California received both of these labels, fast and slow, at least once. Possible explanations for this will be discussed below. In addition, the term slang was found in association with every region that was analyzed. This term tends to be applied broadly, with perhaps the most extreme example shown in the individual map discussed earlier, Figure 8.1, where the entire right side of the country is said to speak a slang. There was also another individual who attached the term slang to every region he labeled, so that his list included mid-western slang, West Coast slang, country slang, southwestern or Texan slang, Nawlens [New Orleans] slang, southern slang, Florida/southern slang, East Coast NYC slang, and Boston N.E. slang. Among Californians, and I suspect among other

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populations as well, the term slang seems to act as a shorthand for ‘a way of speaking that is somehow marked or noticeable’. In some cases it seemed to be linked to familiarity of the respondent with specific lexical items from that region. In other cases, such as the one cited above, it appeared to be functioning simply as a synonym for dialect. 6.2 Perceptions of California itself Table 8.5 shows the terms that were associated with California by its residents. To begin with, California was labeled more often than other regions overall. While there are occasional negative terms, such as sloppy or more broken, a majority of these labels are positive. There is an easy-going theme running through the terms, as with relaxed, hippie, laid back, and surfer. A secondary theme involves the influence of other languages (multilingual, mixed w/Spanglish), for which it is difficult to determine whether the connotations are positive, negative, or neutral. Both surfer and Valley Girl were used frequently as labels, six and eight times respectively, confirming the suggestion made in the introduction that these are two of the main stereotypes for Californian speech. Somewhat to my surprise, two respondents associated the term gangsta or gangster with California, with one of them using it to label northern California specifically. While there are many people associated with gangs in California, I would not have expected their style of speech to be interpreted as characteristic of the region, particularly not the North. Table 8.5. Terms associated with California (or the West Coast). Terms

Comments

Examples

surfer (6) valley girl (8) relaxed (3) gangsta (2) laid back (2) slang (18) TV talk (3) slow (3) fast (2) hippie sloppy sunny multilingual preppish clear hyper normal

“more broken” “mixed w/Spanglish” “AAVE language” “lots of fillers”

hella or hella good (5) dude (2) like (4) I’m all (2) totally you know stoked bro man what up?

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As mentioned earlier, the terms fast and slow were both applied to California. This ambiguity may also have some basis in variation within the state, as suggested by a respondent who indicated that northern Californians talked slower than southern Californians. Overall, 39 respondents drew a geographic boundary separating northern and southern parts of the state, indicating that the distinction is a fairly salient one.10 Another possibility with fast/slow, however, is that it could be based on conflicting stereotypes: Valley Girls are generally portrayed as speaking relatively quickly, while surfers are portrayed as drawing out vowels, possibly giving an impression of slowness. As might be expected, the most examples of linguistic items associated with a particular region were given for California. One of the most prevalent of these was the term hella (or hella good) strongly tied to northern California, and often stigmatized by southern Californians. Some lexical items, like dude and stoked, came originally from the surfer variety. Many of the others were general discourse markers which could be associated with the Valley girl image, such as you know, like, and I’m all (often used to introduce quoted speech). Impressionistically, these labels reinforce the results of the quantitative analysis presented above. Californians seem to see their own speech in a fairly positive light, as natural and relaxed, but with its positive value tempered by the idea that it is also not ‘accurate’ speech in some sense, and that it reflects the negative aspects of the surfers and the Valley girls. This conclusion might also be supported by the fact that the term slang was associated with California very frequently, by a total of 18 respondents. (In comparison, slang was used only three times for the South, four for the Midwest and four for the East Coast.) On the other hand, this result might stem simply from a predictably higher familiarity with local lexical items for California as opposed to other regions.

7.

Conclusions

The perceptual maps of Californians reveal interesting patterns in their perceptions of geographic and linguistic distinctions within the U. S. Their mental geography includes a highly nebulous concept of the Midwest, and a much more specific vision of the South, which nonetheless overlaps in some cases with the East Coast. For many of them, it also includes large ‘unknown’ regions, particularly in the North and West. Their perceptions of preferable varieties of English encompass two distinct notions. Proper English is located in New England, and radiates out from there. Good English, on the other hand, is found in California and the West, but it still has some secondary associations with New England and the East. The folk idea of Midwestern speech as being ‘General American’ or the most representative of the Standard finds little support among Californians in general, although it came up for isolated individuals. All of these results would seem to have wider implications in the area of perceptions in general, particularly as they relate to studies in anthropological linguistics that show similar patterns of distributions for color terms and other semantic areas of this type. In terms of stereotypes about particular regions, Californians have mixed feelings about most places. There are a number of negative terms associated with the South, but

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occasional positive ones as well. The speech of the East Coast is heavily stigmatized, yet also, as mentioned above, associated with prestigious varieties of English. The uncertainty with which Californians approach the Midwest as a geographic region extends to linguistic stereotyping as well. Even with respect to linguistic perceptions of their home state, Californians show a great deal of ambivalence. California is associated with good English, but never proper. The terms used to label it are generally positive, yet the potentially negative term slang comes up 18 times. It seems that California is a state caught between a general aura of desirability and a specific association with negative linguistic stereotypes, and this dual identity can be seen on the perceptual maps of its residents. Nonetheless, Californians in general seem to reflect a fond acceptance of their state, despite their awareness of the negative aspects of its image. One might sum up their attitude as: It’s like, whatever.

Notes 1. Northern California African-American speakers have been studied more thoroughly. See, for example, Rickford et al. 1991. 2. Carver (1990: 205) gives a discussion of the lack of clear isoglosses in the West. 3. See Lippi-Green 1997, Chapter 10, for a discussion of stereotypes of the South. 4. John Fought, personal communication. 5. There was a respondent from Oregon whose data was not included here, but who used the proper English label for the New England states and New York. 6. Except for New Mexico, which is clearly being grouped here with the southern states. 7. In cases where this labeling by an individual was particularly different from the general consensus, I have indicated in parentheses which specific states were meant. 8. The same person who used the label violent language also provided the example that begins ‘you fuckball…’ 9. Preston’s (1989) Hawaiian respondents tended to do this also. 10. Interestingly, the frequency with which respondents made the distinction was almost exactly the same for people who were themselves from cities in the northern versus southern parts of the state.

References Allan, Keith. 1999. Review of MacLaury 1997. Language 75: 143–47. Carver, Craig. 1990. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hinton, Leanne, Sue Bremmer, Hazel Corcoran, Jean Learner, Herb Luthin, Birch Moonwomon, and Mary van Clay. 1987. “It’s not just the Valley Girls: A study of California English.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 117–127. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent. London: Routledge. Luthin, Herbert. 1987. “The story of California (ow): The coming-of-age of English in California.” In Variation in Language: NWAVE XV at Stanford, K. Denning, S. Inkelas, F. McNair-Knox & J. Rickford (eds), 312–24. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Department of Linguistics.



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MacLaury, Robert E. 1997. Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages. Austin: University of Texas Press. Partin, Allyn. 1999. “Some Southern California sounds.” Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA. Preston, Dennis. 1989. Perceptual Dialectology: Non-linguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Foris Publications. Preston, Dennis. 1993. “Folk dialect maps.” In Language Variation in North American English: Research and Teaching, Wayne Glowka and Donald M. lance (eds), 105–118. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Rickford, John, Aretha Ball, Renee Blake, Raina Jackson, and Nomi Martin. 1991. “Rappin’ on the copula coffin: Theoretical and methodological issues in the variable analysis of the copula in African American Vernacular English.” Language Variation and Change 3. 103–132. Zappa, Frank. 1982. “Valley Girl.” From the LP Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. Barking Pumpkin Records.



C 9 Perception of Dialect Distance Standard and Dialect in Relation to New Data on Dutch Varieties Ton Goeman

The contrast between the clearly opposing concepts of “own” and “foreign” is also present in the relationship between standard language and dialect. The pressure from the standard language on dialects is very strong and is felt in the whole of the Dutch language area. As a counterforce, there is at the same time a Dialektwelle, to use the German expression, or a dialect boom, most strongly felt at the periphery. In the West of the country the relation is more problematic. The dialects of the province of South Holland are very close to the spoken variant of Standard Dutch, and dialect speakers there merely think of their dialect as a pronunciation variant of the colloquial standard, possibly as one which is somewhat sloppy or ugly. This folk concept means that one has to approach potential informants for the fieldwork I am going to talk about differently, depending on whether they are inhabitants of the West or not. For example, one may say in the eastern parts of the country that one is doing dialect research. In the West the word dialect is painfully resented. I asked an informant whether he often spoke his dialect at home, and I had a strong reaction: Certainly not, the idea was foreign. They did not speak a dialect, but people from the East certainly did. They themselves spoke ordinary Dutch. When I asked what he spoke at home and with his neighbors, he said: “Oh, that’s another story, at home we talk plat [i.e., vernacular].” There is a second, more simple, aspect of this contrast “own – foreign” with respect to dialects. That is, one’s dialect is one’s “own”, and the other dialects are “foreign”, or more or less foreign. And on this dimension speakers have some outspoken ideas too, positive as well as and negative ones. In what follows I will relate this double contrast of “own – foreign”, the contrast dialect — standard language and the contrast dialect — dialect, as seen by the speakers themselves to some internal linguistic features of dialect behavior: (a) word-final t-deletion, e.g., hij loopt versus hij loop (he walks), (b) vowel-shortening, e.g., lopen–hij loopt, the length of the vowels being long [o˜], half-long [o.], or short [o], and (c) the counterpart of vowel shortening, hypercorrect vowel lengthening.1

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Judgments of dialect speakers on “own” and “foreign”

Subjective judgments from dialect speakers about which dialects in their neighborhood are more or less the same as their own were used in the Netherlands to establish a classification of dialect regions. For example, there are the map of Dutch dialects by Daan (1970), the maps for the Brabant (published in 1944) and Limburg dialects by Weijnen (1966), the map for South Holland and Utrecht by Goeman (1984), and, for the eastern part of the Netherlands and adjacent Germany, the map by Kremer (1984). Weijnen called the means of determining these regions the “little arrows method”, based on the fact that he drew an arrow from A to B when B was considered by a respondent from A as more or less the same dialect as his or her own, A. In this way one gets clusters of localities, and between those clusters empty spaces are found that form the dialect boundaries of which the speakers are conscious. Daan’s map contains information over and above this classification, showing which dialects diverge more from the standard language and which ones less. This rank order does not follow from the judgments themselves, but was imposed by Daan on the speakers’ classification on the basis of expert knowledge of internal linguistic dialect structure. The underpinning of her determination of distance from the standard lies in the fact that South Holland can be considered to be the cradle of the general standard language (Daan 1965), and more than a century ago this idea was already outlined by Johan Winkler (1874), who considered the rural dialects of South Holland to be the spoken variant of the standard language (Berns 1981). We must keep in mind that 19th century Standard Dutch did not yet have a definite norm for a spoken variant. The situation was even more intricate, because the written standard had a strong southern, Brabant flavor. Genetically and geographically the recent make-up of the Holland dialects is strongly related to the standard language. This is also the opinion of the speakers themselves, as exemplified in the anecdote of the South Holland speaker I mentioned before. Winkler situated the authentic “Standard = Hollandic” just to the south of the Old Rhine river. This idea is corroborated in modern dialects, where the subjective judgments of dialect speakers show a relatively isolated group of dialects between the Old Rhine and Hillegersberg, one which is different from Delflands to the southwest, different from the dialects along the Old Rhine, and from those of the city of Gouda with its hinterland of the Krimpenerwaard (Goeman 1984); see Figure 9.1. Van Hout and Münsterman (1981) operationalize the geographical position of the standard language in a similar way: halfway between Utrecht and The Hague. a. On the basis of this consensus, I constructed a scale measuring the subjective distance of a certain dialect from the standard language by taking the cluster of South-Holland dialects as locus of the standard language (Goeman ms). The judgments were weighted, and the shortest chain was taken from each dialect to the Holland geographical cluster. The weighting was done as follows: – –

0.5 when locality A and locality B judge each other as similar 1.0 when locality A judges locality B as similar but B is neutral with respect to A

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Figure 9.1. Subjective identification of southwestern Dutch dialects, general (above) and detailed (below) (Goeman 1984).

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2.0 when locality A judges locality C as similar and B does so too, but C remains neutral with respect to A and to B 3.0 when there is no connection between A and B

Summation over the chain from each dialect to the center of the standard language gives a measure based on the perception of dialect similarity and difference.2 Here I will apply two other indicators that are based on the aforementioned perceptual judgments. Like the distance measure, they trade on the fact that these similarity judgments are pre-eminently tied to direction. b. We are now in the position to analyze whether dialect speakers have a strong propensity to consider everything around them as familiar (which will result in an even geographical dispersal in all directions of the dialects judged similar) or whether their judgments show strong direction effects (in which case a pattern will show up with less dispersal, where the dialects judged similar are in the majority in a certain direction). In the last case there will be no mean direction: see Figure 9.2 — dialect C. In the first case there is such a mean direction: see Figure 9.2 — dialect A and Figure 9.1 — dialect B. c. The third measure that I will propose is the mean deviation of the dialects judged similar from the main direction to the geographical center of the standard language (measured as the angular deviation of the mean direction3), see Figure 9.2. The dialects whose speakers judge their own to be more similar to the dialects that are diametrically positioned as to the geographical position of the standard language are strongly oriented in a direction away from the center of the standard language and may be more divergent from the standard language (see Figure 9.2 — dialect B) than those that are considered to be more similar to the dialects positioned in the direction of the center of the standard language (see Figure 9.1 — dialect A). We may expect that the dispersal and deviation measures will be not such good indicators as the distance measure. The ones first mentioned are strongly locally bounded and function as ‘more or less one’s own’. The last mentioned one does not show this drawback, and we may expect that it will give a better account of the more global situation of ‘more or less foreign’.

2.

Dialect data: Towards a variationist dialectology

Recently, Goossens (1986) argued that one of the urgent tasks for dialectology was the development of a variationist dialectology. He illustrated the importance of this task by noting variation in areas with dialect mixture — on the one hand between dialects, on the other hand, the variation within regions that came into existence by the interaction of the standard language, the regional vernacular, and dialect. This is a complex field of inquiry, where “foreign”, “own”, and “appropriated” flow into each other. Over and above these aspects of variability mentioned by Goossens, there exists other dialect internal variation of a purely linguistic character. This is the field of free variation, variation in complementary distribution of variants, lexical diffusion, and system-bound

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Standard Dialect A: small dispersion, small deviation from the standard language

Standard

Dialect B: greater dispersion, orientation away from standard language

Standard

Dialect C. great dispersion, no orientation to standard language

Figure 9.2. Dispersion and orientation to the standard.

variation, in which forms of variation exist across and within dialects as well. To do reliable research in this area, we need to have a systematic, extensive, and generally comparable database in order to leave behind us ‘occurring/non-occurring dialectology’. The two possibilities — ‘occurring/non-occurring’ — are the mere extremes of an interval with all possible positions between. By accounting explicitly for this inherent variability, there are more opportunities to solve a number of research questions, including even many in traditional dialect geography. Historical dialectology has already taken this step in the

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Netherlands and Belgium (e.g., the work on Old French of the Dutch linguist Dees, the work of Goossens on Middle Dutch, and, for 14th century Dutch dialects, the work of Mulder and of Van Reenen). A joint Dutch-Flemish committee of dialectologists has formulated a project4 for such a new systemic database. This plan is less extensive than the Series of Netherlandic Dialect Atlases (Reeks Nederlandse Dialectatlassen; RND) with its 3000 localities in the Netherlands and the Flemish part of Belgium (and France), but it is much more intensive. The RND offers only 600 items, not even sufficient for a study of the vowel systems of those dialects. This new project offers more than 1900 items, fully balanced for etymological origin of the vowels and for synchronic allophonic variants according to distribution of vowels and consonants as well. Among other things, pluralization of nouns, adjectival declension, diminution, comparatives, superlatives, and the verbal conjugation of strong verbs are represented. Compared to the RND, the restrictions of that earlier work had to be made up by more extensive collecting: in the Netherlands, recordings were made in 365 localities. Those were transcribed in IPA and entered in a database in which the Meertens Institute and the Free University of Amsterdam collaborated, with help from State University of Groningen.5 The computerization of the corpus guarantees that this database will not share the fate of many comparable undertakings of the past: that of awe-inspiring, uninterpreted, data graveyards. The aforementioned studies of t-deletion, vowel shortening, and vowel lengthening were already based on the part of the database that was ready.6

3.

Internal linguistic factors: t-deletion, vowel shortening and vowel lengthening

In earlier studies of word final t-deletion, vowel shortening, and vowel lengthening in Dutch dialects, we reported on the conditioning of these processes by phonetic features of neighboring consonants. T-deletion has to do with articulatory prominence within the consonant cluster. Vowel shortening and its hypercorrect counterpart vowel lengthening correlated with the sonority of the following consonant. Remarkably, the ‘underlying’ voiced character of this consonant exerted its influence even though the cluster had become phonetically voiceless. We looked at pairs of infinitives and third singular presents. We concluded that vowel shortening and vowel lengthening are related to each other because they are concentrated in the same area and because they obey the same conditions with the same rank order of strength. In this article we will answer the question whether this relationship holds when we do not aggregate the data by region but when we compare it locality by locality. We offer the following four hypotheses. I. Vowel lengthening is a hypercorrection and not a natural phonetic process. The hypothesis is that vowel lengthening does not have a relationship to vowel shortening. II. T-deletion might be an unnatural process too. This is the idea of linguists who take it to be strongly lexicalized (Knott 1986). A relationship with a natural phonetic process such as vowel shortening may thus not exist. In that case, t-deletion will not cause vowel shortening, nor will vowel shortening facilitate t-deletion.

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III. Vowel lengthening could facilitate t-deletion on the basis of a sort of syllable balance; in metric phonological terms this may be seen in the comparison of VVC versus VCC, where the last C of VVCC is deleted because VVCC would be a too heavy syllable compared to VCC, and where the last C in VCC is not deleted. If formulated in terms of a condition, we cannot decide which one is the cause of the other: t-deletion causing loss of C in VCC by which the resulting VC lengthens to VVC, or lengthening of V in VCC to VVCC causing the loss of the last C. The only thing we can see is a relationship, if any, and therefore a correlation is possible. IV. The concept of shortening has to be refined. We distinguish between (a) the extent to which there is shortening in terms of the number of cases/word forms shortened, and (b) the strength of shortening in terms of the relationship of long vowel over half-long to short vowel. A dialect that realizes its length contrasts more distinctly will also show more cases of shortening.

4.

Extralinguistic factors

V. We expect that the dialects will differ more and more from the standard language, the more these dialects are at the periphery, in spite of the constant global pressure of the standard language through exposure by general education and exposure to written and audiovisual media. The distance from the standard language according to a speaker’s perception will therefore be reflected in his dialect behavior.7 VI. With respect to t-deletion Goeman and Van Reenen (1985) have shown a west-east contrast. We expect, therefore, that the west-east dimension will be a significant factor, in contrast to the dimension north-south. VII. With respect to vowel shortening Goeman and Van Reenen (1985) show a geographical contrast that is mainly north-south. Therefore we expect this contrast to show up again here. VIII. The measures of dispersion and of deviation away from the center of the standard language will not be copies of the perceptual distance measure. They are of a more local character as indicators of ‘more or less one’s own’, and, therefore, may or may not be important.

5.

Results

Our procedure is as follows. We test a number of models that incorporate the hypotheses via stepwise multiple regression. In these models we map the direction of influences as represented in our hypotheses above. Consequently, they are causal models. We include the variables that we hypothesize not to exert any influence. The data are from localities in the region shown in Figure 9.3. The fieldwork was done in 53 localities. The language external factors are a part of every model. Stepwise regression eliminates all non-significant factors from the model. Those factors that are significant

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Figure 9.3. Vowel shortening, showing positive residuals in the shaded areas and negative residuals in the unshaded areas.

remain. The remaining model(s) and their factors should correspond with our expectations according to the hypotheses. I.


vowel shortening does not cause lengthening; nor does vowel lengthening cause
vowel shortening. II.
vowel shortening does not cause t-deletion; nor does t-deletion cause vowel shortening
(if t-deletion is unnatural in these regions). III.
t-deletion causes vowel lengthening; or vowel lengthening causes t-deletion. IV.
for vowel shortening, strength of shortening is an important causal factor. V.
for t-deletion, vowel shortening, vowel lengthening, and perceptual distance from the
standard language center are important causal factors. VI.
for t-deletion, west-east is an important causal factor, while north-south is not. VII.
for vowel shortening, north-south is an important causal factor, while west-east is not. VIII.
local measures may or may not be significant. The variables t-deletion, vowel shortening and vowel lengthening are count-data (in this case proportions). In order to insure that the distributional make-up of these data is like that of a normal distribution and in order to compensate for any inherent boundedness to 0 and 1 as extremes, these data were transformed by folded logs, a transformation that belongs to a family which includes the logistic transform. The test of the models had to be carried out in two passes: the first pass included the two local measures of deviation and dispersion, the second pass did not. The reason for their exclusion in the second pass lies in the fact that these measures were not available for certain dialects, either because speakers judged them to be totally different, or simply because there were no subjective similarity data for the localities in the 1980–1990 project. Those localities cannot be included in the analysis. The perceptual distance measure does not have this drawback; by definition it could be constructed by taking the ‘no connection’ cases into account.

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PERCEPTION OF DIALECT DISTANCE

The second pass will give more stable results (estimates) given the fact that there are more data available (e.g., the model result diagrams in Figure 9.4). The arrows from variable to variable indicate the direction of influence “from-to.” The numerical labels on the arrows are the standardized estimates of the strength of the influence. We use these instead of the unstandardized estimates because the scales of measurement are different for each variable, and standardization gives us the opportunity to directly compare the relative importance of the estimates irrespective of difference of scale. Unstandardized estimates retain the original scale. The regression results and analysis of variance for the models can be found in Appendix 1. The variables that turned out to be non-significant by stepwise linear regression are indicated by an “X”. First pass: vowel shortening vowel lengthening north-south west-east perceptual distance from standard lang. dispersion in dialect cluster mean deviation from standard language

X X X 0.724 -0.463 X -0.268

t-deletion

Second Pass: vowel shortening vowel lengthening north-south west-east perceptual distance from standard lang. dispersion in dialect cluster mean deviation from standard language

X X X 0.687 -0.376 X X

t-deletion

vowel lengthening strength length contrast north-south west-east perceptual distance from standard lang. t-deletion

X 0.353 0.357 X 0.436 X

t-deletion west-east north-south perceptual distance from standard lang. strength length contrast vowel shortening

X 0.605 X X X X

vowel shortening

vowel lengthening

Figure 9.4. Models.

The results of the second pass correspond to our expectations, with one exception: perceptual distance is not important with respect to vowel lengthening. But this is in line with its hypercorrect character. These results were also found in the first pass. This model is peculiar in that one of

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the two more local variables, mean (angular) deviation from center of the standard language, shows a significant influence on t-deletion. The other one (dispersion around) is not important. One local effect being important and the other not may be in line with Goeman and Van Reenen’s (1985) findings that there are two different effects for a part of the area, the western part of the Betuwe that borders South-Holland and Utrecht. Goeman and Van Reenen suggested two effects in this specific region: a long range and a short range migratory effect. This corresponds well with an interpretation of perceptual distance seen as the long range effect, and deviation and dispersion seen as the more local, short range effect. For t-deletion, the west-east dimension, the perceptual distance from the standard language, and perhaps the geographical orientation away from the standard language of the dialect cluster to which a dialect belongs subjectively are significant factors (t-deletion first pass compared to t-deletion second pass). For vowel shortening, the strength of the short-long contrast, the dimension northsouth, and perceptual distance from standard language are important. For vowel lengthening, the only significant factor is the geographical dimension west-east. These results mean that t-deletion, vowel shortening, and vowel lengthening are not only independent from each other, but that they do not influence each other, each one being an insignificant causal factor for the other one as the models in Figure 9.2 show. Returning to our hypotheses: I.


Vowel lengthening is hypercorrect and not natural (there being no relationship with
the natural process of vowel shortening). II.
T-deletion is not related to the natural process of vowel shortening, but it is also not
related to the unnatural process of vowel lengthening; the question of its naturalness
remains open. III.
There are no indications for syllable balance; vowel lengthening is not related to
t-deletion, nor is t-deletion to lengthening. IV.
Dialects with strong length contrasts do show more cases of vowel shortening. V.
Perceptual distance from the standard language has a role in language behavior as
witnessed by the processes of t-deletion (with less distance) and vowel shortening
(with more distance). VI.
T-deletion shows a clear west-east effect indeed. VII.
Vowel shortening shows a clear north-south effect. VIII.
The subjective local measure deviation from standard language may play a role
in t-deletion (less deviant). With respect to t-deletion perceptual distance and deviation from the standard language correspond with respect to the direction of the effect: the less distant, and the less deviant in orientation the dialect cluster is from the locus of the standard language, the more t-deletion there is. The standard language does not show t-deletion, and when it does, it occurs mainly within words and not word finally. How can we interpret the result that t-deletion does occur more when the perceptual measures are less distant and less deviant? A possible

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explanation would be one of polarization: a smaller perceptual distance from and an orientation towards the standard language provokes the need to polarize behavior with respect to the generally present but, in this case, geographically nearby mighty ‘brother’ that the standard language is. More distant dialects might not feel this need. Other aspects of dialect behavior such as vowel shortening are not used to polarize and correspond more to the perceptual measures. In Figure 9.3 we give the geographical distribution of the negative and positive residuals of the predicted values for the natural process of vowel shortening. This gives an indication where vowel shortening is used either less or more than predicted by the model. We see that other regions than the river area have also relatively more shortening than predicted by the model. This is especially the case in South Holland, although values there are lower than they are to the east. Consequently, there is no salient ‘brother’ model in the locus of the standard language to polarize against in this case. We will end with a very global conclusion: the subjective evaluation of ‘own’ and ‘foreign’ is an important factor in language behavior besides other language internal and language external factors.

Notes 1. See for t-deletion in dialects: Goeman and Van Reenen (1985a), Goeman (1986) and Goeman (ms.). The first is about internal linguistic conditions, the second is concerned with the reliability of dialect survey data and the third is about the relative importance for t-deletion of geographical position, distance from the standard language and social factors. For vowel shortening and vowel lengthening see Goeman and Van Reenen (1985b) and Goeman and Van Reenen (1986). 2. In the aforementioned study we measured distances to the outer boundaries of the Holland cluster. Perceptual distance, measured this way, correlated too strongly with geographical distance, and we could not decide whether this perceptual measure had an independent effect. In other words, we could not establish if an influence of perceptual distance from the standard language had an influence on t-deletion. In this article we measure distance with respect to the geographical center of the Holland dialect cluster. 3. See, for the computation, Davis (1986, 314–330). 4. The members of the committee were: J. Taeldeman, J. Goossens, R. Willemyns, G. Kocks and T. Goeman (secr.). 5. Part of this work was sponsored by the State Department of National Education from 1985 to 1990. 6. There has been continual output after the date of publication of the original article. Among others are articles on diphthongization and on supposed vowel shifts, on the distribution of so-called ‘soft /g/’, the realization of the liquids /r/ and /l/, the realization of word initial /s/ and /z/, and on the present indicative paradigm. 7. In attitudinal behavior this will show up as resentment to all that is Western Dutch and especially ‘Holland’.

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Appendix 1. Final stepwise regression results First pass: t-deletion Number of cases in data file are ……… 53 Number of cases used in this analysis are … 44 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE SUM OF SQUARES DF REGRESSION 14.4701 RESIDUAL 31.7222 TOTAL 46.1923


3 40 43

MEAN SQUARES F-RATIO

P-VALUE

4.8234 0.7931

0.002

6.082

Dependent Variable = t-deletion Number of obs. = 44 Multiple R = 0.5597 R-square = 0.3133 Adjusted R-square = 0.2618 F(3, 40) = 6.0820 Prob > F = 0.0016 Std. Error of Est. = 0.8905 Durbin-Watson Stat.= 1.8684 =======MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATION======= t-deletion = −2.582 + 0.243*west-east + −0.006*deviation St. Lang. + −0.067*percept.dist. + ERROR; =====STANDARDIZED REGRESSION EQUATION===== t-deletion = + 0.724*west-east + −0.268*deviation St. Lang. + −0.463*percept.dist. + ERROR; =======REGRESSION TEST STATISTICS======= VARIABLES

COEFFICIENTS

STD. ERROR

t

P-VALUE

Intercept west-east deviation St. Lang. perceptual dist.

−2.58244 −0.24297 −0.00574 −0.06724

0.0645 0.0028 0.0281

−3.768 −2.025 −2.396

0.0005 0.0496 0.0214

Second pass: t-deletion Number of cases in data file are ……….. 53 Number of cases used in this analysis are .. 49 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

REGRESSION RESIDUAL TOTAL

SUM OF SQUARES

DF

MEAN SQUARES

F-RATIO

P-VALUE

14.6131 43.7965 58.4095


2 46 48

7.3065 0.9521

7.674

0.001

Dependent Variable = t-deletion Number of obs. = 49 Multiple R = 0.5002 R-square = 0.2502 Adjusted R-square = 0.2176

147

PERCEPTION OF DIALECT DISTANCE F(2, 46) = 7.6741 Prob > F = 0.0013 Std. Error of Est. = 0.9758 Durbin-Watson Stat.= 1.7664 =======MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATION======= t-deletion = −2.609 + 0.243*west-east + −0.058*percept.dist. + ERROR; =====STANDARDIZED REGRESSION EQUATION===== t-deletion = + 0.687*west-east + −0.376*percept.dist. + ERROR; =======REGRESSION TEST STATISTICS======= VARIABLES

COEFFICIENTS

STD. ERROR

t

P-VALUE

Intercept west-east percept. dist.

−2.60937 −0.24255 −0.05788

0.0633 0.0276

−3.829 −2.098

0.0004 0.0414

Second pass: vowel shortening Number of cases in data file are ……….. 53 Number of cases used in this analysis are .. 53 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

REGRESSION RESIDUAL TOTAL

SUM OF SQUARES

DF

MEAN SQUARES

F-RATIO

P-VALUE

177.9047 181.0142 358.9190


3 49 52

59.3016
3.6942

16.053

0.000

Dependent Variable = vowel short. Number of obs. = 53 Multiple R = 0.7040 R-square = 0.4957 Adjusted R-square = 0.4648 F(3, 49) = 16.0528 Prob > F = 0.0000 Std. Error of Est. = 1.9220 Durbin-Watson Stat.= 1.6595 =======MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATION======= vowel short. = −11.101 + 2.270*strong length contr.+ 0.544*north-south + 0.161*percept.dist.+ ERROR; =====STANDARDIZED REGRESSION EQUATION===== vowel short. = + 0.353*strong length contr. + 0.357*north-south + 0.436*percept.dist. + ERROR; =======REGRESSION TEST STATISTICS======= VARIABLES

COEFFICIENTS

STD. ERROR

t

P-VALUE

Intercept strong length contr. north-south percept.dist.

−11.10079 −
2.26955 −
0.54407 −
0.16061

0.6739 0.1593 0.0376

3.368 3.416 4.271

0.0015 0.0013 0.0001

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second pass: vowel lengthening Number of cases in data file are ……….. 53 Number of cases used in this analysis are .. 53 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

REGRESSION RESIDUAL TOTAL

SUM OF SQUARES

DF

MEAN SQUARES

F-RATIO

P-VALUE


8.0538 13.9672 22.0210


1 51 52

8.0538 0.2739

29.408

0.000

Dependent Variable = vowel length. Number of obs. = 53 Multiple R = 0.6048 R-square = 0.3657 Adjusted R-square = 0.3533 F(1, 51) = 29.4078 Prob > F = 0.0000 Std. Error of Est. = 0.5233 Durbin-Watson Stat.= 1.4631 =======MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATION======= vowel length. = −2.698 + 0.128*west-east + ERROR; =====STANDARDIZED REGRESSION EQUATION===== vowel length. = + 0.605*west-east + ERROR; =======REGRESSION TEST STATISTICS======= VARIABLES

COEFFICIENTS

STD. ERROR

t

P-VALUE

Intercept west-east

−2.69815 −0.12802

0.0236

5.423

0.0000

References Berns, Jan B. 1981. “De plaats van het Zoetermeers onder de Nederlandse dialecten.” In Zoetermeers Woordenboek, J. van der Spek (ed.). Zoetermeer. Daan, Jo. 1965. “Streektalen in Zuid-Holland: een eerste verkenning.” In Zuidhollands, Jo Daan and K. Heeroma (eds). Bijdragen en Mededelingen van de Dialectencommissie. 30. Amsterdam: NoordHollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij. Daan, Jo and Dan Blok. 1970. “Van Randstad tot Landrand” [From “city-side” to “country-side”]. Bijdragen en Mededelingen van de Dialectencommissie 37. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij. Davis, J. C. 1986. Statistics and data analysis in geology. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Goeman, A. C. M. 1984. Klank- en Vormverschijnselen van het Dialect van Zoetermeer [Phonology and morphology of the dialect of Zoetermeer]. Publicaties van het P. J. Meertens-Instituut 4. Amsterdam: P. J. Meertens-Instituut. Goeman, A. C. M. 1986. “Alleged unreliability of European continental dialect geography. A statistical appraisal.” In Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses



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Göttingen 1985, Bd. 4, P. von Polenz, J. Erben, J. Goossens (eds), 305–318. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Goeman, A. C. M. 1999. “Objectieve en subjectieve geografische factoren, informanten- en veldwerkerskenmerken Een modelmatige aanpak van t-deletie in Nederlandse dialecten.” In T-deletie in Nederlandse dialecten. Kwantitatieve analyse van structurele, ruimtelijke en temporele variatie [LOT-IFOTT 26], A. C. M. Goeman. ’s-Gravenhage: Holland Academic Graphics. Goeman, A. C. M. and P.Th. van Reenen. 1985a. “Word-final t-deletion in Dutch dialects: the roles of conceptual prominence, articulatory complexity, paradigmatic properties, token frequency and geographical distribution.” Vrije Universiteit Working Papers in Linguistics 16. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit (Reprinted 1999 as Chapter 6 of T-deletie in Nederlandse dialecten. Kwantitatieve analyse van structurele, ruimtelijke en temporele variatie [LOT-IFOTT 26], A. C. M. Goeman. ’s-Gravenhage: Holland Academic Graphics.) Goeman, A. C. M. and P.Th. van Reenen. 1985b. “A data-base of Modern Dutch dialects, shortening and lengthening of long vowels in verbal forms.” In Databases in the humanities and social sciences, Th. Moberg (ed.), 137–147. Osprey: Paradigm Press. Goeman, A. C. M. and P.Th. van Reenen. 1986. “Klank- en Vormeigenschappen van Nederlandse Dialecten. Een hypercorrecte klinkerverlenging.” Onze Taal 55: 8–10. Goossens, Jan, 1986. “Über die Einseitigkeit des punktuellen Standpunkts in der korrelativen Soziolinguistik und die Vernachlässigung der Variation in der Dialektologie.” In Kontroversen, alte und neue. Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, Bd. 4, P. von Polenz, J. Erben, J. Goossens (eds), 257–262. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Hout, R. van and H. Münstermann. 1981. “Linguistische afstand, dialect en attitude” [Linguistic distance, dialect, and attitude]. Gramma: Nijmeegs Tijdschrift voor Taalkunde 5 (2): 101–123. Knott, Judith. 1986. Phonological change and inflectional morphology: a case from the Low German and Dutch dialects. Transactions of the Philological Society. Oxford, 85–99. Kremer, Ludger. 1984. “Die Niederländisch-Deutsche Staatsgrenze als subjective Dialektgrenze” [The Netherlands — German border as a subjective dialect border]. Driemaandelijkse Bladen 36: 76–83. RND = Blanquaert, E. et al. 1925–1980. Reeks Nederlandse Dialectatlassen. Antwerpen: De Sikkel. Weijnen, A. 1944 (1946). “De grenzen tussen de Oost-Noord-Brabantse dialecten onderling” [The borders between the dialects of eastern North Brabant]. In Oost-Noord-Brabantse dialectproblemen. Lezingen gehouden voor de Dialecten-commissie der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen op 12 april 1944. Bijdragen en Mededelingen van de Dialectencommissie 8, 1–17. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij. Weijnen, A. 1966. Nederlandse Dialectkunde [Dutch dialect research]. Assen: Van Gorcum. Weijnen, A. 1968. Zum Wert subjektiver Dialektgrenzen [On the basis of subjective dialect boundaries]. Lingua 21, 594–596. Weijnen, A. 1975. “Transformational topolinguistics.” In Algemene en vergelijkende dialectologie/General and comparative dialectology. Een verzameling studies van A. Weijnen, A. Hagen and J. Kruijsen (eds), 115–130. Amsterdam: Holland Universiteits Pers B. V. Winkler, J. 1874. Algemeen Nederduitsch en Friesch Dialecticon [General Low Dutch and Frisian dialect anthology]. 2 Vols. Martinus Nijhoff: ’s-Gravenhage.



C 10 A Dialect with ‘Great Inner Strength’? The Perception of Nativeness in the Bergen Speech Community Paul Kerswill

1.

Introduction — the ‘speech community’

This article addresses an issue which lies at the centre of Labovian sociolinguistics: that of the ‘speech community’. This is an important notion since it is in some sense taken as a prime, that is, as a given unit of analysis. In order to make clear the importance of the notion, I begin by making some remarks concerning both its definition and its application in sociolinguistic studies. Labov has defined the speech community as follows: The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms; these norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant in respect to particular levels of usage (1972: 120).

Labov is making two points here. The first is that speakers within a speech community all evaluate linguistic features in the same way. In other words, a particular vowel quality, or a particular grammatical form, is thought of by everybody as being characteristic of a certain type of speaker; in Labov’s own approach, ‘type of speaker’ has most often been taken to refer to a speaker’s position on a social class continuum. Of course, linguistic features signal all kinds of possible classifications of speakers, including those based on sex, age, ethnicity, membership of certain professions, membership of football supporters’ clubs, and so on. The important thing is that a member of the speech community will agree with other members on what the linguistic features signal. In my own study of rural in-migrants in Bergen, the issue of whether the in-migrants share the same evaluative norms as the native Bergeners was of central concern, and is fully discussed in Kerswill (1993) and Kerswill (1994); however, in this article I focus on the second point Labov seems to be making in the quotation above. By talking of the ‘uniformity of abstract patterns of variation’, he implies that the language varieties in use in a speech community are relatable in a systematic way. In practice, this means that the

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speech varieties, or accents or sociolects, on the whole share a common core of syntactic structures, morphological categories, and phonological units or phonemes. The differences between the varieties on these levels of linguistic analysis are largely describable as differences in low-level rules. For a number of reasons, sociolinguists have concentrated on the phonology, and have found that the variation there has largely been intra-phonemic rather than inter-phonemic. This analysis of the relationship between varieties within the speech community begs the question of how to analyse the variation outside southern England and North America, where the model was first developed and successfully applied. Outside these areas, for example in Northern England, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia, and more generally in societies where there are large dialect differences and standard varieties are more remote from the spoken vernaculars, we find rather extensive morpho-lexical variation. By ‘morpho-lexical variation’, I mean that the relationship between ‘equivalent’ forms even in a monolingual community is not statable in terms of intra-phonemic variation but is instead largely unpredictable and therefore lexical, involving the use of different phonemes. In most cases, there will also be differences in phonemic inventory. I mention morpho-lexical variation here because, as will become clear, such variation is pervasive in Norway, both between dialects of different regions and within geographically limitable speech communities, such as Bergen (see Kerswill 1996a for a comparison of the situations in southern England and western Norway). The problem is the following: once one allows variation of this sort into a speech community model, how can one draw the line between varieties which belong and those which do not? We may then be forced to discard the criterion of linguistic relatableness and concentrate instead on the first criterion, that of shared evaluation of linguistic varieties. However, it is clear from this discussion that, regardless of the size and type of the linguistic differences between the varieties, the total linguistic range of a speech community is nonetheless delimitable. This means that there will also exist (elsewhere, but also spoken by ‘outsiders’, particularly immigrants) varieties which do not belong to the speech community in question. I mentioned earlier that a part of Labov’s definition of the speech community involves a like evaluation of the linguistic features or varieties in use; it presumably follows from this that varieties which do not ‘belong’ to the speech community will be identified by members as not belonging, and that their evaluation will depend on a number of other factors, for example the community’s being part of a larger, perhaps national speech community. It is the idea of the identification of a native member of the speech community that will be addressed in this article. This is an important issue because so much sociolinguistic analysis depends on the linguist’s, and presumably also the native listener’s, ability to identify what is and what is not a part of a given speech community. This article presents a method of testing native listeners’ ability to accept or reject different sorts of speech as ‘native’.

A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’?

2.

153

Discreteness in judgements of nativeness?

Testing for judgements of ‘nativeness’ can be done by presenting ‘native listeners’ with samples of speech which differ, in an externally motivated and quantifiable way, in linguistic features which the linguist believes to be criterial for the speech community being examined. We cannot, of course, expect perfect agreement among the judges as to which samples are ‘native’ and which are not. Also, if the information is elicited carefully, it is likely that the samples will differ in the degree to which they are judged to be different from canonical native speech. These differences of judgement can be systematic, though they relate to a complex sociolinguistic reality, as Kerswill & Williams (Chapter 11, this volume) show. This raises a further question. Speech communities presumably differ in the degree to which they are set off linguistically from other communities with which they are in contact: is this degree of difference reflected in the natives’ judgements? That is, are listeners from a less clearly (linguistically) defined speech community more tolerant of, or perhaps less sensitive to, non-native traits? Kerswill & Williams (Chapter 11, this volume) address this question, and find that listeners in a northern English city, Hull, are very much better able to identify speakers from their own city than are listeners from the southern towns of Reading and Milton Keynes when confronted by voices from their home towns. In that study, it was argued that the linguistic distinctiveness of Hull led to the high recognition rates, while the extensive dialect levelling in the South led to the poor rates there. The issue of linguistic distinctiveness is raised here since Bergen is normally thought of as being very clearly set off linguistically (and socially) from its rural hinterland, by lay people and dialectologists alike.

3.

The Bergen speech community

Dialectologists have for a long time asserted that Bergen speech occupies a special position among Norwegian dialects. There seem to be two reasons for this. First, all varieties of the Bergen dialect share a number of morpho-lexical features which set them off sharply from the surrounding rural dialects (Kerswill 1994: 45–48); Bergen is unique among Norwegian towns in this respect. Secondly, dialectologists have been at pains to argue that the dialect has developed more or less independently (Kolsrud 1951: 104; Rundhovde 1962: 395), probably as a result of extensive and protracted language and dialect contact since the city became affiliated to the Hanseatic League in the early Middle Ages (Kerswill 1991). This apparently independent path has led to what Kolsrud called the ‘great inner strength’ of the dialect (Kolsrud 1951: 104; my translation), and to a certain internal cohesiveness (Larsen and Stoltz 1911–12: 273), which nonetheless may have waned somewhat in more recent years (Nesse 1994). So, we might hypothesise that Bergeners show rather great sensitivity to language varieties that differ only slightly from the ‘native’ varieties. In order to test this, we can either take samples of speech from different dialects,

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increasing the geographical distance from Bergen; or we can take the speech of people from the hinterland who have migrated to Bergen and have modified their speech in the direction of the Bergen dialect, and see how close to the latter the migrants have to come before being accepted as native. The second approach is adopted here, using samples of speech recorded as part of the Bergen study. Linguistically, the rural migrant speakers in the study appear to lie on a continuum from ‘urban (Bergen) dialect’ to ‘rural dialect’. This means that the speakers will probably be judged as ‘more or less urban or rural’. The notion of a ‘rural-urban continuum’ needs further explanation. Rural migrants interlard their speech with varying amounts of Bergen dialect, largely by mixing in a number of morpho-lexical features and by modifying certain phonological and suprasegmental features (see below, Section 4). Some migrants use a minimal amount, if any, of these Bergen elements, while others use them to such an extent that they resemble native Bergeners. It is this scale of ‘Bergenisation’ that constitutes the continuum. In hypothesising it, we are in fact looking at a rather different issue from the nativeness problem: that of degrees of dialect mixing. But is the continuum in any sense real for Bergeners? Is it unidimensional, or do different features pattern differently? Do Bergeners perceive rural migrant speakers as occupying a particular position on the scale? If not, the alternative is that they are perceived simply as being different by a certain amount from the Bergen dialect, but not along any particular scale. This would signify that the Bergeners are not sure of the origin of the speakers. As it happens, rather strong stereotypes are associated with people from a particular group of rural districts to the north and west of Bergen, to such an extent that Bergeners actually have their own derogatory term for them, stril (Kerswill 1994: 30–1; Kleiven 1972, 1974; Gullestad 1975: 256). Over the centuries, there has been much ill-feeling between Bergeners and the rural ‘Strils’ because of the great economic and social differences that existed (though these feelings have decreased a lot since the early 1970s). This means that there has been a strong awareness of Stril speech in Bergen, and that one would expect Bergeners to recognise it when they hear it. The perception test to be presented below tests two separate questions: 1.

2.

What conditions does a speaker have to fulfil in order to be accepted as a ‘native’ Bergener? Is there evidence of discreteness in Bergeners’ acceptance of a sample as native or not native, or is this acceptance a rather gradual affair? One would expect ‘discreteness’ in these judgements to be associated with low tolerance, and ‘gradualness’ with high tolerance in the Bergeners’ ‘nativeness’ judgements. Are Bergeners able to detect different degrees of dialect mixing in the speech of Stril migrants? If they can, we have some evidence at least for a ‘dialect difference metric’. Because of the strong external motivation for a Stril-Bergen distinction, this is probably also evidence that the perceived differences are placed along a StrilBergen continuum of the type we have hypothesised. If we find that Bergeners cannot tell the difference, then either we have got the wrong linguistic measure or the continuum is irrelevant.

A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’?

4.

155

A perception test

Table 10.1 lists some of the most important differences between the Stril and Bergen dialects. In particular, there are a large number of morpho-lexical differences, covering much of the morphology and most function words. There are also low-level phonological differences, as well as differences in phonological inventory and in suprasegmentals. For the test tape, nine voices were selected, differentiated by their ‘Bergenisation’ as determined by their use of these features. At the two extremes were a native Bergener and a Stril speaker who was still resident in her native district. In between were three speakers who claimed to have native or near-native command of the Bergen dialect and four Table 10.1. Key differences between Stril and Bergen dialects (beginning). Stril (rural dialects)

Bergen (urban dialect)

1. Nouns — definite article 4 classes, 3 grammatical genders:

2 classes, 2 grammatical genders:

/kop6n/ ‘the cup’ (masculine)

/kop6n/ ‘the cup’ (common gender)

/çy˜r7/ ‘the cow’ (‘strong’ feminine)

/çy˜r6n/ ‘the cow’ (common gender)

/vi˜su/ ‘the song’ (‘weak’ feminine)

/vi˜s6n/ ‘the song’ (common gender)

/h}˜s6/ ‘the house’ (neuter)

/h}˜s6/ ‘the house (neuter)

2. Nouns — plural forms Indefinite

Definite

masc. & fem. (2 classes):

Indefinite

Definite

Common gender (1 class):

-/"/

-/"n6/ (mainly m.)

-/6r/

-/6n6/

-/6/

-/6na/ (mainly f.)

-/6r/

-/6n6/

neuter: Ø

neuter: -/7/, -/6n"/ (younger)

Ø, -/6r/

3. Verbs Infinitive suffix: /"/ /skri˜v"/ ‘write’

Infinitive suffix: /6/ /skri˜v6/

Present tense of ‘weak’ verbs 3 classes: /k"st", çø˜r6, t7˜l/ (‘throw, drive, count’)

One class: /k"st6r, çø˜r6r, t7l6r/

No suffix on present tense of ‘strong’ verbs /ç7˜m, skri˜v/ (‘come, write’)

Suffix /6r/ /kom6r, skri˜v6r/

-/6n6/

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Table 10.1. (continued) 4. Function words Pronouns Most are lexically different in Stril and Bergen dialects, e.g.: /hu˜, d":, me˜, hedn", de˜, d7ir"/ (‘she, it, we, her (poss.), you (pl.), their’)

/hun, de˜, vi˜, hun6s, dok6r, di˜6s/ The Bergen dialect forms /hun6s, dok6r, di˜6s/ vary with Standard bokmål /h7n6s, de˜r6, de˜r6s/ (Nesse 1994)

Prepositions and adverbs Most are lexically distinct, e.g.: /mydlu, jø˜nu, jo˜, to˜, fro˜/ (‘between, through, at, of, from’)

/m7lom, j7nom, hus, "˜v, fr"˜/

5. Content words There are lexical (non-predictable) differences in much basic vocabulary, e.g.: /g}˜t, 7}", v7rt"/ (‘boy, eye, become’)

/g}t, ø˜g6, bli˜/

6. Morphophonemics Velar-palatal alternation, e.g.: /fl7k/, /fl7ç6n/ (‘spot, the spot’) /v7g/, /v7K6n/ (‘wall, the wall’)

Absence of velar-palatal alternation: /fl7k/, /fl7k6n/ /v7g/, /v7g6n/

7. Vowels 10–13 short and long vowels, depending on dialect 8 short vowels, 9 long vowels and speaker’s age 8. Consonants (main differences) /ç/: [cç]; in connected speech: [ç] /r/: [r, n, p] (people born before c. 1950) [t] (people born after c. 1950)

[ç] [t]

9. Suprasegmentals The realisation of the two Norwegian tonemes or word accents is different in Stril and Bergen dialects, particularly in toneme 2 polysyllables (as below). Some Stril dialects lack the tonemic distinction altogether. (For fuller discussion, see Kerswill (1994: 83–90).) TONEME 1: påleggja ‘compel’:

TONEME 2: pålegget ‘the sandwich filler’:

A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’?

157

speakers with different degrees of what might be called ‘morpho-lexical Bergenisation’, as measured by an index. On the tape, the voices were sequenced in such a way that the difference between adjacent voices was as large as possible. At the same time, a further hypothesis was tested: that a person is not able to acquire native competence in a new dialect after the ‘critical age for language acquisition’ (Lenneberg 1967). This was approached by taking, as two of the voices, two different samples from the speech of one person who had moved to Bergen at the age of 16, using extracts from her ‘Stril’ guise and from her ‘Bergen’ guise; she claimed that her Bergen guise was usually taken to be the ‘real thing’ — a claim that is eminently testable. Each of the nine samples lasted for about a minute, and there was a pause between each. The samples consisted of very short excerpts of speech strung together, in the hope that this would reduce the judges’ exploitation of content-related cues to the origins of the speakers. The judges were 37 people from Bergen and the urbanised parts of the immediately surrounding area. Eight of them (seven adults and one adolescent) were resident in London, while the remaining 29 were adolescents aged 15 to 18 on an English language summer course in Brighton.1 They were given a score sheet (see Appendix) in the form of a 6 by 9 matrix. The six columns had the following headings, written in Norwegian: 1. Native Bergener

2. Almost, but 3. Stril mixed not quite Bergen with a large dialect amount of Bergen dialect

4. Stril mixed with a medium amount of Bergen dialect

5. Stril mixed with a small amount of Bergen dialect

6. “Pure” Stril

The task was to put a cross, in the appropriate row for each voice, under the heading they thought best described the voice. At the same time, the judges were asked to indicate, if they could, what factors had influenced their choice. After the end of the test, they were asked to fill in some details on their social background on the bottom of the sheet.

5.

Results

5.1 Agreement between judges Before we can say anything about the results, we need to know if the judges agree amongst themselves in their ratings. We can do this by calculating Kendall’s coefficient of concordance;2 this figure turned out to be high (W = .8087), giving a significance level of better than 0.0001. This means that the judges showed a very high degree of agreement, and we can go on to analyse the data further. The next step is to look for systematic differences in the behaviour of the judges, despite the homogeneity indicated by the coefficient of concordance. Earlier, I implied that not all the judges were from Bergen itself. This may be relevant to the way in which they perform the judgements; indeed, in an English study, Kerswill and Williams (this volume, chapter 11) demonstrate that judges’ social networks and regional origins can be crucial. To test for any effect that this might have, the 31 adolescent judges were divided

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into two groups according to the following criteria, on the basis of the information they had been asked for on the answer sheet: 1. 2.

Those brought up in Bergen, with neither parent from the Stril districts (n = 14); this gave the most nearly native Bergen group. The rest (n = 17).

One might hypothesise that Group 1 would be more able to detect small deviations from the Bergen dialect, and that this would show up in the ratings for the marginal voices. However, applying a series of Mann-Whitney tests to compare the two groups’ ratings of each of the 9 voices did not yield a significant difference for any of the voices. We have to conclude, then, that what seemed to be the best motivated criterion, based on the information to hand, for dividing the judges has no effect on their performance. From now on, I shall treat the 37 judges as a single, relatively homogeneous group. 5.2 Correlation with an external measure of dialect mixing Next, we compare the ratings of each judge with an external measure of dialect mixing; this is the morpho-lexical index, which was alluded to earlier (for an explanation of the index, see Kerswill 1994: 72–5). The goal of this index is to capture the amount of mixing in such a way that frequently occurring features counted for more than others, while preventing topic-related fluctuations in the frequencies of individual features from influencing the outcome. The set of 9 ratings by each individual judge was compared to the morpho-lexical index scores for each voice by calculating Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient. For all except one of the judges, the correlation turned out to be significant; for all but 6 of the remaining 36, the correlation was highly significant (p < 0.01). This means that there is extremely strong agreement among the judges on something contained in the samples, and a major part of this is evidently variation on a scale of morpho-lexical Bergenisation. On the other hand, without looking more closely at the actual distributions, we are not really in a position to make an unequivocal claim that this scale accurately reflects the hypothesised Stril-Bergen continuum. We now turn to a discussion of these distributions. 5.3 Distribution of scores: the ‘Stril-Bergen continuum’ Figure 10.1 is a histogram of the ratings for each voice. The voices are arranged according to the rank of the mean of the ratings they received; their position on the tape is shown by the code number after the letter ‘V’. A score of exactly 1 would indicate that all the judges rated a particular voice as being that of a ‘native Bergener’, while a score of 6 would indicate that they all rated the voice as ‘pure Stril’. The fact that the scores range from 1.57 to 5.78 shows that the whole scale was used by the vast majority of judges. This suggests that the judges had no difficulty in hearing a difference between the voices. However, the plot of the frequency of each rating shown in Figure 10.2 suggests a certain polarisation of the scores, with high and low ratings being favoured over the

159

6

4.05

Mean rating

4.54

5

4.41

5.03

Maximally ‘Stril’

5.78

A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’?

4

Maximally ‘Bergen’

2.19

1.95

1.76

2

1.57

3

1 V4

V6

V8

V2

V7

V3

V9

V1

V5

Voice Figure 10.1. Mean ratings of the nine voices.

intermediate ones. There are at least two possible reasons for this. First, people may have a tendency to ‘pigeonhole’ others in terms of their social and linguistic characteristics; and second, the polarisation may correspond to something linguistic. Figure 10.3 again shows the ratings, this time plotted against the morpho-lexical index for the voices. It looks very much as if the polarisation of the ratings corresponds to a similar polarisation of the index, as can be seen from the presence of the cluster at the bottom left of the diagram and the (more widely spread) cluster at the top right. As we saw earlier, Mann-Whitney tests showed a significant association between each individual judge’s ratings and the morpholexical index; this diagram can be thought of as a visual representation of the association between the combined judges’ ratings and the index. Clearly, the polarisation corresponds to something linguistic, part of which is our measure of morpho-lexical differences. But does the index correspond specifically to a ‘Stril–Bergen continuum’? Arguably it does, for the following reason. The Bergen and Stril dialects obviously share many features, without which they would not be mutually intelligible. Therefore, if Bergeners are not aware of the specific characteristics of Stril dialects, then when they are asked to place a Stril speaker on our Stril–Bergen rating scale, one would expect them to take note of the shared features, and simply assign the voice a rating somewhere in the middle of the scale as a sign of their uncertainty about the specific dialect features. But this does not

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65

Frequency of ratings (n)

60

60

60

57 51

50

39

40 30 20 10 0

1

2

‘Native Bergener’

3

4

Rating categories

5

6 ‘Pure Stril’

Figure 10.2. Frequency distribution of ratings.

happen. Instead, the judges make use of the full rating scale in a way that correlates closely with the independent linguistic measure. Moreover, the morpho-lexically most ‘Stril’ speaker is almost consistently rated as ‘pure Stril’ (she gets a rating of 5.78); in other words, the judges’ perception of nativeness extends to recognising unmixed, native Stril speech as well. This score is corroborated qualitatively by the only two comments that any of the judges made on this speaker; these were ‘few words which are used in Bergen’ (‘få ord som brukes i Bergen’) and ‘completely Stril’ (‘helt stril’). The Stril– Bergen linguistic continuum has, therefore, some reality for Bergeners: the Stril rural dialects form a part of a Bergener’s passive competence, doubtless because of the close contacts between the rural districts and the city, leading to a high degree of familiarity. 5.4 The perception of nativeness As we have already seen, there are two distinct clusters of voices in Figure 10.3. These two clusters show rather different things, and the range of issues one might look at differs for each. For the ‘bottom left’ group, we can raise the issue of how the linguistic border between ‘native Bergen’ and ‘non-Bergen’ is constituted. For the ‘top right’ group, this is clearly not relevant, since none of the voices is perceived as remotely resembling

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Morpho-lexical index

80

V3 V9

60 V1

V7

40

20 V4 V6 V8 V2 0 1

2 Maximally ‘Bergen’

3

4 Mean rating

5

6 Maximally ‘Stril’

Figure 10.3. Correlation of mean ratings and the morpho-lexical index (from Kerswill 1993: 48). Note: The two circles group together voices whose ratings are not significantly different from each other.

Bergen dialect. Instead, for this group we can look at the perception of dialect mixing. We start by looking at the issue of nativeness in relation to the group on the bottom left. All the four voices are given much the same rating, near the Bergen end of the scale. Yet there are significant differences between the ratings — only the middle pair, which are enclosed by an ellipse, are not significantly differently rated. This means that, taken as a group, the judges are hearing something in these voices that differentiates them, and that the native Bergener (V4) is significantly more often rated a Bergener than even the most ‘Bergenised’ Stril speaker (V6). Since all four have a morpho-lexical index score of zero (that is, their speech contains a combination of marked Bergen features and shared features, with no marked Stril features), there are no cues on this level of linguistic analysis. What, then, are they latching onto? Looking at the judges’ written comments provides some clues. One judge wrote, of voice 6, that it ‘lacks the broadest Bergen intonation’ (‘mangler det helt brede, bergenske tonefallet’), while voice 8 had ‘broad intonation; only Bergen words’ (‘bredt tonefall, kun bergenske ord’). Even though the same judge actually wrote of voice 4, the genuine Bergener, that ‘a few words are not quite like the Bergen dialect’ (‘noen få ord er ikke helt bergenske’), her comments strongly suggest the importance of suprasegmental features. If we return to the last item in Table 10.1 (‘Suprasegmentals’), we get a clue as to what

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these features might be. In fact the three voices rated as most Bergen-like, 4, 6 and 8, consistently use the Bergen pattern in polysyllabic toneme 2 words, while all the rest, including V2, use the Stril pattern (this is discussed in greater detail in Kerswill 1994: 94–8). We must, of course, assume that segmental phonetic differences may have had some effect, though the most important consonantal variables, those contained in /r/ and /ç/ (see Table 10.1), consistently had Bergen realisations in these four voices. The results show that we must reject the idea of the ‘categorical’ perception of native Bergen and non-Bergen dialect, because all of the four most Bergen-like voices are perceived as natives by some and as non-native by others — and this includes the native Bergen voice. This fact alone means that there is no clear-cut distinction, at least in people’s perception, between Bergen and non-Bergen dialect. The results also suggest that the criteria that people use are morpho-lexical, suprasegmental and (probably) low-level phonetic; I would suggest that, when there are very great morpho-lexical differences, these are more salient than other types of difference. Segmental and suprasegmental differences come more to the fore when the morpho-lexis does not differentiate particular voices. A case in point would be the perception of V2 as significantly less ‘Bergen’ than V4, V6 or V8: her toneme realisations are measurably different from theirs (her intonation (‘tonefall’) was specifically mentioned by one judge). Yet, even when she is compared to speakers who use a relatively small proportion of Stril morpho-lexical features (V7 and V1), she receives a very much higher ‘Bergen’ rating than they do — most probably because of the complete absence of these features in her speech. Later, we shall explore how segmental and suprasegmental features can nevertheless counterbalance those on the morpho-lexical level. Although agreement on the identification of the ‘true’ Bergener does not reach 100 percent, there is nonetheless a small but significant difference between the identification of his voice and that of V8, the most Bergenised Stril migrant. The judges appear to be sensitive to extremely fine pronunciation differences (even a close examination of V8’s toneme realisations did not reveal any differences from the Bergen pattern: see Kerswill 1994: 150–2). The fact that careful phonetic analysis cannot easily reveal the pronunciation cues to the identifications means that the Bergen speech community must be seen as ‘perceptually focused’, in the sense discussed in Kerswill & Williams (this volume) (see also Le Page 1978 for a discussion of the wider notion of ‘focusing’). This claim, of course, implies that there are communities which are less ‘perceptually focused’, and that the position of Bergen as ‘focused’ must therefore be seen in a comparative light. An approach to this comparison is provided by Kerswill & Williams (this volume). It appears that, in England, there are great differences in the degree of perceptual focusing in different towns, these differences being related to social and demographic factors, especially mobility, and the linguistic factors of dialect levelling and rapid language change. The comparison also tells us about the validity of the ‘speech community’ notion itself, since it may turn out that the degree to which it can be defined on linguistic criteria alone will vary considerably.

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5.5 An excursus: Second-dialect acquisition We turn briefly to the issue of second-dialect acquisition. This study provides evidence that an adult can acquire a different dialect with native-like fluency — so long as the criterion we apply is an acceptance by a majority of native listeners. (Making this proviso enables us to allow for Payne’s (1976) finding that some phonological rules of a dialect are not learned by people who moved to a new dialect area even at a very young age.) V8 and V1 were spoken by the same person, who had moved to Bergen at the age of 16. In V8, she was speaking what she herself called bergensk (‘Bergen dialect’), in V1 stril (‘Stril dialect’). She maintained that, when she was speaking bergensk, nobody could detect that she was not a Bergener. This is in very large measure confirmed by the judges’ ratings. For V8 (‘bergensk’), 20 of the 37 judges gave a rating of ‘native Bergener’; this compares with 27 native ratings for the ‘real’ native, V4. For V6, who claimed not to speak native-like Bergen dialect, the judges gave 14 native ratings, while for V2, they gave only 4. (See Chambers 1992 and Kerswill 1996b for a fuller discussion of seconddialect acquisition.) 5.6 The perception of dialect mixing Let us now consider the results for the five voices on the right-hand side of Figure 10.3. Here, we are dealing with the perception of degrees of dialect mixing. As can be seen, the correlation of the judgements and the morpho-lexical index is relatively poor, since there is a wide spread; on the other hand, the slope is in the expected direction, and the most ‘Stril’ speaker, V5, is very consistently judged as ‘pure Stril’. Why is there such a discrepancy between the ratings and the morpho-lexical index? The answer to be proposed here is complex. First, we look at the three voices whose ratings were not significantly different from each other (these are enclosed by the righthand ellipse). The distribution of the ratings for each of these is shown in Figures 10.4a–c. Looking at the distributions for V3 and V7 (Figures 10.4a and 10.4b), we can see that they are very similar, with a strong representation of the intermediate-to-high Stril ratings of 4 and 5. On the other hand, few judges rate them as ‘pure’ Stril, and none thought they were Bergeners. Despite this great similarity in ratings, their morpho-lexical indexes are very different (83.3 for V3, 39.3 for V7). Looking back at Figure 10.3, there appears on the other hand to be a good correspondence between ratings and indices for V3 and V9. But if we examine the distributions of the ratings, we see that they are rather different: although the range of ratings is the same, there is a much more even distribution between them for V9, suggesting greater disagreement between the judges than for V3 or V7. Before suggesting reasons why judges might disagree, I will consider how they arrive at their impressions of a speech sample on the basis of the linguistic evidence presented to them. How do we account for the mismatch between ratings and morpho-lexical index? The mismatch suggests that the judges are also attending to features other than the morpholexis. This seems likely to be the case from a comparison of the ratings for V3 and V7; for these voices, the distribution of ratings is quite similar. The great discrepancy in the

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16

a. Distribution of ratings for voice V3

14

No. of ratings

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

16

1

2

3 4 Ratings

5

6

b. Distribution of ratings for voice V7

14

No. of ratings

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

16

1

2

3 4 Ratings

5

6

c. Distribution of ratings for voice V9

14

No. of ratings

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

1

2

3 4 Ratings

5

Figure 10.4. Frequency distribution of ratings for three intermediate voices.

6

A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’?

165

index suggests that, in the case of V7, a high frequency of Stril features on levels other than the morpho-lexical may somehow be compensating for the low morpho-lexical index. (If we instead take V3 as our example, the converse would of course be the case.) This could lead to an equalisation in the overall percept of ‘Strilness’ or ‘Bergenness’ in the two voices. An examination of the voices in the extracts gives some indication that this might indeed be the case. Table 10.2 shows some of the individual dialect markers used by V3 and V7 (‘dialect markers’ referring to features that are unique to one of the two dialects, and not shared or ‘unmarked’). All of these except /r/, /ç/ and the toneme 2 realisation contribute to the morpho-lexical index shown at the top of the table, and it comes as no surprise to learn from the table that V3 greatly outstrips V7 in the number and consistency of her Stril features. The anomaly we must explain is why, despite his low index of 39.3, V7 is nevertheless perceived as predominantly ‘Stril’, to virtually the same extent as V3. The answer may lie in the salience (Trudgill 1986) of some of the Stril features he uses. This undoubtedly applies to V7’s realisation of /r/ as [n], which is part of the Bergeners’ stereotype of Stril speech: it is notable that in this case it is V3 who does not use the marked Stril variant. A comment on V7 by one of the teenage judges gives a further clue: according to her, his ‘intonation wasn’t quite Bergen’ (‘tonefallet var ikke helt bergensk’), suggesting that she recognised the relatively high Bergen content of his morpho-lexis. While /r/ and intonation are quasi-immanent features, a comment by another judge suggests the importance of single items in forming an impression of a dialect: he noted that V7 uses the Stril form /ulj"/ of the word olje ‘oil’, as against Bergen /ulj6/. It is as if V7’s use of these Stril features compensates for his low use of Stril morpho-lexis, while V3’s use of the relatively unmarked [t] ‘counterbalances’ her high morpho-lexical index, giving rise to two percepts which, to our judges, are very similar to each other. However, it must be emphasised that it is difficult to prove that particular features contribute individually to the perception of a dialect, especially when the researcher is using authentic speech as test materials. In compensation, the method adopted here suggests that different constellations of features coming together in different voices can form a range of percepts that listeners evaluate as being in some sense equivalent. In our specific case, two voices with different characteristics are placed on the same point on an urban-rural speech scale that seems to have some reality in the Bergen region. As far as the listeners themselves are concerned, they are mainly (but not entirely) unaware of the particular features involved; instead, dialects are perceived as entities, and it is individual features in combination that lead to the overall percept. We return briefly to the ratings for V9 as compared to those for V3. I noted earlier that, while the two voices had virtually identical average ratings and morpho-lexical indices, this belies the fact that the distributions of their ratings is different, with a more even spread of scores for V9 (compare Figures 10.4c and 10.4a). It turns out that, while the index score was the same, other variables were different. This is most obviously true of two of the frequent phonetic variables, /ç/ and /r/, as shown in Table 10.3 (for clarity, the table repeats the information for V3 given in Table 10.2). We cannot easily demonstrate that these sounds were specifically used in the attribution process. However, it is likely

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Table 10.2. Stril and Bergen dialect features used by voices V3 and V7 on the test tape. Voice V3: female aged 34

Voice V7: male aged 45

Morpho-lexical index

83.3

39.3

Variable

Variant used

Stril or Bergen?

Variant used

Stril or Bergen?

fem. Definite suffix in tida ‘the time’

/ti˜7/

Stril

/ti˜7/

Stril

stem form of verb: bu ‘live’

/b}˜/

Stril

/b}˜/

Stril

Realisation of toneme 2

high-fall

Stril

high-fall

Stril

/jFk/ /j7k/

Bergen Stril

past tense verb form: gjekk ‘went’ noun plural suffix

-/"/, -/6/

Stril

-/6r/ -/"/

Bergen Stril

vi ‘we’

/me˜/

Stril

/vi˜/

Bergen/unmarked

/7t6rmid"˜g6n/ Bergen /ve\6n"/ Stril

velar-palatal alternation before article suffix in ettermiddagen ‘the afternoon’ and vingene ‘the wings’ palatal for velar in begge /b7K6/ ‘both’ and lenge ‘a long /l7\6/ time’

Stril Stril

past tense verb form: jobba ‘worked’

/job"/

Stril

past tense verb form: voks /voks/ ‘grew’

Stril

/r/

[t]

/ç/

[ç]

/job6t/

Bergen

Bergen/unmarked

[n]

Stril

Bergen/unmarked

[ç]

Bergen/unmarked

NOTE: Features marked as ‘Bergen/unmarked’ are either used by younger Stril dialect speakers (in the case of [t] for /r/) or else they occur in a minority of Stril dialects (in the case of /vi˜/ for vi and [ç] for /c/).

that they contributed to the discrepancy in the spread of ratings, with raters differing in the degree of importance they attached to them. Given the range and complexity of cues, even in short extracts, it is not surprising that listeners do not attend to the same cues in forming an impression of a dialect. We should therefore expect a lack of consistency in raters’ judgements, such as those we have found for V9 and in this study generally.

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A DIALECT WITH ‘GREAT INNER STRENGTH’? Table 10.3. Variants of two phonetic variables used by V3 and V9. Voice V3: female aged 34

Voice V9: male aged 41

Morpho-lexical index:

83.3

83.4

Variable

Variant used

Stril or Bergen?

/r/ /ç/

[t] [ç]

Bergen/unmarked [n] Bergen/unmarked [cç]

Variant used

Stril or Bergen? Stril Stril

5.7 The attribution process At several points in the preceding discussion, we have come up against discrepancies in the relationship between the linguistic index and the ratings on the one hand, and differences in the spread of ratings on the other. I suggested earlier that the judges formed a homogeneous group with regard to their ratings; despite this, individual differences might have been masked, and these might be what is reflected in the disagreements between the judges. There is not space here to explore these differences further, but the reader is referred to Kerswill and Williams (Chapter 11, this volume) for a treatment of them in terms of a number of social and social-psychological parameters. For present purposes, I shall briefly outline a model of the process by which the judges might have arrived at their ratings, bringing out the complexity of the process. First, we consider the range of features that might be attended to. In the specific case discussed here, these include the following: – – – – – –

Suprasegmentals (e.g., toneme realisations, but also characteristic dialect intonation) Sub-phonemic differences (e.g., /r/ and /ç/, but also several vowels) Lexical items and function words whose form is marked for dialect (e.g., /ulj"/, but also a number of others) Differences in inflexional morphology (which compose much of the morpho-lexical index) Syntactic differences (e.g., use of vera ‘be’ as an auxiliary in some Stril dialects, instead of the more widespread ha ‘have’) Voice quality

In addition, we can mention the following features which are not normally associated with dialect differences, but which contribute to the formation of an impression of the speaker’s personality and background: – – – – –

Choice of speech styles more or less associated with either the oral or the written mode (reflected in register of vocabulary and in syntactic complexity and completeness) Articulatory explicitness Speaking rate Pitch range Topic

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Some of these factors are explored by Williams, Garrett and Coupland (1999) in their social psychological exploration of Welsh teenagers’ recognition of and attitudes to regional accents of Welsh English. As for the process of attribution itself, it may be direct or mediated. A direct attribution process involves the identification of criterial dialect characteristics, and the direct inference that the speaker is a user of that dialect. The direct perception of dialect mixing would simply be the assessment of the proportion of features from Dialect A and Dialect B. This is essentially the approach of linguists, but there is evidence from judges’ comments in this study that lay listeners can also apply it. Mediated attribution, on the other hand, is multifaceted. One aspect is related to the issues discussed by the proponents of the Matched Guise method (Lambert, Hodgson & Fillenbaum 1960), in which subjects are shown to be willing to attempt to judge social and personal characteristics of speakers on the basis of accent or language alone. Applying this insight to dialect recognition, we can interpret a judge’s strategy as follows: ‘The speaker sounds to me as if she or he has the following social and personal characteristics. Somebody with these characteristics speaks language variety X’. Evaluations of personal and social characteristics project back onto the linguistic characteristics, thereby influencing the linguistic judgements the judges are asked to make. This works in the following way: for example, a slow speaking rate may traditionally and stereotypically be associated with Strils, and Strils may be stereotypically considered ‘rural’. If this is so, we would get one (or both) of the following associations, in which the attribution of linguistic characteristics is mediated by a social evaluation: (i) person speaks slowly ⇒ person is a Stril ⇒ person must speak Stril dialect (ii) person speaks slowly ⇒ person is rural ⇒ person is a Stril ⇒ person must speak Stril dialect As already mentioned, dialect perception is mediated not only by voice characteristics such as those mentioned in this section, but also the social and linguistic characteristics of the judges themselves (Kerswill & Williams this volume; Williams et al. 1999).

6.

Conclusion

We can draw the following conclusions from this study: 1.

2.

Linguistic criteria may be useful to the sociolinguist in delimiting a speech community. This is shown by the highly significant agreement between the judges on the degree to which a voice is Bergen-like, and by the highly significant, though not perfect, correlation with one particular external measure of ‘Bergenness’, the morpholexical index (Sections 5.1 and 5.2). Nonetheless, the judgements of ‘nativeness’ are relative, not absolute (Sections 2 and 5.4). This research shows that judgements in Bergen are relatively sharp compared to those in other communities, such as those in southern England. Judgement patterns lead to the conclusion that Bergen is ‘perceptually focused’.

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3.

4.

5.

6.

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Native listeners in Bergen can on the whole perceive degrees of mixing between Bergen dialect and another dialect, that of the ‘Stril’ districts, with which they are familiar. The fact that they can accurately identify unmixed, ‘pure’ Stril speech suggests that they are aware of a linguistic continuum specifically between these two dialects. This can be attributed to familiarity resulting from intensive contact resulting from (in the past) in-migration to the city and (in the present) out-migration to new residential districts in the countryside. There is fairly strong evidence that native-like competence in a new dialect can be acquired at least as late as the age of 16, that is, well after the ‘critical age for language acquisition’, and that this competence can be combined with code-switching (Section 5.5). In the perception of dialect mixing, morpho-lexical cues are utilised, though the extent varies between judges (Section 5.6). In speech production, morpho-lexical variation does not necessarily co-vary with that on other linguistic levels: there is evidence of a low index being compensated for by a high use of Stril dialect features on other levels to give a percept of a strongly rural speech variety. Conversely, a high index can be balanced by a low use of other Stril features to reduce the percept of a rural variety. Finally, the attribution process was shown to be complex, depending on a response to a complex set of linguistic and paralinguistic cues, and on the social characteristics of the judges.

Acknowledgments This article is a revised and expanded version of Kerswill (1982).

Notes 1. I am very grateful to Kari Bråtveit for running this experiment for me in Brighton, as well as for putting me in touch with Bergeners in London. 2. I would like to thank Dr P. Callow of the Cambridge University Computer laboratory for help with the statistical analysis presented in this article. All the tests were carried out using the package SPSS-X.

References Chambers, J. K. 1992. “Dialect acquisition.” Language 68: 673–705. Gullestad, Marianne. 1975. Livet i en gammel bydel. Analyse av rekruttering og sosial organisasjon i et eldre sentralt boligstrøk. Occasional Paper No. 14, Sosialantropologisk Institutt: University of Bergen. Kerswill, Paul. 1982. “Native dialect and dialect mixing in Bergen: a perception experiment.” Cambridge Papers in Phonetics and Experimental linguistics 1: 1–17.

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Kerswill, Paul. 1991. “Dialektkontakt i Bergen: Kan dagens innflyttere fortelle oss noe om en gammel prosess?” [Dialect contact in Bergen: can present-day in-migrants tell us anything about an old process?] In Storstadsspråk och storstadskultur i Norden, [Series: MINS, No. 34], Kjell J. Berge and Ulla-Brit Kotsinas (eds), 34–45. Stockholm: University of Stockholm. Kerswill, Paul. 1993. “Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: the role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(1): 33–56. Kerswill, Paul. 1994. Dialects converging: rural speech in urban Norway. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kerswill, Paul. 1996a. “Divergence and convergence of sociolinguistic structures in Norway and England.” Sociolinguistica 10: 90–104. Kerswill, Paul. 1996b. “Children, adolescents and language change.” Language Variation and Change 8: 177–202. Kerswill, Paul and Ann Williams. 2001. “Dialect recognition and speech community focusing in new and old towns in England: the effects of dialect levelling, demography and social networks.” Chapter 11 of this volume. Kleiven, Jo. 1972. Some stereotypes attached to social groups in the Bergen region — a preliminary study (Reports from the Institute of Psychology 1972 [8]). Bergen: University of Bergen. Kleiven, Jo. 1974. Social stereotypes elicited by linguistic differences — descriptive and evaluative aspects. (Reports from the Institute of Psychology 1974 [8]), Bergen: University of Bergen. Kolsrud, Sigurd. 1951. Nynorsken i sine målføre. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Republished in 1974. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lambert, Wallace, R. C. Hodgson, and S. Fillenbaum. 1960. Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60(1): 44- 51. Larsen, Amund B. and Gerhart Stoltz. 1911–12. Bergens bymål. Kristiania: Aschehoug. Lenneberg, Erik. 1967. Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Le Page, R. B. 1978. Projection, focusing, diffusion, or, steps towards a sociolinguistic theory of language, illustrated from the Sociolinguistic Survey of Multilingual Communities. [Occasional Paper No. 9 of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.] Trinidad: University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Also in York Papers in Linguistics 9: 9–32, 1980. Nesse, Agnete. 1994. Kollektiv og individuell variasjon i bergensdialekten. Talemål i Bergen 5. Bergen: Department of Nordic Languages and Literature, University of Bergen. Payne, Arvilla. 1976. The acquisition of the phonological system of a second dialect. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Rundhovde, Gunnvor. 1962. Målet i Hamre. Årbok for Universitetet i Bergen, University of Bergen. Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, Angie, Peter Garrett and Nikolas Coupland. 1999. “Dialect recognition.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Dennis Preston (ed.), 369–383. Amsterdam: Benjamins.



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Appendix Response sheet given to judges innfødt bergenser

nesten, men ikke helt bergensk

stril med et sterkt innslag av bergensk

stril med et middels innslag av bergensk

stril med et lite innslag av bergensk

“ren” stril

Stril mixed with a large amount of Bergen dialect

Stril mixed with a medium amount of Bergen dialect

Stril mixed with a small amount of Bergen dialect

“Pure” Stril

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Translation of response sheet: Native Bergener

Almost, but not quite Bergen dialect



C 11 Dialect Recognition and Speech Community Focusing in New and Old Towns in England The Effects of Dialect Levelling, Demography and Social Networks Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams

1.

Introduction

1.1 Folk linguistics and language variation and change In a recent article, Preston has made a plea for the systematic study of non-linguists’ opinions about language varieties to complement professional linguists’ insights about ‘scientifically discovered aspects of language structure and use’ (1996a: 72). His concern in that article is partly with implications for public policy, though, as we shall argue, such folklinguistic opinions also bear strongly on issues of language variation and change. Preston’s research on Americans’ perceptions of United States English dialect areas has enabled him to present both quantitative and ethnographic evidence of a range of social psychological and linguistic factors which influence folklinguistic awareness. If we assume that people’s awareness of a particular linguistic feature is related to its sociolinguistic patterning in a speech community, then Preston’s approach is of obvious value to sociolinguists investigating language variation. Indeed, the ‘modes of awareness’ he hypothesises (Availability, Accuracy, Detail and Control) seem to us to have the potential significantly to extend and deepen Trudgill’s notion of ‘salience’ (Trudgill 1986: 11). This article centres on just one means of collecting folklinguistic data: non-linguists’ identification of regional and/or sociolectal varieties presented on a test tape. Surprisingly, this procedure has been relatively neglected despite Preston’s plea for it (1989: 3), even though, as we hope to show, the evidence it provides is directly relevant to the understanding of language variation.

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1.2 Dialect recognition and the attribution of speakers to one’s own community A brief review of three dialect recognition studies will illustrate the range of possible links with language variation.1 Preston (1996b: 320–9) considered the extent to which nonlinguist respondents can differentiate between voices with regional phonology, but no lexical or grammatical cues as to their origin. Preston asked non-linguist Americans to allocate nine Eastern United States varieties to their correct positions on a north-south scale. The overall result was that, with the judgements pooled, listeners placed virtually all the voices correctly on this scale — even though in many cases the difference in the judges’ average ranking of adjacent locations was small. One particular pattern emerged which sheds light on the social psychology of variation. There were clear differences between a Michigan (northern) and an Indiana (central) group of judges: surprisingly, the Michigan judges did not differentiate the northern voices as clearly as did the Indiana judges, a finding which, Preston suggests, reflects the ‘unity of that territory’ as displayed in the hand-drawn dialect area maps produced by subjects from this region (1996b: 324). However, Preston does not explicitly consider the cause of the Michiganders’ apparently inferior discrimination abilities. It seems to us that the result may actually be a consequence of the Michiganders’ enthusiastic identification with a broad northern area, differentiated clearly from the South, such that the placement task is somehow downgraded when individual voices are perceived as belonging to in-group members, and thus deemed socially attractive. That this is a possibility is suggested by findings from the second study we consider: this is Williams, Garrett and Coupland’s (1999) exploration of Welsh teenagers’ recognition of and attitudes to regional accents of Welsh English as spoken by teenagers of the same age as themselves. Two voices from each of six locations were played to judges from the same six locations. An unsurprising result was that the teenagers were generally more successful at recognising voices from their own location than from elsewhere, and that overall recognition scores for individual voices were fairly low (ranging from 21% to 42%). However, individual voices varied greatly in terms of whether judges from the same locations as the voices could recognise them: the highest rate was 100%, the lowest 13.8%. Equally surprising was the fact that there were often considerable differences in recognition rates between two voices from the same location. Williams et al. find that, in general, it is the voices whose owners are perceived as ‘likeable’ and ‘a good laugh’, possibly due to the content of the narratives, which tend to be ‘claimed’ as belonging to the judge’s own regional group regardless of the actual provenance of the voice. They point to this as indicating the complexity of the dialect identification task; it is an example of a social psychological factor mediating between the ostensibly stimulus-based task (here, based on segmental and suprasegmental accent features) and the response. This type of explanation seems to throw additional light on Preston’s American findings, as we saw above — though we suggested that perceived in-group membership in itself had the power to make a voice ‘attractive’, perhaps as an effect separate from other possible (paralinguistic) features of the voice which, if Williams et al.’s conclusions are correct, might be relevant.

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The dialect recognition task we report in this article likewise presents two young voices from each research site, again with adolescent listeners. Additionally, we included older voices from the same locations. As we shall see, we too found differences in the recognition rates for voices from the same location. However, we adopt a different, but complementary angle in the interpretation of these differences: we examine the particular accent features of the voices, and those voices’ relation to the processes of dialect levelling and speech community focusing. The outcomes of the American and Welsh studies also indicate that the dialect identification technique can help in the interpretation of variation and change in speech communities. The key notion, already alluded to above, is focusing (Le Page 1978): a speech community is said to be focused if there is relatively little variation and if the variation that remains is clearly patterned. Such communities are socially stable, and linguistic change is likely to be slow. ‘Diffuse’ communities, on the other hand, do not have such clear norms, reasons for this usually lying in a more volatile social structure. (See Kerswill 1993 for an example of a diffuse in-migrant speech community interacting with a focused urban speech community.) The link between focusing and perceptual dialectology is this: in a focused community, one would expect members to be more successful at recognising other members’ language varieties than the case would be in diffuse communities. It was as an attempt to test this hypothesis that the third study was conceived. Kerswill’s investigation of dialect perception in the Bergen region of Norway aimed to investigate the focusing of the Bergen speech community by testing native Bergeners’ sensitivity both to very small and to somewhat greater deviations from canonical Bergen speech (Kerswill this volume, briefly reported in Kerswill 1993). The study used a test tape containing the voices of rural migrants from the immediate hinterland who had accommodated in varying degrees to the Bergen urban dialect, along with a native Bergen speaker. The results showed that not only could the Bergen judges tell the difference (to a statistically significant degree) between the most ‘accommodated’ rural speaker and the genuine Bergen voice, but they could also rank the remaining speakers in terms of their degree of ‘ruralness’, the ranking being identical to that established by applying a dialect index based on a range of morpholexical features. It was suggested that the Bergen speech community is exceptionally focused in that the phonetic criteria for ‘membership’ are extremely subtle and yet salient, though they could not be picked up by a careful phonetic comparison of the Bergener and the apparently fully ‘accommodated’ rural speaker on the tape. The Bergen study did not provide any comparative data to evaluate either the method or the conclusions reached. The study we will be reporting partially provides this comparison, as well as taking account of the findings of the American and Welsh studies. 1.3 Mediating factors affecting dialect recognition On the face of it, a dialect recognition task is simply a test of sensitivity to linguistic (usually restricted to phonetic) differences; this is true whether or not the task involves ‘own-community’ or ‘other-community’ identification (as with the three studies we have

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just reported, ours tests both of these). Yet, as we have seen, the recognition process will be mediated by a number of other factors, including: 1. 2.

3. 4.

The life experience of the judges (relating especially to whether their social networks are close-knit or open, and to whether they as individuals have been socially and geographically mobile). The absolute linguistic differences between the varieties being offered for recognition, and the differences between these and other varieties known to the judges. This factor will itself be affected by the salience of the features differentiating them or, to use Preston’s (1996a) terminology, their availability for perception and comment, and the accuracy and detail with which they are perceived. The sociolinguistic maturity of the judges (relating mainly but not exclusively to age — see Kerswill 1996a, Williams et al. 1999: 370–1). The subjectively perceived social attractiveness of the speaker due to paralinguistic factors (voice quality, tempo, pitch range, content) which one might presume to be unrelated to the identification of the varieties.

Ideally, a study of dialect recognition should either test, or control for these factors. The present study tests the first (the life experience of the judges) by systematically varying judges by social class/social network and town. It also tests the second (the effect of linguistic differences), but in a qualitative way. It explicitly controls for the third (sociolinguistic maturity) by using judges of the same age. The fourth (the perceived social attractiveness of the voices due to paralinguistic features) can be approached by the use of a questionnaire, as it was in the Welsh study, though this does not answer the question of which features actually influence the perception. Alternatively, the Matched Guise technique (Lambert, Hodgson and Fillenbaum 1960) may be used. In the present study, the latter was rejected because we felt it essential to preserve the naturalness of the material presented. Instead, we focused on the phonetic features contained in the authentic extracts which the subjects heard.

2.

Dialect recognition in urban England

2.1 The context of the dialect recognition task 2.1.1 The Dialect Levelling project In Britain, as in other European countries, there has been a steady trend towards the loss of regional dialects, resulting in new, compromise varieties combining some of the original dialect/accent features, some new forms, and some forms adopted from a relevant standard. These varieties have a geographical spread that is greater than the old regional dialects, and in a few cases they function as regional standards rather than completely ousting the old dialects. In all cases, they are the result of dialect levelling — the reduction in regionally marked forms and the adoption of regionally more widespread features.2 It was in order to explore the linguistic and social mechanisms behind dialect

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levelling that the project The role of adolescents in dialect levelling3 was set up. An important facet of the project was the exploration of subjective factors affecting people whose dialect is involved in levelling, part of this investigation being the dialect recognition task reported here. Before discussing the task, we place it in the context of the wider study. The project had the following premises: 1. 2. 3. 4.

In areas of high population movement, there may be rapid changes in dialect and accent features, including levelling. The speech community is diffuse. Membership of a close-knit, stable social network with strong local ties leads to linguistic conformity (i.e., not ‘stepping out of line’). This inhibits change, including that manifesting as levelling. The speech community is focused. The distance of a town from a national metropolis (in this case London) is inversely proportional to the degree to which the town adopts linguistic features from that metropolis (the gravity model: see Trudgill 1983). Language change is most visible through the comparison of teenage language with older adults’ speech and with the speech of younger children.

Additionally, the project built on Milroy and Milroy’s (1992) contention that, in urban societies, there are clear differences in the social networks contracted by people of different social classes. The more privileged middle classes tend to have ties outside their immediate neighbourhoods and families: they are often geographically mobile, and are likely to have been socially mobile, too. Working-class people, especially in times of adverse economic circumstances, tend to have closer ties with family, neighbours and work colleagues. The difference is reflected in speech, in that middle-class people use less localised and more standardised varieties than do working-class people. Conversely, working-class speech is more likely than middle-class speech to symbolise a local identity. Despite these differences, both middle-class and working-class speech undergoes change, including levelling, and the project aimed to document this. We also tested the hypothesis that geographical mobility and open networks (both held to be middle-class traits: Milroy and Milroy 1992) affect the speed and direction of change (towards forms which are both more standard and less localised) independently of social class. We did this by investigating (1) both middle-class and working-class teenagers, and (2) towns which differ greatly in terms of the overall degree of mobility of their populations. Two of the towns chosen, Reading and Milton Keynes, are about the same distance from London (c. 70 kms.) and have similar population figures, economies and commuting patterns. (See Figure 11.1 for a location map.) Both are prosperous with low unemployment. Crucially, they differ in their recent demographic histories. Parts of Reading have large, stable populations with strong local ties, while the town as a whole has seen considerable in-migration. By contrast, Milton Keynes was designated only in 1967, and since then has seen a massive, and continuing, population increase due to in-migration, mainly from the south-east of England. The third town, Hull (official name: Kingstonupon-Hull), contrasts with Reading and Milton Keynes in its distance from London (340 kms.), in its geographical isolation on the north-east coast in East Yorkshire, and in its

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Æalsfkjlakjsflj •

SCOTLAND Newcastle-upon-Tyne Durham Middlesbrough YORKSHIRE Kingston-upon-Hull Manchester

Liverpool

ENGLAND

WALES

Milton Keynes

Bristol

Reading London

SOMERSET DEVON CORNWALL

Figure 11.1. Map showing location of places mentioned in this article.

declining industries reflected both in high unemployment and falling population figures. Even more than in Reading, a large proportion of its inhabitants have strong local ties. (See Table 11.1 for a demographic summary of the three towns.) We expect, then, that dialect levelling (based on the rise of London and general south-eastern features) will be further advanced in Milton Keynes than in Reading, that changes in Hull will be less rapid and will follow a relatively independent course, and that the use of levelled and standard features will be greater among the middle-class teenagers in all three towns. Some of the results of the project are reported in Kerswill and Williams (1997, 2000a) and Williams and Kerswill (1999).

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Table 11.1. Summary of demographic characteristics of Reading, Milton Keynes and Hull New Town?

Close to London?

Population 1991

Population change 1981–91

% skilled Unemployment* manual + unskilled*

Hull

no

no (340 kms)

254,000

−8.7%

63.0%

Reading

no

yes (60 kms)

129,000 (not counting Wokingham)

−5.1% 42.8% (increase with Wokingham added)

4.25%

Milton Keynes

yes, founded yes 1967 (pop. (70 kms) 44,000)

176,000

+39.2%

4.75%

44.9%

12.02%

*1991 Census, taken from BBC Constituency Guide 1997.

2.1.2 Dialect recognition and dialect levelling: Hypotheses As suggested earlier, it is likely that members of focused speech communities will recognise each other on the basis of voice samples more easily than people whose communities are diffuse. This expectation can be extended to dialect levelling: speakers whose communities are undergoing rapid levelling will find this kind of ‘own-community recognition’ more problematic than speakers from communities not subject to levelling. However, as we have seen, recognition is mediated by several other factors, both social psychological and linguistic (see 2.1). Thus, we arrive at the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Own-community recognition will be better among people with strong local ties (working-class judges in Reading and Hull will be more successful than middle class groups in the same towns, but working-class Milton Keynes judges will not have the same advantage). Hypothesis 2: Own-community recognition will be better in towns with relatively little mobility (Hull > Reading > Milton Keynes). Hypothesis 3: Own-community recognition of an accent with strongly localised phonetic features will be better than that of accents without such distinctive features. In the present study, this potentially confounds, or at least interacts with Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 4: Recognition of an accent from outside the judge’s own community depends on how familiar that accent is to the listener (familiarity being a function of a number of disparate factors, especially personal contacts and the broadcast media). We refer to this as the familiarity hypothesis. Hypothesis 5: To judge from the experience of Williams et al. (1999), different voices from the same town (even if there is no age difference between the speakers) will not be recognised at the same rate by members of that speech community. Reasons for this are likely to be complex: in this article, we focus mainly on the linguistic features of voices.

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Hypothesis 6: We extend Hypothesis 5 by further hypothesising that recognition rates will be influenced by the perceived age of the speakers: own-community speakers close to the teenage judges’ age will be more successfully identified than speakers who are significantly older. This arises mainly from the assumption that a judge is more likely to recognise an accent similar to his or her own than an accent that is different. Linguistic differences within a community can be a function of age, resulting from rapid language change, and these can lead to older voices not being recognised by younger judges. However, other things (such as phonetic features) being equal, an accent is likely to be ‘claimed’ if it is perceived that the speaker is of a similar age to the listener, and hence potentially socially attractive. 2.1.3 Subjects, materials, methods The dialect recognition task was conducted as one component of a language-related discussion which formed part of the fieldwork for the project. The subjects attended one of six schools, two in each of Hull, Milton Keynes and Reading. The selection of the schools was made according to the criteria for the main project: since we wanted to investigate dialect levelling among people with either locally-based, close-knit networks or more open, less local networks, we selected schools whose pupils could be expected to conform to one of these two broad categories. In Hull and Reading, this meant targeting schools in mainly low-income districts with high continuity of population and schools in middle-income districts with a high proportion of incomers. In Milton Keynes, there are no districts with high continuity of population: this gave us the opportunity to study levelling among high mobility, low-income groups (see Kerswill and Williams 1997). An important corollary of this procedure is that the two groups are likely to be either broadly working class, using local accents, or middle class with less localised forms of speech. For ease of reference, we refer to the two groups as ‘WC’ and ‘MC’, respectively. 24 group interviews were conducted, 22 by AW and two by PK, following an agreed format. The groups were composed of four (very occasionally five or six) 14–15 year olds, each of whom had previously taken part in an individual sociolinguistic interview with the same fieldworker. A total of 96 adolescents took part in the project, a figure which gives 32 in each town and 16 in each school. The subjects participated in a number of activities designed to tap their language awareness. These began with the dialect recognition task reported here, followed by a questionnaire inviting discussion of regional grammatical features, and a general linguistic discussion covering issues such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ speech and correction by parents or teachers. For the dialect recognition task, subjects in each town were presented with taped samples of ten speakers, chosen so as to be both locally relevant to the judges while still allowing us to compare identifications of some of the same speakers across the three towns. Thus, three different, but substantially overlapping tapes were prepared (six voices being shared), the extracts being taken from interviews we had conducted previously or which had been conducted for us, or which had been recorded off-air. We ensured the samples contained phonetic features characteristic of their regional origins. In each case, the sample was an extract from a personal narrative. The tapes were composed of the voices given in Table 11.2, coded by sex and age as

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DIALECT RECOGNITION AND SPEECH COMMUNITY FOCUSING Table 11.2. Voices presented to judges in Hull, Reading and Milton Keynes. Tape presented to judges in:

Voices

Hull

1 Hull F83

2 3 Milton Durham Keynes M55 F13

4 5 Middles- Reading brough F50 F17

6 Hull M9

7 Public school M14

8 Yorks. East Riding M80

9 London M13

10 Hull M15

Reading

1 Reading M82

2 Hull M15

3 London F35

4 Reading M15

5 Durham M55

6 London M13

7 Public school M14

8 Reading F50

9 Milton Keynes F13

10 Reading F18

Milton Keynes

1 Milton Keynes F82

2 Hull M15

3 London F35

4 Reading M15

5 Durham M55

6 London M13

7 Public school M14

8 Reading F50

9 Milton Keynes F13

10 Milton Keynes M9

shown. For each town, there are one elderly speaker and two young speakers. The ‘public school’ voice was that of a pupil at a prestigious fee-paying school in the south of England. The subjects were given a form on which they were asked to fill in answers to three questions while the tape was being played: ‘Where do you think this person comes from?’, ‘About how old do you think this person is?’, and ‘Do you think this person lives in a town or in the country?’. (The latter two questions were mainly included in order to give all the subjects a chance of getting at least some answers right, while making the task more interesting.) Afterwards, the fieldworker led a discussion about any features of the voices that might have influenced the subjects in their judgements. For each voice for each town, there is a maximum of 32 judgements; in practice, some subjects failed to make an entry for every voice: the average number of judgements is therefore closer to 30. 2.2 Recognising voices from one’s own speech community: Overview of results We return to one of the main issues of this article: linguistic focusing. As in the Bergen study mentioned above, we can investigate this indirectly by considering people’s recognition of voices from their own town. However, by systematically varying both the judges and the ‘native’ voices (those from the judges’ own town), we are in a position to answer much more specific questions about the nature of dialect recognition and its relationship to focusing. Figures 11.2a–2c show the recognition of the two young voices from the home towns of the judges: scores for the WC and MC groups are given separately. Three results stand out. First, both the Hull groups are much more successful than any of the other groups — in conformity with Hypothesis 2 (‘judges from towns with little mobility are well attuned to local speech’) — though Hypothesis 3 (‘highly distinctive dialects are likely to be more easily recognised than less distinctive dialects’) may be a confounding factor. Second, within Hull, the WC group is the more successful — this time in conformity with

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Figure 11.2. Correct identifications of young voices from judges’ home towns.

Hypothesis 1 (‘people with local ties are attuned to local speech’). The third is perhaps more surprising: this is the fact that the Reading subjects are even less successful at the task than their Milton Keynes counterparts — contrary to both Hypotheses 1 and 2. We turn first to the Hull data.

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2.3 Focusing in Hull 2.3.1 Local networks and localised dialect as factors favouring dialect recognition Figures 11.3a–f show the Hull results in more detail. In addition to showing the ‘Hull’ identifications (dark shading), they show the number of times the voices were heard as being from Yorkshire, the county in which Hull is situated (light shading). The recognition rates for an elderly Hull speaker, F83, are also given. Note the overall greater success of the WC judges (their range being 86.7% to 94.1%, as opposed to the MCs’ 53.3% to 80.0%), a result which is in line with Hypothesis 1. However, we cannot confirm this interpretation until we have shown that the WC group actually has stronger local networks. We did this by asking the judges where their parents were born, on the assumption that local parents are a reflection of locally-based networks. Table 11.3 shows that, of the working-class parents, 94% of the mothers and 87% of the fathers were born in Hull — the vast majority of them born on the estate where they currently reside — while the figure for Hull-born middle-class mothers and fathers is much lower at 53%. On the face of it, we have evidence that the strongly local networks of the workingclass judges facilitate their recognition of Hull voices. As we shall see later, this interpretation is confirmed by a comparison with the recognition patterns found in Reading and Milton Keynes: to anticipate, the Reading WC group is more successful at recognising own-community voices than the corresponding MC group, while the equivalent pattern is not present in Milton Keynes, where few of the families have local origins. While we have demonstrated a clear working-class advantage in recognition rates, we have not explained why the overall rate for Hull is so much higher than that for the southern towns. As we have already mentioned, the accent may contain features which distinguish it sharply from neighbouring varieties and which act as positive identification markers (Hypothesis 3). One segmental feature appears to be unique to Hull and its immediate hinterland. This is the vowel in the lexical set of  (Wells 1982), which, in Hull, has two very distinct allophones: a diphthong [aI] before voiceless consonants, as in price itself as well as in bright, bike and knife, and a monophthong [a˜] before voiced consonants, as in bride, five and pint. A typical Hull pronunciation of night time, then, is [naF‘ ta˜m]. Table 11.4 shows the use of the two variants in voiceless and voiced environments among WC and MC adolescents and WC elderly people. The most striking result is the virtual absence of the distinction among MC speakers: an RP-like diphthong [aI] is used fairly consistently in both environments. The picture is very different for the WC subjects: even in the reading list from which the adolescent data is taken, the distinction is categorically maintained by all except two of our speakers (a girl and a boy). Overall, the WC dialect appears to be maintaining this old, complex, localised feature, which was described in detail as early as 1877 (Ross, Stead and Holderness 1877: 9). We now face the question of whether the Hull listeners consciously or unconsciously attended to this particular feature when carrying out the listening task: the two environments (voiceless and voiced) were indeed present in the recorded extracts for two of the speakers, M9 and M15, with the distinction clearly made. However, because the decision had been taken to use only sections of spontaneous discourse as stimuli, and to use a

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Table 11.3. Birthplace of Hull judges and their parents Working class

Middle class

Born

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birthplace

Born

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birthplace

1

Hull*

Withernsea

Hull

Hull

Hull

2

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

3

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Hull

East Riding

Barnsley

4

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Hull

5

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

East Riding

East Riding

6

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Canada

7

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Nuneaton

Hull

Nuneaton

8

Hull

Hull

Spain

Hull

Hull

Hull

1

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Hull

2

Hull

Hull

Hull

Birmingham Kurdistan

3

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Manchester

Hull

4

Hull

Hull

Hull

Manchester

Manchester

Wales

5

Chester

Hull*

Lincs

Hull

East Riding

East Riding

6

Hull*

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Hull

7

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Hull

Hull

8

Hull*

Hull*

Hull

Hull

Manchester

Hull

% born in Hull

93.7

93.7

86.7

80.0

53.3

53.3

Girls

Boys Wales

* indicates individuals born on the estate where they currently live Note: for ease of identification, ‘Hull’ is printed in bold type.

variety of stimulus voices, we could not easily test for any direct effect, using, say, the technique of Labov’s Subjective Reaction test (Labov 1972: 146–9). However, assuming that a dialect is normally perceived as a whole, rather than by listening for individual features, we can conclude that the high recognition scores are the result of a dialect gestalt which is linguistically well demarcated from other dialects. If this is so, it implies that investigating responses to the  vowel may not be relevant in this context: the distinctiveness of this vowel may be indicative of the distinctiveness of the accent as a whole. If we allow the definition of focusing to encompass at least some shared phonetic features, then we can conclude that, like Bergen, Hull appears to be a focused speech

DIALECT RECOGNITION AND SPEECH COMMUNITY FOCUSING a. Hull Working Class identification of elderly Hull speaker (F83) Yorkshire N=1

Correct town: 0 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 53.3

Other N=2

Hull N=14

Midlands N=2

Yorkshire N=8

North N=3

c. Hull Working Class identification of Hull teenager (M15) Other N=2

d. Hull Middle Class identification of Hull teenager (M15)

Correct town: 13 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 86.7

North N=2 Hull N=13

North N=1

Hull N=15

Lancs./ Manchester N=2 North N=1 Yorkshire N=2

e. Hull Working Class identification of young Hull speaker (M9) Yorkshire N=1

b. Hull Middle Class identification of elderly Hull speaker (F83)

North N=1 Correct town: 14 Correct county: 1 % correct t + c: 93.7

185

Correct town: 9 Correct county: 2 % correct t + c: 78.6

Hull N=9

f. Hull Middle Class identification of young Hull speaker (M9)

Correct town: 15 Correct county: 1 % correct t + c: 94.1

Midlands N=2 North N=1

Correct town: 9 Correct county: 3 % correct t + c: 80.0 Hull N=9

Yorkshire N=3

Figure 11.3. Hull identifications of speakers from Hull.

community. Yet we have also uncovered differences within the community: it is the WC judges who appear to be more ‘focused’ than the MC, first, in having a more localised accent and, second, in recognising the voices better. We have already argued that this greater ability is at least partly due to these judges’ greater familiarity with the local variety owing to their more strongly local networks; this factor should, we argue, be seen as combining with the fact that the WC judges are being asked to recognise accents that are actually similar to theirs (Hypothesis 6). At this stage of the argument, we cannot of course make any statement about the degree of focusing in relation to other communities: we approach this issue below in our

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Table 11.4. The PRICE vowel with following voiceless and voiced consonants, Hull speakers (adapted from Williams & Kerswill 1999, Table 7) (a) with following voiceless consonant, e.g., bright

WC elderly (n = 4) WC boys (n = 8) WC girls (n = 8) MC boys (n = 8) MC girls (n = 8)

% [aI ~ a™I]

% [a˜]

100 100 100 100 100

0 0 0 0 0

(b) with following voiced consonant, e.g., bride

WC elderly (n = 4) WC boys (n = 8) WC girls (n = 8) MC boys (n = 8) MC girls (n = 8)

% [aI ~ a™I]

% [a˜]



0
17.5
25.7
95.0 100

100
82.5
74.2

5.0

0

Note: Each adolescent read the following words: bright, knife, lighter, bike, whiter; bride, five, pint, smile, wider. Scores for the elderly are derived from the interview data: 20 tokens per speaker were transcribed.

discussion of Milton Keynes and Reading. But first, we address a surprising difference in the identification patterns of the WC and the MC judges. 2.3.2 Hull or East Riding? The mediating effect of (socio)linguistic exposure The discussion of focusing does not, however, explain why the two groups of judges identify the elderly Hull speaker in such different ways, with high identifications as ‘Hull’ by the WC, and no such identifications by the MC, who instead favour a ‘Yorkshire’ identification. Figures 11.4 and 11.5 show the non-generic ‘Northern’ identifications (that is, excluding not only identifications as ‘southern’, ‘Midlands’, etc., but also generic ‘Northern’) for the three Hull voices and the two geographically closest voices, East Riding of Yorkshire (corresponding to the rural hinterland of Hull) and Middlesbrough (a large town some 100 kms. to the north). Middlesbrough is incorrectly identified by all the judges, something which suggests a lack of familiarity with the accent, due, probably, to a minimal amount of contact between that town and Hull. This would support Hypothesis 4 (the ‘familiarity hypothesis’). By far the largest number opted for Liverpool (in the north-west of England), though Newcastle, which lies some 60 kms. to the north of Middlesbrough, was a popular choice — both accents having been made familiar in recent years in popular television soaps and children’s programmes. Given the unfamiliarity of the Middlesbrough accent, it is likely that three phonetic factors contribute to these very specific, but erroneous

187

16 14

Identifications as: Hull

12 10

Yorkshire

8

Newcastle

6

Liverpool

4 2

Middlesbrough F17

Yorks. E. Riding M80

Hull F83

Hull M15

0

Hull M9

Number of identifications. (Max. 16)

DIALECT RECOGNITION AND SPEECH COMMUNITY FOCUSING

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Middlesbrough F17

Voices

Yorks. E. Riding M80

Hull F83

Hull M15

Identifications as: Hull Yorkshire Newcastle L'pool/N.W.

Hull M9

No. of indentifications (max. 16)

Figure 11.4. Non-generic ‘Northern’ identifications of Northern voices by Working Class Hull judges.

Figure 11.5. Non-generic ‘Northern’ identifications of Northern voices by Middle Class Hull judges.

identifications of Middlesbrough: first, intonation is subjectively similar to that of both Liverpool and Newcastle, where a rise-plateau pattern is associated with finality (Cruttenden 1995; Local 1986). Second, the taped extract contains Newcastle-type glottally reinforced pre-vocalic /t/ (Milroy, Milroy and Hartley 1994). The third factor involves the vowel system: while some realisations on the tape, especially those of  and  (half-close monophthongs), are similar to those of Newcastle, others are similar to Liverpool, particularly [²7˜] for  (though it is not merged with  as it may be in Liverpool); indeed, Llamas, in discussing the  vowel, comments that migration

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from Ireland and Wales ‘may explain the similarity of [Middlesbrough] to Scouse [Liverpool] with regard to this and other variants’ (1998: 109). On the other hand, the scores for the elderly East Riding voice are similar to those for Hull F83, suggesting both the local ‘relevance’ of the accent and a considerable phonetic similarity to the Hull accent. As with F83, the WC judges place him in Hull, while the MC prefer a ‘Yorkshire’ identification. A possible explanation for this is that many of the MC judges do not live in the city, but in the dormitory villages just outside the city boundary. They are therefore more likely to identify elderly speakers as rural because it is in a more rural context that they encounter them. The WC group, all of whom live on the council estate in the north of the city, encounter elderly people mainly in the city. This argumentation could be extended to explain why the MC judges are nevertheless able to identify the young Hull voices: visits to the city are likely to bring them into contact with young Hull people. However, this possibility is complicated by the presence of a local dialect levelling process, by which features of Hull speech are spreading to the rural hinterland (Middleton 1999). This means that the young voices on the tape to a significant extent resemble younger WC speakers in the villages, where many MC judges live. On the face of it, this ought to lead to an identification of the young voices as ‘Yorkshire’ rather than ‘Hull’. The fact that this is not the case may perhaps be due to a blurring of the city/ country distinction for younger people, with dormitory villages increasingly seen as suburbs of the city. This interpretation must, however, remain suggestive. In this study, the young judges are in general linguistically more similar to the younger voices they are being asked to judge than they are to the older voices. This will in itself lead to higher recognition rates (Hypothesis 6), as will become even clearer when we come to consider Reading and Milton Keynes. As we have already suggested, this has the corollary that voices perceived to belong to people similar to the judges are likely to be socially attractive, and hence ‘claimed’ by the judges. In conclusion: the relationship between dialect recognition and focusing is not direct, but mediated, affected as it demonstrably is by the judges’ own social networks, their exposure to different varieties, and their linguistic similarity to the voices they are judging. 2.4 Dialect levelling in Reading 2.4.1 Familiarity and local networks as factors in the recognition of Reading accents We hypothesised that dialect recognition in Reading would be a little less consistent than in Hull, but considerably more consistent than in Milton Keynes. This turns out not to be so: recognition rates in Reading are much lower than in Hull, and lower even than in Milton Keynes. We had two grounds for the hypothesis: the greater distinctiveness of the Reading accent as compared to Milton Keynes, and the strongly local working-class networks in the town (see Kerswill and Williams 2000a for a discussion of these points). Figures 11.6a–6h show the identifications of four Reading voices, including the two young voices already shown in Figure 11.2b. No-one recognised the elderly speaker as a Reading voice; instead, approximately half the judges placed him in the Southwest, with responses such as ‘Devon’, ‘Cornwall’, ‘Somerset’ and ‘Bristol’, as well as ‘West Country’, which

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is the widely accepted generic term for this region of England. Most of the remainder favoured ‘Northern’ identifications, indicating a complete failure to associate the voice with the south of the country at all. We will return to the reason for this lack of recognition after we have considered speaker F50. The picture is more optimistic for the second oldest speaker, F50: 40% of the WC and one of the MC judges correctly identified her — though ‘West Country’ remains, overall, the most popular option. The recognition pattern for F50 is not surprising, since she represents the generation of the WC judges’ (older) parents or (younger) grandparents, and so is a familiar ‘voice’ in the community. This also explains the MC judges’ failure to identify her: almost none of the judges’ families originate from Reading, with the result that this is a much less familiar voice for them, being encountered only outside the family. Table 11.5 shows the differences between the birthplaces of the parents clearly: almost all the WC parents are Reading-born, while only a very small proportion of the MC parents are born there. The WC–MC divide in terms of birthplace is even stronger than it is in Hull (Table 11.3), and this appears to be reflected in the recognition patterns. We still have to answer the question of why the oldest speaker, M82, is not recognised at all. We suggest that this voice belongs to the generation of the great-grandparents of the judges, and is thus relatively unfamiliar. Such an explanation would be in line with the ‘familiarity hypothesis’ we have just discussed. Phonetically the voice is very different from that of the judges: he is fully rhotic (that is, he pronounces non-prevocalic /r/), and uses a strongly retroflex articulation of /r/ — neither of which is true of the judges. He does not use [f] for /θ/ or [v] for intervocalic /ð/, as do most of the WC judges. The two youngest speakers attract strikingly different recognition patterns. F18 is recognised as ‘Reading’, or at least ‘Berkshire’ (the county in which Reading is situated), by 71.4% of the WC speakers. Given that this is a WC voice, this is not surprising, and the lower success rate of the MC speakers (23.1%) is in line with both Hypothesis 1 (‘people with local ties are attuned to local speech’) and Hypothesis 4 (the ‘familiarity hypothesis’). M15, however, is recognised as a Reading speaker only by four MC judges, no WC judges correctly identifying him. Most of the remainder opted for an undifferentiated ‘South’, suggesting a measure of recognition coupled with uncertainty. Listening to the extract, however, gives a clue to the reason for this, and (as we shall see in the next section) suggests the direction in which the Reading accent is changing: although the voice can be heard to use a range of non-standard phonetic features, such as h-dropping in the items happening and stressed he, categorical glottal replacement of intervocalic /t/, vocalisation of non-initial /l/, and a broad diphthong [7I] in , he does not use any marked Reading features. F18, in addition to using all the features mentioned, uses a central vowel [6] in the items funny and stuff, (cf. M15: [!]) and a diphthong [fI] in inside (cf. M15: [#I]) — both of these being features not widely found in London-influenced south-eastern accents, and the latter being specially mentioned as a Reading feature by some judges in the discussion following the identification task. M15 uses a more levelled variety than F18, in the sense discussed in Williams and Kerswill (1999): he does not use strong Reading features, nor does he use marked London features. Instead, he uses the set of south-eastern features which are spreading throughout the region and further afield,

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PAUL KERSWILL AND ANN WILLIAMS

a. Reading WC identification of elderly Reading speaker (M82)

b. Reading MC identification of elderly Reading speaker (M82) South N=2

Other N=1

West Country N=8

North N=7

Correct town: 0 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 0

c. Reading WC identification of middle-aged Reading speaker (F50) Other N=2

West Country N=5

Correct town: 6 Correct county: 0 % correct t+c: 40

e. Reading WC identification of Reading teenager 1 (F18) Other N=1

Bracknell N=2

d. Reading MC identification of middle-aged Reading speaker (F50) South N=2

Reading N=1

West Country N=4 London N=4

Yorks/ North N=3

Correct town: 1 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 6.7

f. Reading MC identification of Reading teenager 1 (F18)

Correct town: 6 Correct county (inc Bracknell): 4 % correct t+c: 71.4

South N=3 North N=1

North N=3

Correct town: 3 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 23.1

h. Reading MC identification of Reading teenager 2 (M15)

g. Reading WC identification of Reading teenager 2 (M15) West Country N=3

West Country N=4

Reading London N=2 N=3

Berkshire N=2

South N=5

Correct town: 0 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 0

London N=2

Reading N=6

Manchester N=2

West Country N=7

Yorks/ North N=5

Other N=1

Reading N=6

Bir'ham N=2

Other N=2

Correct town: 0 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 0

South N=5 Reading N=4

Other N=1

Figure 11.6. Reading identifications of speakers from Reading.

London N=5

Correct town: 4 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 28.6 Yorks/ North N=2

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191

Table 11.5. Birthplace of Reading judges and their parents. Working class

Middle class

Born

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birth- Born place

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birthplace

1

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Barbados

Barbados

2

Reading

Reading

Reading

Warrington

Yorkshire

Yorkshire

3

Reading

Guyana

Guyana

Reading

Essex

Essex

4

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

5

Germany

India

Reading

I. of Wight

Reading

I. of Wight

6

Reading

Cambridge

Reading

Ascot

London

Portsmouth

7

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Tadley

8

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Watford

Yorkshire

1

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

2

Reading

Reading

Reading

Slough

Reading

Somerset

3

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Wolverhamp- London ton

4

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Sussex

Hastings

5

Reading

Reading

Reading

Hillingdon

Hastings

Reading

6

Reading

Reading

Reading

Reading

Newcastle

Newcastle

7

Reading

Reading

London

London

London

London

8

Reading

Reading

Ireland

Reading

Germany

Devon

81.2

81.2

62.5

26.7

11.8

Girls

Boys

% born in 93.7 Reading

Note: For ease of identification, ‘Reading’ is printed in bold type.

including those which are in evidence in the taped extract. This, in turn, makes his accent more similar to that of the MC judges than is F18’s: this is why, we suggest, four of the MC judges accepted him as ‘Reading’. Next, we consider whether this boy’s speech represents a stage in the change in the Reading accent.

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2.4.2 The de-focusing of Reading Our data shows that the identification of the Reading accent as ‘West Country’ diminishes with the decreasing age of the speaker. This apparently simple fact masks a complex issue: that of the effect of the time dimension. Would this result have been obtained for an older panel of judges, or if the survey had been done 25 or 50 years previously? Our supposition is that older listeners, or judges in an earlier period, would have been less likely to adjudge M82 a ‘West Country’ speaker than today’s adolescents were. This is because there has demonstrably been change in Reading, most of which can be considered part of regional dialect levelling (Williams and Kerswill 1999). Thus, from a contemporary adolescent’s vantage point, the speech of elderly speakers can seem very remote not only in time, but in place. We now explore the apparent ‘de-Westcountrification’ of the accent, and consider the direction in which it is heading: in particular, is it becoming ‘Cockneyfied’ (that is, ‘Londonised’)? Figure 11.7 shows the ‘West Country’, ‘Reading’ and ‘London’ identifications for the four Reading voices and those for the two London speakers. Other identifications, including generic ‘South’, have been omitted. Figure 11.7a shows the ‘West Country’ identifications: the impression given by this graph, which ranks the four Reading voices by descending age, is that the accent is becoming less southwestern, with only three judges deeming M15 to be ‘West Country’, which puts him nearly into line with the two Londoners. Figure 11.7b shows a gradual ‘improvement’ in ‘Reading’ identifications, though this stops with F18, with even London M13 being heard as more ‘Reading’ than M15. So far, we could be tempted to use the analogy of the accent ‘travelling’ rapidly in an easterly direction towards the capital. But Figure 11.7c destroys the analogy. The two Londoners, F35 and M13, are overwhelmingly identified as such (with scores of 78.1% and 69.7%, respectively), while for M15, who is the Reading speaker who receives the highest ‘London’ identification and whose speech contains the fewest Reading features, the figure is only 16.7%. The picture emerging is that the Reading accent, for all the levelling it has been subject to, remains distinct. Moreover, inner-London speech, even that of the youngest age group, is still easily identifiable by outsiders. Indeed, the extract of London M13’s speech contains a number of London features, including [7˜] for the vowel of , a relatively front vowel, [²a], for , and the vowel /eI/ (as in ) in the auxiliary ain’t, an item in which Reading speakers tend to use /e/ (as in ). Interestingly, these judgements are not specific to Reading judges, since the Milton Keynes and, more surprisingly, the Hull judges gave similar identifications. Figure 11.8 shows the ‘West Country’, ‘London’ and other southern identifications of the southern voices which were presented to those judges: clearly, there are stable phonetic features in a London accent and, apparently, in a Reading accent which are nationally salient and available (in Preston’s 1996a sense) and which lead to ‘London’ and ‘West Country’ identifications, respectively. This is evidence of the continued presence of a degree of focusing in Reading, yet there are also clear signs of the ‘de-focusing’ of the speech of the town: change has been sufficiently rapid for the oldest generations to be no longer identified as natives of the town. This is clearly not true of Hull for either elderly or young speakers, who are

DIALECT RECOGNITION AND SPEECH COMMUNITY FOCUSING

193

No. of indentification (max. 32)

a. Reading judges' identifications of Reading and London voices as ‘West Country’ 25 20 15

Identifications as:

10

West Country

5 0 Reading Reading Reading Reading London London M82 F50 F18 M15 F35 M13 Voice

No. of indentification (max. 32)

b. Reading judges' identifications of Reading and London voices as ‘Reading’ 25 20

Identifications as:

15

Reading

10 5 0 Reading Reading Reading Reading London London M82 F50 F18 M15 F35 M13 Voice

No. of indentification (max. 32)

c. Reading judges' identifications of Reading and London voices as ‘London’ 25 20 Identifications as: London

15 10 5 0 Reading Reading Reading Reading London London M82 F50 F18 M15 F35 M13 Voice

Figure 11.7. Reading judges’ identifications of Reading and London voices as ‘West Country’, ‘Reading’ and ‘London’.

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PAUL KERSWILL AND ANN WILLIAMS a. Milton Keynes southern identifications of Reading voices and London M13

No. of indentification (max. 32)

25 Identifications as: 20

West Country London

15

Other South

10 5 0 Reading F50

Reading M15

London M13

Voices b. Hull southern identifications of Reading F50 and London M13

No. of indentification (max. 32)

25

Identifications as:

20

West Country London

15 10

Other South

5 0 Reading London F50 M13 Voices

Figure 11.8. Milton Keynes and Hull southern identifications of Reading and London voices.

recognised at a very high rate. Our research shows that the continued focusing of Hull is mirrored by a slower rate of change than in Reading. A particular consequence for Reading of the reduction in focusing (assuming it was greater in earlier decades) is that its residents, particularly the younger ones, seem to associate its accent with the West Country. This ‘perceptual dislocation’ of the accent reflects, we believe, the rapid social changes in the town over the past 50 years. In 1950, it was a market town dominated by agriculture (its university was founded as an agricultural

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195

college) and industries related to horticulture, food manufacture and brewing. Today, it is one of the principal national centres for high-technology computer-based industries, financial services and retailing. In this environment, the link with agriculture has been lost, and it is not surprising that the oldest speakers and their accents have been marginalised. One particular phonetic feature is a specific cue to the perception of the older accent as south-western: the non-prevocalic /r/, which was mentioned by a number of judges in the discussion sessions as a feature they attended to in arriving at a ‘West Country’ identification of F50. Anecdotally, we can mention that Reading young people regularly report being accused of talking ‘country’ when they visit London — even though they do not use the non-prevocalic /r/; and a middle-aged speaker reported being surprised at how ‘country’ she sounded the first time she heard her voice on tape. All this is tied in with a strong negative stereotype of south-western speech as being that of unsophisticated farmers, the word ‘farmers’ itself being the vehicle through which the stereotype is often expressed, with both r’s being realised in mocking imitation of West Country speech. Reading’s geographical and dialectal position near the boundary between the stereotypically rural South and Southwest and the stereotypically urban Southeast, coupled with the rapid economic changes noted above, makes it particularly vulnerable to the ‘farmer’ stereotype. The example of Reading shows that de-focusing goes hand in hand with dialect levelling and a rapid rate of change. Levelling potentially robs people of the possibility of using strongly local speech to mark allegiance to groups based on territory, class or ethnicity (see Kerswill and Williams 1997 and 2000a for discussions of language used as an identity marker). With the perceptual dislocation of traditional Reading speech to another region, and the lack of a distinctive replacement, Reading speakers seem to be losing this possibility. Likewise, the rate of change there is sufficiently fast for there to be a disjunction between the oldest and the youngest speakers, at least in terms of young people’s recognition of old people as part of the speech community. It may be realistic to talk of a move away from strong local identifications towards identities based on other groupings, including class, age, gender and ethnicity, with regional identities subsumed into a sense of being ‘from the south-east’. In the next section, we turn to the New Town of Milton Keynes, where there is by definition a sharp break in continuity between the oldest and the youngest speakers (Kerswill and Williams 2000b). 2.5 Milton Keynes: An incipient focused, but levelled speech community? 2.5.1 Non-local networks and the recognition of Milton Keynes voices Figure 11.9 shows the recognition patterns for Milton Keynes, as before with the two class groups’ identifications shown separately. As we noted earlier (Section 2.2), the Milton Keynes judges are more successful at their task than are the Reading judges, a finding which goes against our hypotheses. However, closer examination shows that the results pattern quite differently from those of Reading, in a way consistent with Milton Keynes’s status as a new community whose younger families have no time-depth in the town. The failure of any of the WC judges to recognise the elderly speaker, F82, comes as

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PAUL KERSWILL AND ANN WILLIAMS

a. Milton Keynes Working Class identification of elderly MK speaker (F82) West

b. Milton Keynes Middle Class identification of MK elderly speaker (F82) Bucks/Nor-

Country N=2 London N=5

Correct town: 0 Correct county: 0 % correct t + c: 0

Other N=3

Correct town: 4

thants

Correct county: 1

N=1

Milton

North N=3

Keynes N=4

North N=5

London N=3

Other N=2

c. Milton Keynes Working Class identification of young MK speaker (M9) Correct town: 3

Birmingham

Correct county: 0

N=1

% correct t + c: 20.0

% correct t + c: 38.5

d. Milton Keynes Middle Class identification of young MK speaker (M9) Milton

Correct town: 4

Keynes

Correct county: 0

N=4

% correct t + c: 25.0

Milton

London

Keynes N=3

N=11

London

South-

N=12

east N=1

e. Milton Keynes Working Class identification of MK teenager (F13) Midlands

Correct town: 7

N=4 Other N=3

f. Milton Keynes Middle Class identification of MK teenager (F13) Southeast N=2

Correct county: 1

Other N=3

% correct t + c: 66.7 Bucks N=2

Bucks. N=1

Milton Keynes N=7

Correct town: 7 Correct county: 2 % correct t + c: 64.3

Milton Keynes N=7

Figure 11.9. Milton Keynes identifications of speakers from Milton Keynes.

no surprise: in addition to the factors we have already adduced for the parallel finding in Reading, a reason must also be the fact that very few of these judges have any family connections with older people in the town. Elsewhere, we have argued that this lack of continuity is reflected in the linguistic production data (Williams and Kerswill 1999; Kerswill and Williams 2000b); what we are dealing with here is the effect a lack of continuity has on dialect recognition. Table 11.6 shows the judges’ place of birth and that of their parents. There is a striking difference between this table and the equivalent tables for Hull and Reading: in Milton Keynes, there are only slightly more locally-born parents among the WC group than among the MC group (around 13%, as opposed to 3%

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for the MC), whereas the percentage of locally-born WC parents in the other towns was extremely high (80–90%). This does not explain why the positive identification of F82 as ‘Milton Keynes’ or ‘Buckinghamshire’ (the county in which Milton Keynes lies) is relatively high for the MC Table 11.6. Birthplace of Milton Keynes judges and their parents. Working class

Middle class

Born

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birth- Born place

Mother’s birthplace

Father’s birthplace

1

Scotland

Scotland

Scotland

M. Keynes

Newbury

St. Helena

2

M. Keynes

Halifax

London

M. Keynes

London

Leeds

3

Luton

Portsmouth

Watford

Oxford

Oxford

Oxford

4

London

London

London

M. Keynes

Lowestoft

Bletchley

5

M. Keynes

Bletchley

Bletchley

Cranfield

Leicester

Bucks.

6

Lancashire

Lancashire

Liverpool

7

Blackpool

London

Glasgow

Inverness

Inverness

8

Bletchley

Stevenage

Ireland

M. Keynes

Kenya

Kenya

1

M. Keynes

Bletchley

Bletchley

Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead

2

London

Essex

London

London

Luton

Luton

3

M. Keynes

London

London

Kent

Manchester

Dorset

4

M. Keynes

Gt. Yarmouth Ireland

Aylesbury

Poland

Manchester

5

Newbury

Newbury

Tadley

Northampton Newport Pagnell

Newport Pagnell

6

Ireland

Halifax

Ireland

Bristol

Manchester

7

M. Keynes

London

London

Northampton Newcastle

‘North’

8

M. Keynes

London

Jamaica

Brighton

Northants.

Leicester

% born in M. Keynes

50.0

12.5

13.3

26.7

0

6.7

Girls

Boys

Bristol

Note: For ease of identification, ‘Milton Keynes’ and ‘Bletchley’ are printed in bold type (Bletchley lies within the borough of Milton Keynes).

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judges (38.5%). The same argumentation could perhaps be used as for the Hull MC judges: many of the Milton Keynes MC judges lived in villages near the town. Elderly speakers like F82 would be encountered in the villages, and her ‘voice’ would be familiar. At present, however, this interpretation is somewhat speculative. The fact that few of the Milton Keynes judges have locally-born parents means that ‘localness of network’ ceases to be a possible factor in the explanation of differences in judgements, as it was in both Hull and Reading, where there was a marked tendency for the WC judges to recognise own-community voices better than MC judges. The Milton Keynes results, when taken together with the results for Hull and Reading, in fact strongly support the relevance of networks as an independent factor: Figures 11.9c–f show that there is practically no difference in the recognition of the younger voices between the two classes (20% vs. 25% for M9, 67% vs. 64% for F13). This leads us to the conclusion that it is network, and not class that is the decisive factor in own-community dialect recognition. This conclusion constitutes powerful support for Hypothesis 1 — though we argue elsewhere that class has a decisive effect in other areas: those of language and identity (Kerswill and Williams 1997), and the patterning of linguistic variables (Kerswill and Williams 2000a). 2.5.2 Milton Keynes and Reading: Converging accents following different paths We have previously noted the Reading judges’ lack of success in recognising Reading accents, and we ascribed this to dialect levelling and rapid change. These factors should apply even more in Milton Keynes, though the slightly better own-community identifications seem to refute this. This means that we may be witnessing an incipient ‘focused’ speech community, which is developing out of the diffuse melting pot of the incomers’ generation. Our research shows that both towns are subject to the same dialect levelling, leading to a number of shared features. For dialect perception, the equivalent of linguistic levelling is increasing similarity in patterns of recognition — and here we find that the overall frequencies are indeed similar, though there are detailed differences which we can relate to differences in the localness of the judges’ networks. However, when we consider the phonetic features of the young Milton Keynes and Reading voices, a striking difference emerges between the two towns. We saw above how the more strongly localised Reading voice, F18, was perceived as ‘Reading’ much more frequently than the more levelled voice, M15, whose provenance listeners were unwilling to commit themselves to. The Milton Keynes voices, on the other hand, show precisely the reverse pattern. F13 does not use any marked regional features; thus, she does not use the older Buckinghamshire [%F] for , but instead uses ["F], and she uses [a~] for . This makes her accent subjectively quite similar to Reading M15. On the other hand, Milton Keynes M9, who is identified as a Londoner by 71.8% of the judges, has a rather different accent: in particular, he uses London [7˜] for the  vowel — acquired, no doubt, from his parents, who are from London. The pattern is that, whereas in Reading it is the less levelled accent that is the better identified, in Milton Keynes it is the more levelled accent. The difference can be related directly to the history of the two towns and their dialects over the past 30 years. Reading’s

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dialect has long contained localised features, and these survive sufficiently (albeit weakly) for them to be markers of the Reading origin of a young speaker. By contrast, there are few if any young linguistic inheritors of the older North Buckinghamshire dialect of the area now occupied by modern Milton Keynes: younger members of local families are, presumably, now linguistically absorbed into the new, in-migrant mainstream. Of the two young Milton Keynes speakers, the one with the more localised pronunciation traits (M9) in fact derives his accent from elsewhere, in this case London. The fact that 35% of the in-migrants came from the capital means that M9’s accent will be widely heard in Milton Keynes — more so, probably, than a young North Buckinghamshire-derived accent. Nevertheless, it is the levelled accent represented by F13 that is probably numerically in the ascendancy, and to which young speakers accommodate as they reach their teens: indeed, our previous research (Kerswill and Williams 2000b) suggests that speakers like M9 tend to modify their accent towards that represented by F13 as they reach their teens. It is this adolescent age group, we argue, that is establishing the ‘new’ accent of Milton Keynes. In consequence, F13’s accent is the one perceived as characteristic of the younger speakers, and this is reflected in the relatively high recognition scores for her voice. 2.5.3 Does own-community perception co-vary with linguistic features? As we have shown elsewhere (Williams and Kerswill 1999), the accents of Milton Keynes and Reading are converging by a process of levelling, though they are taking different routes. The dialect perception data adds to the linguistic performance data by giving more detail to those routes. First, it accurately reflects the linguistic discontinuity between older and younger generations in Milton Keynes; however, contrary to expectations, it shows that the same discontinuity applies in Reading, though only in terms of perception, linguistic features showing considerable continuity despite the rapidity of change. Second, it shows that perception patterns correlate with the strength of the listener’s local networks, and that these networks are in turn reflected in the degree to which the listener’s own speech is localised, and hence localisable. However, in an exceptionally fluid community, such as that in a new town, it seems that this relationship does not apply: it may be the more levelled speakers, with fewer localised features, who are perceived as local. Clearly, the relationship between dialect perception and dialect production is not straightforward, affected as it is by a number of social factors. Careful examination, however, yields insights into dialect levelling which are not available from the linguistic data alone.

3.

Discussion: Dialect perception and focusing

3.1 Social structures, linguistic distinctiveness and familiarity as factors in focusing Before we return to the main theme of this article, we will summarise our findings in relation to the hypotheses. There was ample support for Hypothesis 1: ‘Own-community recognition will be

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better among people with strong local ties’: in both Hull and Reading, the WC groups showed better own-community recognition. In Milton Keynes, there was no WC advantage. However, while in Hull the WC showed better recognition rates for all the Hull voices, in Reading it was the MC who recognised the more ‘levelled’ speaker (M15) the better. This suggests that his greater similarity to the MC judges’ own accents might have played a part. It may well be that the hypothesis only holds for the recognition of voices with strongly localised accents. There turned out to be a close relation between Hypothesis 2: ‘Judges from towns with little mobility are well attuned to local speech’ and Hypothesis 3: ‘Highly distinctive dialects are likely to be more easily recognised than less distinctive dialects’. In the context of the present study, they must be interpreted together. They form part and parcel of an emerging, multifaceted picture of focusing in which large-scale social patterns, especially mobility and social networks, interact with language use: a focused speech community is one in which highly distinctive dialect features coupled with a slow rate of language change co-occur with strongly local networks and low geographical mobility. A corollary of all four factors in tandem (distinctive dialect, slow rate of change, local networks and low mobility) is the high recognition rates noted for Hull. On an individual level, there will of course be differences, particularly those dealt with by Hypothesis 1 and by Hypothesis 4, to which we turn next. It is almost a tautology to say that accents which are familiar to the judge will be better recognised than those which are not (cf. Hypothesis 4). However, the range of factors contributing to familiarity is wide. The most important distinction may be between those factors which promote the recognition of an own-community accent and those which facilitate the identification of accents from elsewhere. Local networks and family ties influence own-community recognition, as this research has shown; however, for the recognition of other accents, three factors in particular may be important: (1) the degree of contact between one’s own community and the community represented by the voice, (2) whether a voice sounds like someone the judge happens to know, and (3) the influence of the broadcast media. In the contemporary world, the broadcast media are a crucial means by which familiarity with varieties is spread, and this became very clear from the discussion sessions following the dialect recognition task. Of the six voices heard by subjects in all three towns, Durham M55 has the most consistent identification: 63.7% identified the voice as ‘Newcastle’, which we accepted as correct since Durham lies just 25 kms. south of Newcastle and has an accent sharing many features with that of Newcastle. In the discussion sessions, many judges said that they knew the accent from Byker Grove, a popular and long-running children’s soap set in Newcastle and using local child and teenage actors. Additionally, judges in one school cited the fact that one of their teachers had a Newcastle accent. The second best identified voice was that of London M13, who was recognised by 60.4% of the judges; in this case, the popular soap EastEnders would have been a factor making London accents familiar, though London voices are heard over a wide sector of radio and television broadcasting. In contrast, Hull M15 was identified as coming from Hull by no-one outside that city — even though Hull has a population figure that is 65% of that of Newcastle (254,000 vs. Newcastle’s

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389,000). However, he was correctly located in Yorkshire by 24.6% of Reading and Milton Keynes judges, this being the single most common identification (‘North’, ‘Liverpool’ and ‘Manchester’ being popular, but less common choices). There are no television series set in Hull, nor are there any icons of popular culture from there. A comparison of the results for Hull M15 and Durham M55 strongly supports the hypothesis that familiarity through media exposure is a decisive factor. We have found ample support for Hypothesis 5: ‘Different voices from the same town (even if there is no age difference between the speakers) will not be recognised at the same rate by members of that speech community’. However, the reasons we adduced for this finding can be related to factors other than those discussed by Williams et al. (1999): though of course we do not deny that ‘social attractiveness’ due to paralinguistic and content factors plays a part, we were able to relate the differences to the degree of focusing of the speech community and to differences in the amount of dialect levelling found in the stimulus voices. In our study, Hypothesis 6: ‘Own-community voices close to the age of the judges will be relatively easily recognised’ forms an extension of Hypothesis 5. We found that a lack of recognition of elderly speakers only occurs in the two towns with rapid language change: Reading and Milton Keynes. This means that we can add ‘rapidity of change’ to loss of focusing and the presence of dialect levelling as a factor impeding dialect recognition. However, the intervening variable which reflects the factors directly affecting a judge’s success, is the combination of a distinctive dialect and the judge’s familiarity with that dialect. 3.2 Degrees of focusing Finally, we return to the main theme of this article, the relationship between dialect perception and speech community focusing. It is clear that there is no direct correlation between the two: measuring focusing by means of dialect perception leads to a complex picture, and the results must be interpreted against the background of a number of mediating social and social psychological variables. Changes in dialect perception over ‘apparent time’, that is, comparing the recognition of older and younger voices, shows that both rapid linguistic change and a break in contact across the youngest and oldest speakers lead to an apparent discontinuity in a speech community and, we may assume, a reduction in focusing. This reduction can be reversed, as we can see in Milton Keynes where some degree of dialect recognition is beginning to appear and less diffuse social networks are developing. Overall, we can say that Hull is the most focused of the three towns: recognition is mainly high, and there is little loss of recognition across three or even four generations. Although the Bergen study did not investigate age differences of this sort, it did show that there are unequivocal phonetic cues to speech community membership there, and that they are exploited by native judges. Despite a different methodology, the high success rates suggest that the same is true for Hull. Reading and Milton Keynes must be regarded as occupying the same, much lower position on a putative subjective focusing scale: both show a loss of recognition across

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generations and in relatively low levels of recognition within the same generation. But this simple picture for Reading and Milton Keynes belies greater complexity: our comparison of the social networks of the judges, and our discussion of the degree of levelling of the voices presented on the tape, suggests differences in the sociolinguistic structure of these towns, due, we argue, to their very different demographic histories. Most striking of all was the very frequent identification of older Reading speakers as ‘West Country’ and therefore rural, suggesting what we called a ‘perceptual dislocation’ of the town’s accent. We argued that this was a consequence of rapid social changes in the town. Reading contrasts with Milton Keynes, which was founded on an in-migrant base and consequently started from a state of diffusion, which is gradually being replaced by a degree of focusing. The relationship between this ‘perceptual focusing’ (that is, degree of own-community dialect recognition) and linguistic behaviour is one we have touched upon in this article. Perceptual focusing is closely linked to Hypothesis 3 (‘highly distinctive dialects are likely to be more easily recognised than less distinctive dialects’), and yet the relationship is not straightforward. As we have seen, there is a clear effect of the judge’s familiarity with the accent being presented, including that of his or her own town. This familiarity is in turn linked to the judge’s social network characteristics. As we argued in the discussion of Hypotheses 2 and 3, dialect recognition forms part of a broader view of focusing, in which social structures, especially local networks and low mobility, combine with distinctiveness of dialect, clear sociolinguistic patterns and slow linguistic change to form a focused speech community. All this, of course, confirms dialect recognition as an aspect of human sociolinguistic behaviour that is mediated by, and interacts with, a range of highly disparate factors. As a result, it has a complex, but nonetheless investigable, relationship with other sociolinguistic processes, including dialect levelling and other forms of language change.

Acknowledgments An earlier version of this article appears in C. Upton and K. Wales (eds) Dialectal variation in English: Proceedings of the Harold Orton Centenary conference 1998. Leeds: School of English, University of Leeds, 205–241.

Notes 1. There is a problem of terminology here. The reader will note that we will be using the terms accent and dialect somewhat loosely. In British linguistic tradition, ‘accent’ refers to pronunciation features (e.g., Hughes and Trudgill 1996: 3). This covers subphonemic variation, but also variations in phonological inventory and the predictable difference in phonemic incidence this leads to (e.g., Southern English and Scots /k%p/ cup corresponds to Northern English /k~p/, because of the absence of /%/ in Northern English varieties). ‘Accent’ also covers phonologically predictable differences in incidence, such as the Southern English use of /"˜/ as against Northern /æ/ before voiceless fricatives in items such as bath. ‘Dialect’, on the other hand, refers to grammatical and lexical features, as well as non-predictable differences in phonological incidence, such as Durham English /θa~t/ in thought, for which Received Pronunciation has

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/θf˜t/. In this article, our use of ‘accent’ and ‘dialect’ on the whole reflects this division. However, following usual practice we use ‘dialect’ as a modifier referring to all aspects of regional and social variation in the terms dialect recognition and dialect levelling. 2. For discussions of levelling in Europe, see Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle 1993; Thelander 1982; Hinskens 1996; Trumper and Maddalon 1988; Sandøy 1998; Kerswill 1996b; and papers in Vol. 10 of Sociolinguistica. 3. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain, 1995–8, ref. R000236180. Award holders: Ann Williams, Paul Kerswill and Jenny Cheshire. Research Fellows: Ann Williams and Ann Gillett. See Kerswill and Williams (1997), Williams and Kerswill (1999).

References Cheshire, Jenny, Edwards, Viv and Whittle, Pam. 1993. “Urban British dialect grammar: the question of dialect levelling.” In Real English: The grammar of English dialects in the British Isles. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy (eds.) London: Longman, 54–96. Cruttenden, Alan. 1995. “Rises in English.” In Studies in General and English Phonetics. Jack WindsorLewis (ed.), 155–174. London: Routledge. Hinskens, Frans. 1996. Dialect levelling in Limburg. Structural and sociolinguistic aspects. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Hughes, Arthur and Trudgill, Peter. 1996. English accents and dialects (3rd edition). London: Arnold. Kerswill, Paul. 1993. “Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: the role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(1): 33–56. Kerswill, Paul. 1996a. “Children, adolescents and language change.” Language Variation and Change 8(2): 177–202. Kerswill, Paul. 1996b. “Divergence and convergence of sociolinguistic structures in Norway and England.” Sociolinguistica 10: 90–104. Kerswill, Paul. 2001. “A dialect with ‘great inner strength’? The perception of nativeness in the Bergen speech community.” Chapter 10 of this volume. Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 1997. “Investigating social and linguistic identity in three British schools.” In Ungdomsspråk i Norden. Föredrag från ett forskarsymposium [Youth language in the Nordic countries. Papers from a research symposium. Series: MINS, No. 43]. U.-B. Kotsinas, A.-B. Stenström and A.-M. Malin (eds), 159–176. Stockholm: University of Stockholm, Department of Nordic Languages and Literature. Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 1999. “Mobility versus social class in dialect levelling: evidence from new and old towns in England.” Cuadernos de Filología Inglesa 8. Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 2000a. “Mobility and social class in dialect levelling: evidence from new and old towns in England.” In K. Mattheier (ed.) Dialect and migration in a changing Europe, 1–13. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 2000b. “Creating a new town koine: children and language change in Milton Keynes.” Language in Society 29(1): 65–115. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lambert, Wallace. E., Hodgson, R. C. and Fillenbaum, S. 1960. “Evaluational reactions to spoken languages.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60: 44–51. Le Page, R. B. 1978. Projection, focusing, diffusion, or, steps towards a sociolinguistic theory of language, illustrated from the Sociolinguistic Survey of Multilingual Communities. [Occasional Paper No. 9 of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.] Trinidad: University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Also in York Papers in Linguistics 9: 9–32, 1980.



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Llamas, Carmen. 1998. “Language variation and innovation in Middlesbrough: a pilot study.” In Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 6, Paul Foulkes (ed.). 97–114. Local, John. 1986. “Patterns and problems in a study of Tyneside intonation. In Intonation in discourse, Johns-Lewis, Catherine (ed.), 181–197. London: Croom Helm. Middleton, Lucy. 1999. The levelling of the traditional East Riding accent towards the mainstream Hull accent. Unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading. Milroy, James, Milroy, Lesley and Hartley, Sue. 1994. “Local and supra-local change in British English: the case of glottalisation.” English World Wide 15: 1–33. Milroy, Lesley and Milroy, James. 1992. “Social network and social class: Toward an integrated sociolinguistic model.” Language in Society 21: 1–26. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis R. 1996a. “Whaddayaknow? The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5: 40–73. Preston, Dennis R. 1996b. “Where the worst English is spoken.” In Focus on the USA, Edgar Schneider (ed), 297–360. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ross, F., Stead, R. and Holderness, T. 1877. A glossary of words used in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire. London: Trubner and Co. Sandøy, Helge. 1998. “The diffusion of a new morphology in Norwegian dialects.” Folia Linguistica 32(1–2): 83–100. Thelander, Mats. 1982. A qualitative approach to the quantitative data of speech variation. In Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities. Suzanne Romaine (ed), 65–83. London: Arnold. Trudgill, Peter. 1983. On dialect. Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Trumper, John and Maddalon, M. (1988). “Converging divergence and diverging convergence: the dialect-language conflict and contrasting evolutionary trends in Modern Italy.” In Variation and convergence. Studies in social dialectology, Peter Auer and Aldo di Luzio (eds), 216–258. Berlin: de Gruyter. Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Angie, Garrett, Peter and Coupland, Nikolas (1999). “Dialect recognition.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Dennis Preston (ed.), 369–383. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Williams, Ann and Kerswill, Paul (1999). “Dialect levelling: continuity vs. change in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull.” In Urban voices, Paul Foulkes and Gerry Docherty (eds), 141–162. London: Arnold.



C 12 Where is the “Most Beautiful” and the “Ugliest” Hungarian Spoken? Miklós Kontra

1.

Is this a linguistic question?

Some may hold the opinion that the question addressed in the title does not belong to the field of linguistics. Some might consider esthetics to be a more appropriate field to answer this question. Others may exclude the question from linguistics based on humanistic, egalitarian (in essence, socio-cultural) considerations, saying that “every language or dialect used by people is equally good, logical, beautiful, etc.” Finally, those who investigate the Chomskyan ideal speaker/hearer in a supposedly completely homogeneous speech community (Chomsky 1965: 3) a priori exclude such questions from the field of linguistics (i.e., Chomsky’s linguistic theory). A few years ago, in the introduction to his book about perceptual dialectology, Preston (1989: xi) explained why he considered the study of laymen’s opinions about language part of linguistics. I quote only the beginning of his argument: I am convinced (as some of even my best friends are not) that this work is linguistics. I admit that it is a broadly conceived linguistics — ethnographic, sociolinguistic, social psychological, but I believe that such facts themselves constitute a part of the most central, theoretical concerns of language. For example, where does language change come from?

2.

Imre’s study (1963)

In 1963, the Hungarian dialectologist Samu Imre made an attempt to answer the question where beautiful Hungarian is spoken. He based his investigation on data gathered from respondents for the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects,1 i.e., on his experience with “almost exclusively country peasants.” He also used what he called the “excluding method”, the essence of which is as follows. If the dialect of an area has one or more features “generally not considered beautiful” by the Atlas respondents, then this dialect is “excluded from the contest of beautiful speech.” For example, since many of the Atlas

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respondents considered í-ing, as in the dialect form kíve [ki˜v7] for standard kéve [ke˜v7] ‘sheath’, rough, rude, or “peasant-like”, dialects that have this feature, such as that of Hajdú-Bihar County, are not “beautiful”. In the context of the present study, it is worthwhile to refer to the five generalizations in Imre’s study. (1) The concept of “beautiful speech” primarily refers to pronunciation. (2) According to the dialectal respondents, the ideal norm of “beautiful speech” is not the standard spoken language but the written language regulated by orthographic and punctuation rules, “literally, down to the pronunciation of letters”. (3) The concepts of “correct” language and “beautiful” language are almost never separable in the metalinguistic comments of the respondents. (4) Almost no one considers the “Budapest dialect”, the dialect of the capital city, beautiful. (5) Most respondents consider their own dialects quite beautiful. Based on the “pronunciation norms of standard language”, Imre, for instance, decided that “strong ö-ing”, the use of the ö sound instead of e, as in Szöged for Szeged (a city), is a reason for exclusion. Therefore, the regions south of the line drawn through Marcali, the southern part of the Csepel island, Nagyko˝rös, and Makó (see Figure 12.1 on page 218 below) were also excluded from the beauty contest. In the end, Imre concludes that the most beautiful Hungarian is spoken around Sárospatak (location 17 in Figure 12.1); the runner-up is Budapest (location 27 in Figure 12.1), and the area around Budapest is in third place. Those speakers in the capital, however, who speak with “the Budapest intonation”2 are “of course excluded.” At the end of his article, Imre makes a thought-experiment-like comment. He says that if the measure of beauty were “good sounding” instead of the ideal norm of standard pronunciation, he might award first place to the ö-ing dialect characteristic of the Szeged area (location 12 in Figure 12.1). In this paper, I will not criticize in detail Imre’s excluding method, but I would like to point out that one of its weaknesses is that it gives equal weight to every dialectal feature; i.e., it does not differentiate. Language users, however, do differentiate; they find one phenomenon worse than another. For example, in today’s Hungarian society, two structurally different versions of the same nonstandard use of t-final verbs are stigmatized to very different degrees (Váradi and Kontra 1995).

3.

Terestyéni’s investigation (1987)

In 1983–84, Terestyéni examined, among other things, people’s opinions about and attitudes to each other’s verbal behavior, using a 1000-strong random sample of adult Hungarians stratified by gender, age, education, and residence. In a section titled “Where do people speak more beautifully?” he writes the following: People speak more beautifully in Budapest according to 43% of our sample, in the country according to 36%, and 21% find no difference between speech heard in the capital and in the country (n = 983). A larger percent of women think that the Budapest dialect is more beautiful (men: 38%, women: 48%), while men favor country dialects

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(men: 42%, women: 30%). Place of residence, and even more so education, strongly influenced opinions about this group of questions as well. The opinion that people speak more beautifully in the country was found in larger proportions in Budapest than in the country. On the other hand, in the country the dominant view was that the Budapest dialect was more beautiful, although the proportion of those who feel there is a difference at all was smaller. It seems then that while Budapesters are in some way attracted to country language use, country people are attracted to Budapest language use. The lower the education level, the stronger the opinion is that people speak more beautifully in Budapest, and vice versa; the higher the education, the more dominant the view that language use is more beautiful in the country. (Terestyéni 1987: 44–45, translation mine)

4.

Who speaks beautifully and who speaks badly?

Almost everyone has some sort of opinion regarding this question. Here are some for illustration. A journalist, expressing his discontent with the language committee of the Hungarian Radio, claims that reporters should not use “dialectal elements” (Go˝z 1990). Another journalist objects to the German accent of Count István Bethlen, a member of parliament until 1994 (Tamás 1990). Many of us remember the newspaper article about Hungary’s Minister of Internal Affairs Péter Boross “giving voice to his opinion that the television and radio need healthy Hungarian kids from the country, who speak Hungarian more beautifully” (Egészséges … 1993). Somewhat later he refined his opinion in an interview: “The flavors of the different regions should also be present in the Hungarian Television. In an earlier statement I have referred to the beautiful Eastern Hungarian accents of Gábor Mádi Szabó” (a well-known actor) (Lantai 1994). What emerges from these opinions is the generalization that “the language of the countryside is beautiful, that of Budapest is ugly.”3 In contrast to this, Sándor, Langman, and Pléh (1998) found in a matched guise study that Standard Hungarian and Budapest speech are closely associated, attitudes concerning nonstandard Hungarian are stronger in Budapest, and the distinction of standard vs. nonstandard speech is associated by many with the distinction of city vs. rural speech. Fodor and Huszár (1998) studied the evaluations of tape recorded samples of six Hungarian dialects by one-hundred university students and found that students from small towns (Hungarian kisvárosok) held the most positive attitudes to dialects and those from villages (Hungarian községek) held the most negative attitudes. In a book about life in Budapest in the early 20th century, Gyáni (1995: 76–84) has published a valuable selection of popular views concerning undesirable foreign features in Budapest Hungarian spoken in the 1910s and 1920s. A very different socio-political edge can be seen in what György Konrád writes in his novel A városalapító (The founder of the city) about communist Hungarian society in the 1970s: “I don’t want the city where […] incorrect language use is a letter of recommendation to the higher authorities”4 (Konrád 1992: 112–13, translation mine). At the 1994 annual meeting of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, one of the committee chairs set forth the opinion that there are some among the Hungarian Members

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of Parliament who “do not know the rules of the use of ami and amely” (the relative pronouns what and which). He quoted this as a warning example, in an emotional voice, beginning one of his sentences with the hypercorrect verb form könyörgöm (‘I pray’).5 Pop singer József Dinnyés referred to geographical issues in one of his interviews, with an accuracy unexpected from a layperson: When I started out, a Szöged (a dialect form of the city pronounced Szeged in Standard Hungarian) man went out into the world. I was ridiculed everywhere. Not in Kecskemét and Hódmezo˝vásárhely. Nor in Kaposvár. But everywhere in Budapest. After this, if only for spite, I tried to get to know the other Hungarian dialects. So when I had come to know the native dialects, I realized that I live in Hungary, and that this country does not end at the borders; in fact, to me it is as big as far they understand the words I say. (Tátray 1992: 5)

Dinnyés’ last sentence leads to the issue of Hungarian language use beyond Hungary’s borders.6 Regarding this, for now let me just mention that the myths in Hungary (e.g., “The real, unspoiled, clean Hungarian language is spoken in Transylvania”) and people’s linguistic attitudes and behaviors can be in sharp conflict with one another. For example, many Hungarian refugees who fled communist Rumania in the 1980s had a hard time adjusting linguistically to life in Hungary (Bartha 1991).

5.

Where is the most beautiful and the ugliest Hungarian spoken?

As part of the Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey conducted with a random stratified sample of adult Hungarians in 1988 (n = 832, cf. e.g., Kontra 1995) we asked respondents the following questions: People speak differently in different areas of the country. In which area do they speak the most beautifully? And where do they speak the ugliest? We only accepted the name of a specific region, county, or town for an answer. To evaluate the answers, we need a dialectal map which is not as detailed as Imre’s (1971), in which over 30 dialects are delineated, nor as sketchy as Kálmán’s (1966: 119), in which speakers of Pécs, Szeged, and Budapest (locations 25, 12, and 27 in Figure 12.1) all belong to the “southern” dialect. This latter categorization is problematic because people in Pécs hardly consider those from Szeged to be speakers of the same dialect as their own, and speakers of both dialects judge their own speech different from that of the capital and its vicinity. The map in question was prepared for the purposes of this study by the dialectologist Lajos Balogh, a member of the team creating the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects, as follows. First, he marked each of our 100 research points (A TÁRKI V. felvétel dokumentumai 74, 1988) on the map of public administration in Hungary for 1994; then, based on his dialectological experience, he categorized each village or town into one of six dialectal regions, or marked uncertain those that could not be categorized unambiguously. Balogh found 24 out of the 100 villages/towns/cities problematic from the point of view of dialectal membership, and we excluded these from the analysis: Budapest (27), Cegléd (28), Dunaújváros (29), Eger (32), Fót, Gödöllo˝, Kaposvár (24), Karakószörcsök,

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Kazincbarcika, Kilimán, Mezo˝tárkány, Miskolc (31), Nyergesújfalu, Osztopán, Pécs (25), Pilisborosjeno˝, Salgótarján (30), Somogyvámos, Szigetszentmiklós, Tatabánya (26), Tápióbicske, Vése, Vönöck, Zalaszentgrót. Thus, he ended up with 76 towns in 6 dialectal regions. On the map (Figure 12.1) the dialect boundaries are indicated with solid lines. The dotted lines show the borders of the counties. In the case of the Southern dialect, four subdialects have also been identified, which are marked with broken lines. Figure 12.1 shows the six dialect areas with some of the localities identified by numbers. The six dialect areas and the respondents selected for this part of the study are the following: 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

Western dialect (35 respondents in 10 localities, three of which are indicated on the map): Magyarszecso˝d, Máriakálnok, Nagykanizsa (3), Páka, Rábapatona, Sárvár, Sopron (1), Szombathely, Zalacséb, Zalaegerszeg (2). Transdanubian dialect (73 respondents in 13 localities, five of which are indicated on the map): Alsóörs, Bakonybél, Gyo˝r (4), Nagylók, Oroszlány (5), Pápa (6), Pázmándfalu, Sárszentlo˝rinc, Székesfehérvár (8), Tapolca, Velence, Veszprém (7), Zámoly. Southern (or ‘ö-ing’) dialect (125 respondents in 20 localities, four of which are indicated on the map): Baja (11), Bácsalmás, Bogyiszló, Bonyhád, Csongrád, Gálosfa, Hódmezo˝vásárhely (10), Kátoly, Kecskemét (9), Kétújfalu, Kishajmás, Kiskunmajsa, Kiszombor, Lábod, Miske, Mórahalom, Nyergesújfalu, Szeged (12), Töttös, Vajszló. Palóc7 dialect (53 informants in 7 localities, four of which are indicated on the map): Bélapátfalva (14), Gyöngyös (16), Hollóko˝ (13), Múcsony, No˝tincs, Sajógalgóc, Tura (15). Northeastern dialect (129 respondents in 16 localities, four of which are indicated on the map): Berettyóújfalu (20), Bodroghalom, Debrecen (19), Derecske, Fülöp, Hadháztéglás, Mándok, Nyírcsászári, Nyíregyháza (18), Nyírgelse, Sárospatak (17), Taktakenéz, Tiszaeszlár, Tiszarád, Vámosatya, Vámosújfalu. Tisza8 dialect (76 informants in 10 localities, three of which are indicated on the map): Békéscsaba (22), Füzesgyarmat, Gyomaendro˝d, Mezo˝túr, Orosháza (23), Rákóczifalva, Szolnok (21), Tiszafüred, Tiszakeszi, Zagyvarékas.

We included in this study a total of 491 respondents in 76 localities; we had to exclude 153 (about 31%), because they lived in peripheral/transition areas from a dialectological point of view. The findings will be presented in the form of simple frequency data. For each dialect area we list the three regions/counties/towns whose speakers are considered to speak the most beautifully and three whose speakers are regarded as speaking the ugliest Hungarian. Let us finally consider the judgments of the Budapest speakers, who are dialectologically hard to pin down but sociologically very important. If we give 3 points to the town/county/region placed in first place, 2 to the one in second place, and 1 to the one in third place, then, according to tables 12.1-12.6, the most beautifully speaking town/county/region is Budapest with 15 points. The respondents from three regions placed it in first place (the Transdanubians, the Palóc, and the Northeasterners), speakers from three dialectal regions placed it in second place (the southern, the

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MIKLÓS KONTRA

Table 12.1. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Western dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Szeged

7

20

Northern Hungary

5

14

Borsod County (around location 31)

3

9

Nógrád County (around location 13)

3

9

Budapest

3

9

Vas County (north of location 2)

3

9

Table 12.2. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Transdanubian dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Budapest

15

21

Northern Hungary

9

12

Heves County (around location 32)

7

10

Vas County (north of location 2)

7

10

Pest County (around Budapest)

7

10

Borsod County (around location 31)

6

8

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

6

8

Table 12.3. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Southern dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Bács-Kiskun County (around location 9)

16

13

Szeged

13

10

Budapest

10

8

Zala County (around location 2)

9

7

Békés County (around location 22)

10

8

Borsod County (around location 31)

8

6

Nógrád County (around location 13)

8

6

Table 12.4. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Palóc dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Budapest

8

15

Nógrád County (around location 13)

5

9

Pest County (around Budapest)

7

13

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

4

8

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

6

11

Vas County (north of location 2)

4

8

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WHERE IS THE “MOST BEAUTIFUL” HUNGARIAN SPOKEN?

Table 12.5. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Northeastern dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

Pest County (around Budapest)

13

10

Budapest

13

Transdanubia (western half of Hungary)

10

most ugly

N

%

Nógrád County (around location 13)

16

12

10

Vas County (north of location 2)

15

12

8

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

10

8

Table 12.6. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Tiszai dialect speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Borsod County (around location 31)

19

25

Nógrád County (around location 13)

12

16

Budapest

10

13

Northern Hungary

11

14

Fejér County (around location 8)

5

7

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

8

11

Table 12.7. Judgments of most beautiful and most ugly Hungarian by Budapest speakers. most beautiful

N

%

most ugly

N

%

Baranya County (around location 25)

23

15

Szabolcs County (around location 18)

21

14

Budapest

20

13

Nógrád County (around location 13)

17

11

Szeged (location 12)

19

13

Budapest

15

10

western, and the Tisza). Budapest’s first place is strengthened by the fact that Pest county (which lies in the immediate vicinity of the capital) was deemed to be the second most beautifully speaking region. Nógrád County is considered the ugliest speaking region by the respondents with 12 points. In the judgments of respondents from three regions (Palóc, Tisza, and northeastern), Nógrád is the first in the rank order of the ugliest dialects, and second and third on the list of two other regions (western and southern). The somewhat hard to interpret ‘Northern-Hungary’ and Vas County share second-third place with 8 points. Judgments about ‘Northern-Hungary’ may also strengthen the generally negative opinion about Nógrád, i.e., the Palóc dialect. If we examine the opinion of the respondents from the different regions about the beauty or ugliness of their own speech, we cannot fail to notice that the speakers of the

212

MIKLÓS KONTRA

southern or ö-ing dialect region find the speech of Bács-Kiskun County (around location 9 in Figure 12.1) the most beautiful, and the Szeged dialect (location 12) the ugliest. I will return to this contradiction later. Budapesters, too, are aware of their prestige; they judged their own speech the second most beautiful. We can observe, however, some selfstigmatization, as well; in the Budapest respondents’ opinion, Budapest is the third ugliest speaking area of the country. We also find a strong self-stigmatization among speakers of the Palóc dialectal region (where the Nógrád County dialect is judged the ugliest), and in the above-mentioned southern or ö-ing region (where Szeged speech is considered the ugliest). A weaker negative opinion of the local dialect is present in the western and Northeastern regions, where the Vas County and Szabolcs County speech, respectively, was judged the third ugliest. The paradox of the southern or ö-ing dialectal region is that informants from this area judged one local variant (Bács-Kiskun County) of their own speech the most beautiful, while another variant (Szeged) the ugliest. To resolve this paradox, I conducted the following analysis. I projected our 20 research points that Lajos Balogh assigned to the southern dialectal region onto Imre’s dialectal map, noting which of Imre’s dialectal types they each belong to. Thus I assigned 18 research points9 to four subdialects (marked with a broken line in Figure 12.1): (1) Baja area: Baja, Bácsalmás, Miske; (2) North-Baranya region: Bogyiszló, Bonyhád, Gálosfa, Kátoly, Kétújfalu, Kishajmás, Töttös; (3) Kiskunság region: Csongrád, Helvécia, Kecskemét, Kiskunmajsa; (4) Szeged area: Hódmezo˝vásárhely, Kiszombor, Mórahalom, Szeged. I excluded two research points (Vajszló and Lábod) from the analysis, because I did not think they could be categorized as belonging to any one of the above four dialectal types. As a next step, I analyzed the answers in the four subdialect regions. Looking at the most frequent answers, i.e., the ones mentioned by the most number of people at each research point, we find that in answer to the question “Where do people speak the most beautifully?” Bács-Kiskun was mentioned 9 times in 3 North-Baranya County research points and 3 times in a Kiskunság point (in Kecskemét, location 9). In answer to the question “Where do people speak the ugliest Hungarian?” Szeged (location 12) was mentioned 2 times near Baja (location 11) and 3 times by the Szeged respondents themselves. The Szeged dialect was also considered the ugliest by one respondent in each of 7 other research points. Thus the explanation for the apparent schizophrenic judgments of the southern or ö-ing dialectal region’s respondents is that speakers of the North-Baranya County and Kiskunság subdialects — both included in the Southern dialect region — consider the speech of Bács-Kiskun County the most beautiful, while speakers of Baja and vicinity and Szeged and vicinity subdialects find the Szeged dialect the ugliest. As can be seen from the respondents’ answers in Kecskemét (location 9) and Szeged (location 12), the prestige of the local dialect is high in the former city (3 out of 6 thought the Kecskemét speech was the most beautiful), but low in the latter (3 out of 14 judged the Szeged dialect the ugliest, while only two from each area mentioned the Budapest and the Nógrád dialect). The above results reflect the judgments of those informants who belong to a welldefined dialect (n = 491). By way of comparison, I also examined the answers gathered

213

WHERE IS THE “MOST BEAUTIFUL” HUNGARIAN SPOKEN?

from the whole sample (n = 832), including speakers from mixed or transition areas. Tables 12.8 and 12.9 show these results. Table 12.8. Rank list of most beautiful Hungarian judged by two groups. Well defined dialect speakers

All speakers

N

%

(1) Budapest 15 points (2) Pest County 7 points (3) Borsod County 5 points (4–5) Szeged 3 points (4–5) Bács-Kiskun Co. 3 points (6–7) Heves County 2 points (6–7) Békés County 2 points

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

95 63 58 48 37 34

11.4
7.6
7.0
5.8
4.4
4.1

Budapest Szeged Pest County Bács-Kiskun Co. Szabolcs County Borsod County

Table 12.9. Rank list of ugliest Hungarian judged by two groups. Well defined dialect speakers

All speakers

N

%

(1) Nógrád County 12 points (2–3) Northern Hungary 8 points (2–3) Vas County 8 points (4) Szabolcs County 5 points (5) Szeged County 3 points (6–7) Borsod County 2 points (6–7) Zala county 2 points

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

90 75 66 55 49 44

10.8
9.0
7.9
6.6
5.9
5.3

Nógrád County Szabolcs County Northern Hungary Vas County Szeged Budapest

The tables demonstrate that the rank orders of the ugliest variants are quite similar, but those of the most beautiful variants are not. Szeged is the second most beautifully speaking city/region in the whole sample, but it is only in fourth-fifth place for the welldefined dialect speakers. Now the question must be asked whether the first place of the Budapest speech, judged outstandingly beautiful, and the first place of the Nógrád speech, judged outstandingly ugly, is due to chance or not. In other words, is the number of those voting for Budapest different enough from the number of those voting for other places/regions for us to say that Budapest’s first place is due to some existing, statistically significant effect, not to chance? (Mutatis mutandis, the question is the same concerning the “outstandingly ugly” judgment of Nógrád’s speech.) To answer this question, we do the following. We consider the top portions of the “most beautiful” and “ugliest” frequency lists, i.e., the six places/regions that got the most votes. The reason for this is that it is not necessary to consider the smaller votes on the list in order to define which places/regions were judged to have the most beautiful and the ugliest dialects respectively. If we assumed that there is no difference whatsoever in the beauty or ugliness of speech among the first six places/regions, then each place/region would get one sixth of the total votes given to the first six places. This would mean 335/6,

214

MIKLÓS KONTRA

i.e., 56 votes (rounded), in the case of the “beauty list”, and 379/6, i.e., 63 votes (rounded), in the case of the “ugliness list”. Performing a chi-square test on the given values, we find that for the beauty list χ2 = 44.33; degrees of freedom = 5; p < 0.01. In other words, the probability that such a distribution of the answers is due to chance and not to the fact that the respondents really think the Budapest dialect beautiful is less than 1%. Nógrád’s outstanding place on the “ugliness list” is significant at the same level (χ2 = 23.85; degrees of freedom = 5; p < 0.01). One objection to this method could be that, for example, it is possible that Budapest’s first place is due to the characteristic feature of the sample that most respondents judge their own speech beautiful, and since close to one-fifth of the sample are from the capital, the capital’s first place is a direct consequence of the proportion of Budapesters in the sample. We can disregard this objection, however, since 20 of the Budapest informants (13%) judged the speech of the capital the most beautiful, but 15 (10%) judged it the ugliest (Table 12.7).

6.

Epilogue

Before I read the first version of this paper at the Sándor Károly Memorial Conference10 on April 27, 1995 in Szeged, I asked the conference audience to answer the same two questions on a piece of paper that the respondents to the national study answered, in order to highlight the methodological procedures of the study presented here. Here are the results of the “audience poll”, with the numbers in parentheses showing the number of votes. Some linguists did not answer, and there were some who wrote that we should not ask such questions; others thought that the questions were “not interpretable”. If I were to follow the procedure of one conference presenter who examined the doubling of preverbs and marked, for example, *össze-összefér (‘to be getting on well with somebody’) with an asterisk as incorrect, ?utána-utánamegy (‘to be going after something or somebody’) with a question mark as a verb of arguable correctness, and judged the word el-eljár (‘to be frequenting a place’) correct, then I could undoubtedly call Budapest, for instance, the place judged to have the ugliest speech, I would have doubts about Szabolcs (I could use ?), and I could place an *, say, in front of Transylvania, since no one put it down as a place where ugly Hungarian is spoken. Of course there would be something wrong with this method in so far as the respondents giving grammaticality judgments were asked specifically whether they find össze-összefér correct, but I asked an open-ended question, thus marking Transylvania with an * (= no one thought it is a region with ugly speech) would only be a deduced datum. However, by writing nothing in front of Budapest and a ? in front of Szabolcs County, I would follow the same procedure as the presenter mentioned above. I would do this on the basis that “I asked respondents: university students and linguists.” If I did this, I would not meet any of the criteria that are basic requirements of quantitative sociolinguistics today. Data gathered this way would be sociologically (and statistically at the same time) uninterpretable, since I would not know the age or any other

WHERE IS THE “MOST BEAUTIFUL” HUNGARIAN SPOKEN?

215

Table 12.10. Rank list of ugliest and most beautiful Hungarian judged by linguists. Judged most ugly

Judged most beautiful

(1) Budapest (13)

(1) Budapest (3)

(2) Szabolcs County (2)

(2–4) Hódmezo˝vásárhely (location 10) (2) Gyo˝r-Sopron County (between locations 1 and 4) (2) Szeged (location 12) (2)

(3) Salgótarján (location 30) (1)

(5–10) Transylvania (Rumania), Zemplén (around location 17), Szatmár (around location 18), Sárospatak (location 17), Csongrád (between locations 10 and 21), Tolna County (north of subdialect II) (1 each)

important social characteristics of my respondents. All I would know is that some of the 16 respondents were men, some were women, and their age was somewhere between 22 and 65. I would also know that all of them were linguists. Since I would know next to nothing about my respondents, my study would be unreplicable and impossible to check. But since I did not examine potential but rather existing language use (linguistic attitudes to be precise), I tried to comply with the minimal condition for publication of the leading quantitative sociolinguistic journal Language Variation and Change, according to which “the reported findings should be fully replicable from the information provided.”

Acknowledgments This research was supported by grant T 018272 from Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alap. I wish to thank László Cseresnyési, László Hunyadi, and Tamás Szende for their helpful criticism of an earlier Hungarian version. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ildikó Svetics for her help with the translation into English.

Notes 1. Fieldwork for the Magyar nyelvjárások atlasza (Atlas of Hungarian Dialects) was carried out between 1949 and 1964. The six volumes (1162 maps) were published between 1968 and 1977. For more on Hungarian dialects see Imre 1972. 2. That is what Weinreich (1956) termed “the Yiddish rise-fall intonation contour.” For more on this see Kontra and Gósy 1987. 3. In the major usage guide for Hungarians written by language cultivators in the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Éder (1980: 1189) promotes the following views:

216

MIKLÓS KONTRA As regards accents, today it is no longer acceptable to say, covertly or overtly, that dialect pronunciation is correct but the standard/everyday pronunciation is incorrect. However, the opposing view cannot be automatically endorsed either: dialect pronunciation cannot be automatically regarded wrong. Dialect is not opposed to standard in the same way as bad Hungarian is opposed to good Hungarian. Standard pronunciation is correct (or the norm, if you will); although dialect pronunciation is not incorrect, it has a country flavor, and for that reason it can only be accepted in the appropriate context.

4. Undoubtedly, Konrád refers to “correct” language here, not “beautiful” language; but correct and beautiful language are rarely separated from each other, as shown by the quote from Imre, where he summarized the views held by the informants of the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects. 5. Hungarian verbs fall into what are called the ik-verbs and the ik-less verbs (see, for instance, Fenyvesi 1998: 289ff.). The latter are stigmatized, hence the ik-less verb könyörög (‘pray’) is often hypercorrected to könyörgöm (‘I pray’) in place of standard könyörgök. 6. As a result of the peace treaties concluding World War I, millions of ethnic Hungarians became citizens of neighboring Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Austria. The number of minority Hungarians in the neighboring countries today is estimated to be about 3 million. 7. Palóc is the name of the dialect spoken on both sides of the current Hungarian-Slovak border east of the Danube. 8. The Tiszai dialect takes its name from the River Tisza. 9. I have excluded two locations (Vajszló and Lábod) because they do not seem to fit any of the four subdialect regions in question. Note that Imre (1971: 31) himself was also hesitant in assigning clear geographical boundaries to the Hungarian dialects. 10. Professor Sándor Károly (1920–1994) held the chair of general linguistics from 1978 through 1990 at József Attilla University, Szeged.

References A TÁRKI V. felvétel dokumentumai [Research documents of TÁRKI]. 1988. A Társadalomkutatási Informatikai Társulás 6. sz. kiadványa. Budapest: TÁRKI, October. Bartha, Csilla. 1991. “Erdélyi menekültek magyar nyelvi viszontagságai [The linguistic traumas of Hungarian refugees from Rumania].” Regio 2.1: 77–87. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Éder, Zoltán. 1980. “Köznyelvi és nyelvjárási kiejtés [Standard and dialect pronunciation].” In Nyelvmu˝velo˝ kézikönyv I. László Grétsy and Miklós Kovalovszky (eds), 1188–91. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. “Egészséges, vidéki, magyar gyerekek kellenek a tévébe [Television needs healthy Hungarian kids from the country].” 1993. Magyar Hírlap, November 13, p.3. Fenyvesi, Anna. 1998. “Inflectional morphology.” In Hungarian, István Kenesei, Robert M. Vago, and Anna Fenyvesi (eds), 191–350. London and New York: Routledge. Fodor, Katalin and Ágnes Huszár. 1998. “Magyar nyelvjárások presztizsének rangsora [The prestige list of Hungarian dialects].” Magyar Nye1v 94:196–210. Go˝z, József. 1990. “Mit csinál a bizottság? [What does the language committee of Hungarian Radio do?].” Magyar Nemzet, March 9, p.3. in the “Melléklet.” Gyáni, Gábor. 1995. Hétköznapi Budapest: nagyvárosi élet a századfordulón [Everyday Budapest: Metropolitan life at the turn of the century]. Budapest: Városháza. Imre, Samu. 1963. “Hol beszélnek legszebben magyarul? [Where is the most beautiful Hungarian spoken?]” Magyar Nyelvo˝r 87: 279–283.

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Imre, Samu. 1971. A mai magyar nyelvjárások rendszere [The system of present-day Hungarian dialects]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Imre, Samu. 1972. “Hungarian dialects.” In The Hungarian language, Loránd Benko˝ and Samu Imre (eds). 299–326. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kálmán, Béla. 1966. Nyelvjárásaink [Hungarian dialects]. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó. Konrád, György. 1992. A városalapító [The founder of the city]. Budapest: Pesti Szalon Könyvkiadó. Kontra, Miklós. 1995. “On current research into spoken Hungarian.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 111: 9–20. Kontra, Miklós and Mária Gósy. 1987. “Interference in intonation: Notes on Hungarian-Americans” In The thirteenth LACUS forum 1986, Ilah Fleming (ed.), 136–45. Lake Bluff, IL: LACUS. Lantai, András. 1994. “Elítélem a sajtó gorombaságait — Beszélgetés Dr. Boross Péter volt kormányfo˝vel [I disapprove of the rudeness in the media: An interview with former Prime Minister Dr. Péter Boross].” Élet és Irodalom 18 November, 1998, p.8. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics. Dordrecht/ Providence, R. I.: Foris Publications. Sándor, Klára, Juliet Langman, and Csaba Pléh. 1998. “Egy magyarországi ‘ügynökvizsgálat’ tanulságai. A nyelvváltozatok hatása a személypercepcióra [A matched guise study of varieties of Hungarian].” Valóság 8: 29–40. Tamás, Gáspár Miklós. 1990. “Bethlen gróf kiejtése [Count Bethlen’s accent].” Magyar Hírlap, March 19, p.6. Tátray, Barna. 1992. “Madárnak lenni átok, madárnak lenni ékes [An interview with József Dinnyés].” Szeged 5: 9. Terestyéni, Tamás. 1987. Az anyanyelvi kommunikációs kultúra néhány jellegzetessége Magyarországon [Some characteristics of communication in the mother tongue in Hungary]. Budapest: Tömegkommunikációs Kutatóközpont. Váradi, Tamás and Kontra, Miklós. 1995. Degrees of stigmatization: t-final verbs in Hungarian. In Verhandlungen des Internationalen Dialektologenkongresses Bamberg 1990, Band 4, Wolfgang Viereck (ed.), 132–42. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart. Weinreich, Uriel. 1956. Notes on the Yiddish rise-fall intonation contour. In For Roman Jakobson, Morris Halle (ed), 633–43. The Hague: Mouton.



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Figure 12.1 Map of Hungarian dialect areas and sites referred to in this study.



C 13 Microcosmic Perceptual Dialectology and the Consequences of Extended Linguistic Awareness A Case Study of Noirmoutier Island (France) Jean Léo Léonard

Si l’on veut estimer son intelligence, il faut d’abord se rappeler que le paysan ne sait pas parler. Son esprit, engourdi par la langue, a plus de feu souvent qu’il ne paraît à l’étranger : une parole de lente sagesse vient parfois en témoigner, une saillie, sorties de journées entières de silence. Mais il pense peu et mal dans la pensée articulée, où son vocabulaire est pauvre. Il se meut dans des situations et dans des expériences plus que dans des mots et des idées, et s’y meut lentement, confusément, mais souvent profondément. L’homme des villes ne s’aperçoit que des formules heureuses qu’il profère de temps à autre. [If one tries to figure out how the ordinary peasant’s mind works, (s)he must first remember that peasants do not know how to speak. Their mind, stiffened by language, is far more active than it seems to an alien. Words of wisdom uttered now and then, or a good joke, may burst out suddenly after a whole day keeping silent. But a peasant does not think much, and he often thinks in an inarticulate manner, as his mental lexicon is quite limited for elaborate thought. Actually, the ordinary peasant lives more in experience and concrete situations rather than in the world of words and ideas. He moves slowly and awkwardly in this concrete world of his, but with deep feeling most of the time. The urban dweller only hears the witty words the peasant says every now and then.] Emmanuel Mounier, Traité du caractère.

We owe the quotation above to the French philosopher and psychologist Emmanuel Mounier, whose seminal work on characterology is well known. Mounier advocated this point of view in his masterpiece Traité du caractère, a handbook in behavioral psychology. The reader may therefore be surprised and shocked by the amount of nonsense such a distinguished scholar is able to write and publish when peasants and peasants’ intellectual life or intellectual skills are concerned. Linguists, and many dialectologists, however deeply involved in fieldwork they may have been, have indulged in the same kind of prejudices about the intellectual and perceptual limits of their rural, academically uneducated informants. One of the most exciting aspects of perceptual dialectology (i.e.,

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epilinguistics) is to open windows on the non-academic awareness of how language works, to inquire about variation in an essentially empathic and cooperative way, with informants unexpectedly promoted to experts, enriching linguistic thought by dialogue and introspection with homo loquens in situ. Not only is the program of folk linguistics linked with crucial cognitive and sociopolitical issues, such as Plato’s and Orwellian paradoxes put forth by Chomsky (1986: xxv–xxix), but the open-minded attitude of perceptual dialectologists may turn out to be quite challenging for available theories of language change and sociolinguistic processes of interference for the simple reason that perceptual dialectology is, like dialectometry, an exploratory field of research (Séguy 1973b; Goebl 1981, 1984; Viereck 1997); Hans Goebl, who has been developing dialectometry for over thirty years, shows a conspicuous interest in linguistic attitudes (see Goebl 1995, 1994, 1992), providing manyfold visions of the same phenomenon of medium scale linguistic variation and cross-dialectal contact. As we shall see in the study of Noirmoutier epilinguistics (a Greek-based term for perceptual dialectology, coined by such Corsican sociolinguists as Thiers 1986 and Chiorboli 1986), discourse and local theories of change give strategic clues to the spread of phonological rules or lexical items as well as to recessive trends for particular phonological processes. Most of all, perceptual dialectology tells us a lot about what we would never have guessed, working as we do in the linguist’s relativistic way. While Noirmoutier dialects may considerably differ structurally in pronominal and participial morphology, islanders are more keen on stigmatizing allophonic oralization of front nasal vowels, interjections, hushing particles, or peculiar lexical forms. In the last case, selection of lexical items is motivated by diglossic attitudes; these items are indeed very likely to be different from standard or regional French. Specific experimental tasks show that actually much more extensive knowledge or awareness remains covert in linguistic ability (e.g., see the results of the Corbrejaud test below). One of the most striking answers of my respondents in 1988 to the question “what is the most dialectal patois in the island?” (quel est le patois le plus patois?) was Joseph Billet’s remark: “You mean, the least French-like dialect?” (Tu veux dire, le moins français?).

1.

Happier Hunting Grounds For Perceptual Dialectology

1.1 Small Dialectal Networks Are Beautiful I assigned a number from one to seven to the main villages and hamlets of the island, according to dialectal differentiation. In order not to confuse these with indexed examples or other items, each of these numbers will be preceded by v = variety: v1 = variety # 1 (La Fosse), v2 = variety # 2 (Barbâtre); see Figures 13.1 and 13.2. I shall cluster varieties according to main structural isoglosses from morphology (Tables 13.1–13.3) to phonology (Table 13.4–13.12). For descriptions, sketches and monographs of Poitevin, see Pignon 1960, Gauthier and Lavoie 1995, La Chaussée 1966, Gauthier, Bossy, Chevrier, Le Quellec, Nowak, and Piveteau 1995, and particularly

221

MICROCOSMIC PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY L'Herbaudière Le Vieil La Bosse Noirmoutier-en-l'île L'Épine La Guérinière

4 km

Barbâtre La Fosse La Frandière

Figure 13.1. Villages and hamlets of Noirmoutier. 6

5 4

7

3 2

1

Figure 13.2. Numbers assigned the dialect varieties of Noirmoutier (see Figure 13.1).

Svenson 1959 for the northern Vendean Marais area, closest to the Noirmoutier varieties sketched in Léonard 1991. Table 13.1. I, we: {i ≠ jhe} 1st Person Singular and 1st Person Plural Pronouns (see Figure 13.3):

v1–4 v5–7

I turn

we turn

I say

we say

i torn [i tfrn] jhe torn [h6/Š6 tfrn]

i tornuns [i tfrnê] jhe tornê [h6/Š6 tfrnê]

i dis [i di] jhe dis [h6/Š6 di]

i disuns [i dizê] jhe disuns [h6/Š6 dizê

Table 13.2. Passive Past Participle ⇒ [ AGR.] (see Figure 13.4.1) a. b.

Active past participle: /7/ → [æ] −Stressed i [Áæj] +Stressed v1–7 çhèle mésun a brûlàe [ç7l mezê a brylÁæj] = this house burned/has been set fire to Passive-adjectival participle: /7/ [+masc, +Sg.] ~ /e/ [ masc., β Sg.] v1–4: le toét étét brûlàe [l6 toj ete brylÁæj] = the roof was burned les toéts étiant brûlés [le toj etjâ bryle] = the roofs were burned la mésun étét brûlée [la mezê ete bryle] = the house was burned les mésuns étiant brûlées [le mezê etjâ bryle] = the houses were burned v5–7: le toét, la mésun, les toéts, les mésuns étét/étiant brûlàe [Áæj]

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Variable 2 is not insignificant: not only does the past participle agreement isogloss divide the island and mainland, but its geolinguistic domain goes far into the Western Oïl and regional French dialect network (e. g., Normandy, e.g., Lepelly 1975). The same can be said of the {I ≠ jhe} isogloss, which goes along the “croissant” line, the zone between the Oïl and Oc dialects. c.

v5–7: ⇒ /7/ v1–4: /e/ [

/7/ [−inflected]: le toét-(i) avét brûl-àe = the roof was burned [ masc., β sg.] le toét-(i) étét brûl-àe (i) = the roof was burned /7/ [+masc., +sg.] le toét-(i) étét brûl-àe (i) = the roof was burned masc., −sg] les toéts-(i) étiant brûl-é-s (i) = the roofs were burned

The next variable is typically phonolexical, that is, limited to a lexical paradigm formerly motivated through derivation (Latin N+ -ELLU-Suff.) Table 13.3.

v1 v2 v3 v4–7

boat

hat

coat

castle

Suff.

bateo baty8 batea bat7t

wapeo wapy8 wapea wap7t

mânteo mâty8 mâtea mât7t

wateo waty8 watea wat7t

⇒ -EO ⇒ -EA

Both -ea and -eo forms result from phonotactic surface rules of either contraction and further assimilation (-ELLU# > [ełu] > [ewu] > [ew] > [eo], [y8]) or dissimilation of the [ front, +labial] complex [E-U] through low vowel insertion (-ELLU# > VELARIZATION [ełu] > VOCALIZATION [ewu] > DISSIMILATION [eAu] > COMPLEX NUCLEI REDUCTION [ea] > CONSONANTIZATION OF LOW RHYME TERMINAL MORA [et]), the [e#] reflex being lately interpreted as a -eR# chain (see Figure 13.4.1). Table 13.4. -eN# [+ Stressed], front nasal vowel /ê/: {[Áâj] ≠ [Áêj] ≠ [Áan]} (see Figure 13.5)

v1–2 v3–4 v5–7 v7

bread

wine

white, black pudding

[pÁan] [pÁêj] [pÁâj] [pÁêj]

[vÁan] [vÁêj] [vÁâj] [vÁêj]

[budÁan] [budÁêj] NB: /ê/ centralized [budÁâj] [budÁêj] NB: no centralization

Table 13.5. -oN# [+ Stressed], back nasal vowel /ô/: {[Áâj] ≠ [Áêj] ≠ [Á7ô]}

v1 v2–3 v5 v7

slippers

sausage

it’s good

sure not

[wusÁêj] [wusÁ7ô] [wusÁâj] [wusÁê]

[susisÁêj] [susisÁ7ô] [susisÁâj] [susisÁê]

[ul [ul [ul [ul

[dam [dam [dam [dam

e e e e

bÁêj] bÁ7ô] bÁâj] bÁê]

nÁêj] nÁ7ô] nÁâj] nÁê]

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223

Most of Noirmoutier inner dialectal divisions are shown in Figures 13.3, 13.4.1, and 13.4.2. Figure 13.3 shows the dramatic geographic alternation in pronominal morphology: southerners use the Poitevin system, with “I” and “le” for first and third person masculine singular and plural, whereas northerners stick to the general Oïl pattern, closer to standard French, with “je” and “il”. jhe jhe te, tu vu il, al il, al

i i te vu le, al le, al

Figure 13.3. 1st person singular and plural pronouns.

jhe jhe te, tu vu il, al il, al

i i te vu le, al le, al

Figure 13.4.1. Various features of Noirmoutier dialects.

In Poitevin, as in Gallo-angevin (see Chauveau 1989) and many Oïl dialects, a powerful rule of syllabic alternation gives as surface outputs simple versus complex nuclei, as shown in Tables 13.6 and 13.7. See the impressive study of Fernand Carton on syntactic and prosodic correlates of prosodic alternation of nuclei in Picard (Carton 1972). Most of the phonological units involved in this rule are actually secondary phonemes emerging from diachronic processes of coda assimilation or intersyllabic contraction, such as nasal vowels or long mid-vowels, or the /7/ vowel of past participles. The /oi/ and /ai/ diphthongs, specific to peripheral west-northern Poitevin are primary results of ancient diphthongizations /oi/ or phonolexical and interferential with the Gallo area /ai/ — see Figure 13.6.

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JEAN LÉO LÉONARD

végne vœgne le port'

R r

jhe pain i

pan'

Continent

Figure 13.4.2. Some Noirmoutier isoglosses. NB: p"nÁ = [pan], portÁ = [pfrt]. Table 13.6. Prosodic alternation of marked nuclei (oral nuclei) CD

/e˜/

/o˜/

/oi/

/ea/

/7/

− stressed + stressed

[7], [e]… [Áai], [ae]…

[o] [Áau], [Áao]

[o] [Áoi], [Áoe]…

[7r] [Á7r], [Á7"]

[7] [Áæj], *[æ˜j]

NB: CD = Contextual Distribution; *[æ˜j] calls attention to the fact that this particular stressed diphthong proceeding from underlying mid-open front vowel /7/ is always short, never long, in sharp contrast with stressed reflexes of /e˜/, whose first mora can lengthen freely according to context (#, focus).

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MICROCOSMIC PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY Table 13.7. Complex nuclei in Noirmoutrin and northern Poitevin /e˜/ < -ES- /be˜t/ → [be˜t], [bÁaet] = beast, animal /o˜/ < -AL- /w6vo˜/ → [wvo], [wvÁao] = horse (sg. & pl.) /7/ < -ATU # /bryl7 → [brylæ], [brylÁæj] /oi/ < -E-, Late Latin [e] /ai/ < -OSC- and O-A chains: Poit. /bai/ = “bois” < BOSCU (wood), Poit. /ai/ = “oie” < OCA (goose). Phonolexical list limited to three items. Table 13.8. -eN, L [+distributed] or -eN, -eL +Pal.

v1–4 v5–7

vineyard

(fishing) line

girl

sickle

vœ^ ve^

lœ^ le^

fœˆ feˆ, fej

fusœˆ fuseˆ, fusej

Table 13.9. Phonolexical -o- raising versus lowering

v1–5 v6–7

fork

sickle

ffrw futw

fusœˆ fosej

Table 13.10. oiR#: {oi ≠ wE}

v1–3 / -# v7

see

have

black

pear

jaw

razor

/voir/ [vÁo6] vw7t

/avoir/ [avÁo6] aw7t

/noir/ [nÁo6] nw7t

/poir/ [pÁo6] pw7t

Standard French “machoire”, “rasoir” [maww7r] [razw7r] maww7t razw7r

NB: as to /oi/ ending a syllable, see Figure 13.6

The [w7] reflex probably has emerged through contact with the French koinè, though distinct from standard [wa]. Islanders from v7, Noirmoutier-en-l’île, the unique small town in the island, still remember the following: “Our parents wouldn’t have let us say [vÁoir], [nÁoir] like in the villages around: it would have sounded rude.” Nevertheless, oi > we happens only in syllables closed by -r# in v7 (swère, nwère = “evening”, “black”, versus soï, noï: [soj], [noj] = “thirst”, “self”, “drowned”, and “nut” homophones). Moreover, the -wè reflex creeps in the lexicon of surrounding “villages” through phonolexical lists of loans from the Oïl koinè: mâchwère (jaw), raswère (razor), armwère (cupboard).

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JEAN LÉO LÉONARD

Table 13.11. Rhoticity

v1–2 v3 v3′ v3″ v4 v5–7

Syllabic

#r-

-r-

-Cr-

-rC-

-r#

+ + + − − −

rr rr r, | t t t

| r, | | t r, t t

| r | t t t

rr r | t t t, t

6 r r t 6 t, t

Table 13.11 takes into account sociolectal and idiolectal variation according to phonological context and syllabic constituency: v3 and v3′ stand for 80 year old women in 1988, whereas v3″ accounts for women ages 50–70, with /r/ [−front] (actually, uvular [t], as in urban French). [|] stands for a soft variant of one flapped /r/ close to a lateral /l/, an idiosyncratic feature of v3. [rr] is uttered as a strongly trilled /r/, as in European Spanish initial /r/. Non uvular “r” is obviously recessive according to generations (v3, v3’, v3”), though still holding a few contextual positions, as final vocalized variants in v4. Nevertheless, I never heard any islander mention these facts, except the elders’ lateral trill in v3. Tables 13.12 and 13.13 provide examples of phonolexical lists (i.e., a phonological rule limited to a few lexical items, such as the analogical extension of -t#) and lexical variables (the quantifying adverb “much”). Table 13.12. -C#

SF v5–7 v1–4

a mouse

thank you

on the deck

harbor

“souris” /surit/ /suri/

“merci” /mersit/ /mersi/

“à bord” /a bort/ /a bor/

“port” /port/ /por/

SF = Standard French Table 13.13. “beaucoup” = “much” v1–2 v3–4 v5–7

Poit. tot pllin = [to pjãan, to pˆãan] (= tout + plein = “all + full”) Poit. be serràe = /be ser7/ ⇒ [besarãaj] (= bien + serré, “well + set up”) Poit. tot pllin, bèa cop = [to pjê, betkop] (= beau + coup, “nice + blow, stroke”)

1.2 Diasystemic Options Therefore, [Áêj] is either residual or recessive as compared to [Áâj] and the oralized nucleus [Áan], or emerging on its own or as a [−L, +H] strategy of postlexical syllabification. The odd strategy on the island is [+L, +sonorant], though its patterning is strongly natural, if we consider that such syllabic dissimilation improves iconicity and is widely spread in central and southern Marais-nord. But it still has the flaw of being too salient sociolinguistically. Islanders have a wide array of structural variables at hand (see Figure 13.4.2), and one would not wonder why they say that “according to someone’s speech, you can place

MICROCOSMIC PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY

227

Table 13.14. Stressed nasal vowels in Noirmoutier and the mainland (see Figure 13.7) L = Low, H = High, in terms of tongue position (i.e., for degree of tongue height, not for pitch), according to Léonard’s and Svenson’s fieldwork (Léonard 1991, Svenson 1959). [âj] [Áêj] [Áan]

[+L[+H]] [−L[+H]] [+L[+Sonorant]]

Noirmoutier (Léonard)

Mainland (Svenson)

(5–6–7): three communities (3–4): two communities (1–2): two communities

seven communities two communities eight communities

5

6 ' ãj 7

4 'õj e 3

'an 2

1

Figure 13.5. Front nasal vowel in Noirmoutier.

him/her at once, even if you have never seen him/her ever before.” Paradoxically, one would never guess what clues are considered relevant for placing and will easily find out that the most conspicuous variables described by linguists, such as those listed in Tables 13.1 to 13.14 are simply ignored or soon discarded for “odd” ones. As a matter of fact, local discourse strategies do not aim at describing or defining empirical variation. Instead, epilinguistic talk has a lot to say about islanders, identity, neighbors, oral history, and craft (or métiers). In a witty echo to the linguist’s demand to put into words their dialectal ability — or placing ability (hence, PAb) — dialect-speakers open the Pandora’s box of intercommunity differentiation. In this model, Perceptual Dialectology appears as a subordinate component of local characterology. According to this model, people from L’Épine are above all cheerful, congenial, great liars, and outstanding storytellers and crab fishermen; that is, petty sailors never venturing far from the coast. The barbâtrins are “barbarians”, sort of deep-south peasants, stubborn, selfish and dumb. Worst of all, after World War II many barbâtrins became clerks and lower civil servants such as douaniers (customs officers), gendarmes (rural police officers), soldiers, etc. and were therefore called les octroyannes, a witty and somewhat unusual way of saying “tax collector” (= “octroyens” ← 〈octroi〉, 〈octroyer〉). When informants attempted to imitate neighboring

228

JEAN LÉO LÉONARD

-oi oi oi 2 3

ai

1 6 7 8

e

ow

11

9

12 10 13 14

ow 15 Svenson, carte 34 "j'avais"

Figure 13.6. Complex nuclei in Noirmoutier and northern Poitevin (NB: On this map, scale is irrelevant; Noirmoutier has been enlarged for comparison to the neighboring mainland).

speech, they would stick to these caricaturistic features: women’s voices get sharper when talking like in L’Épine, rising quickly to soprano, whereas they lower when imitation targets Barbâtre speech. 2.

Small Patterns in a Small World

Most islanders agree on the following dialectal clustering: Table 13.15. Dialect Clustering. North: Center: South:

5–6–7 Noirmoutier-en-l’île 4–3 2–1 La Fosse-La Frandière

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229

(the configuration of the local variables — the dialects — follows that of Figures 13.1 and 13.2, with v7 north-east and v1 south)

This three-fold theory becomes indeed more locally specified, according to from where and to which anchor dialects informants work out their statements (source dialects versus target dialects), e.g., Table 13.15 will be specified as 13.16 if a respondent from La Guérinière is viewing the inner dialectal network. Table 13.16. La Guérinière dialect clustering. North: Center: South:

5–6–7 4 3 2–1

Gilbert Leroy, an informant from Le Vieil (v6) suggested Table 13.17: Table 13.17. Individual dialect clustering. 5–7 6 4–3 2–1

Paying lip service to theories founded on principles and constraints, one might be tempted to call this splitting attitude the Local Idiosyncrasy Principle (LIP). LIP provides that, from wherever you talk about dialect differentiation in a Local Dialect Network (LDN) such as Noirmoutier, other dialects begin next door, however objective the structural variation involved may turn out to be. Epidialectal discourse basically provides a focal approach to variation, making difference increase with proximity. Whereas isoglosses are often discontinuous, whatever the size of the space at stake (see Figures 13.9 and 13.10), mental dialectal maps tend to avoid discontinuity at the LDN-level. Clustering as in Table 13.18 is unlikely to be correct: Table 13.18. Unlikely dialect clustering. * 5–6 7–3 4–2–1

Instead, (13.20) has been put forward by the daughter of Jean Michaud, the informant who suggested (13.17): Table 13.19. Individual dialect clustering. 2–1–4–5 3–7

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ãj ~ ej

ãj an

an

-eN Svenson, map 10 -eN, "andains" and JLL.

Figure 13.7. Stressed front nasals in Noirmoutier and the mainland.

To be honest, I must add that the former division was inferred by Marie-Pierre Michaud, the younger informant, considering prosody and rhythm through a theory of her own: some dialects sound faster to her, much like the exuberance of their speakers, accounted for by characterology; others flow slower, in a staccato rhythm with plain intonation, and have deeper pitch. As mentioned before, most informants when asked to imitate a neighboring dialect would switch pitch from bass or baritone to alto or soprano, or else from staccato, overly slow speech to rapid phrasing. Nevertheless, no criterion seems to vary as much as Local Prosodic Theories based on tempo and pitch. Jean Michaud and his daughter were perfectly opposed on this point as to which neighboring dialect sounded slower. This might be due to the high dependency of these ad hoc theories to idiolectal interaction. The contradiction between the two informants points to the overpowering

231

MICROCOSMIC PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY

R# Infinitives -er er

ëi 2 3 ei

ei 1

4

ei

5

6

ëi

7 11 9

8

12 10

er

13 14

15

NB : [ë] = central vowel, close to schwa.

Figure 13.8. Rhoticity and secondary diphthongs in Noirmoutier and the mainland.

constraints of face-to-face communication and common knowledge gained from speakers’ networks in selecting speech models or imitated samples of neighboring dialects. Working memory recalls first the idiolects of people familiar to the informant as a consequence of the fact that dialectal perception is necessarily based on evidence from a limited number of speakers one interacts with outside his/her community.

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2.1 The “Barbarians” The communities of Barbâtre-La Fosse-La Frandière (v1–2), where most dialect speakers are now over 70, make up an atomic or very small dialect network, as shown in Tables 13.5, 13.3, and 13.20. Table 13.20. /ˆ/∼/j/.

v1 v2

blue

rain

it rains

yes

/bˆø/ /bjø/

/pˆ7/ /pj7/

/u moˆ/ /u moj/

/waˆ/ /waj/

According to RG, GG, Émilienne Laurent.

Following the local idiosyncrasy principle (LIP), v1 may split further into a couple of slightly distinct dialects (La Fosse opposed to La Frandière) though this argument seemed somewhat awkward to defend. Anyhow, more variation is obvious between v1 and v2, as in Tables 13.3, 13.20, and 13.21: Table 13.21. Coronal affrication before [i]

v1 v2

a. it screams

b. she said it

c. book

d. nest

u twit u tit

al uz a dŠit al uz a dit

ˆiv liv

^ik nik

Joséphine Sommelin (a v2 speaker) points to this affrication process, explaining that people from La Fosse “kind of scream”: “a titant” (titer = crier = scream, yell), connoting the idea of sharpness. Barbâtrins’ speech, or v1–2, looks quite odd compared to other varieties in Noirmoutier island’s small world. We may assume that its idiosyncrasy emerged quite recently through migration from the neighboring mainland, where the denasalization of the front vowel as a stressed reflex prevails (i.e., /ê/ → [Áan]). During the French Revolution in October 1793, royalist troops entered the island through Barbâtre, where v1 and v2 are spoken nowadays. They were overcome in January 1794 by federal troops, who slaughtered part of the local population, suspected of having helped the royalists. 1,500 prisoners were killed in the castle of Noirmoutier by federal troops. Ever since, Barbâtre seems to be to some extent a shameful place, doomed to damnatio memoriae. The islander community has reached a high degree of oblivion to these historical facts, though Barbâtrians are still held in suspicion and called “barbarians”. I personally claim that the very poor corpus of historical reminiscences of this period of history in folklore and the high vitality of stories and jokes about Barbâtrians are clues to a damnatio memoriae process, that is, purposive oblivion for the sake of unity or social consistency. I might be wrong, but it is striking to compare such written collections of oral history as Aymé Thibaud in the late 19th century with current lore about Barbâtrians:

MICROCOSMIC PERCEPTUAL DIALECTOLOGY

233

Since the [French] Revolution, Barbâtre was not a commune any more. It was ruled from Noirmoutier [v7], whose inhabitants still hated barbâtrians because of the bad trick they had played on the islanders, helping the counter-revolutionary Charette’s army to sneak onto the island through the Gois. Barbâtrians lived thereafter in pitiful conditions, in hunger and despair. They suffered for seventeen years, lost and forlorn, unable to trade and without money; people had no facilities whatsoever, no food, so that the population had to beg for bread twice or thrice a week in the parish church and in wealthy houses of Noirmoutier in order to avoid starvation (Thibaud, 1931). [NB: All of Thibaud’s texts which I translate and comment on here are from the very manuscript he wrote before its publication in “Le Phare de l’Ouest”. Aimé Thibaud, 1841–1913, was a local savant who wrote about Noirmoutier oral history in the late 19th century according to his grandfather’s reminiscences.]

The following text is even more convincing of the long term hatred between northern and southern islanders after the French Revolution. Another hard blow struck Barbâtre again in 1816, when crops were damaged or lost all over the country. Islanders did not know how to survive: no wheat, no salt, no wine (…). Landowners from Noirmoutier supplied barley and flour to the inhabitants, but the Barbâtrins were not given anything, as they were still scorned by other islanders. Starvation squeezed them even stronger as supplies stayed out of reach (Thibaud, 1931).

One might expect that such traumas as the slaughter of over 1,500 prisoners and part of the population of Barbâtre, the burning of Barbâtre’s church, and the destruction of half the village (Martin 1971: 18–49; 1972: 104) should have left reminiscences in local oral history, as it was still vivid in the mid-19th century when Aimé Thibaud wrote it up from his grandfather’s reminiscences. On the contrary, what folklore has to say about Barbâtre is like classical clichés about neighboring villages everywhere: Barbâtrians are said to be dumb, backward, and particularly naive as far as sex is concerned. Moreover, the fact that most young men left the village with their families in the 1940s and 1950s to get hired as lower civil servants in Paris or abroad (les octroyannes) erased any kind of historical representation. Nevertheless, they are still called “the Barbarians”. But another fact flows from the dramatic events of 1794 and the starvation that followed: economic and social structures were destroyed and land was kept idle for years in the very same region of the island where Dutch engineers had come before to build up polders and foster land resources. On the mainland next door, the Marais nord-vendéen, many farmers worked for landowners without any prospect of ownership. Mainlanders started therefore to flow in and came along with their families and their own dialect, close to Noirmoutrian, with the very specific item everyone laughs at nowadays: the denasalization/oralization of the stressed front nasal vowel. Hence started a process of linguistic unification of the mainland varieties with the island varieties, which is still going on. In this process of insularization of mainland varieties, the variable /ê/ → [Áan] / -# still persists, while other features, such as palatalization (in 13.21) are recessive. Once more, Aimé Thibaud gives us evidence of migration from the mainland after 1794:

234

JEAN LÉO LÉONARD Barbâtre was destroyed by the enemy and its population dramatically collapsed, but its fate became worse and worse, as landowners from Noirmoutier-en-l’île who possessed land in Barbâtre had to leave the soil idle. Most of them sold them out as soon as they could, at any price as opportunities to sell this land were so few that it could be given away quite cheaply. For several years, two-thirds of the land remained uncropped, and for six or seven years local peasants lived in deep misery, without food supplies, without a job and without consolation whatsoever (ibid.).

We can therefore conclude from this evidence that the events of 1794 triggered the following socioeconomic conditions: 1. 2. 3.

Demographic collapse, resulting in a sparse working population. Collapse of land ownership and restructuring of land tenancy. Starvation and migration away from Barbâtre, followed later by immigration of poor peasants attracted by low-price tenures.

I should now explain another odd fact we observed previously: the non-Poitevin pronominal system of the northerners (see Table 13.1 and Figure 13.3). The only explanation I could find was that this population, who settled on the island with the monks in the Middle-Ages and dug a network of salt-marshes, was most probably from the outskirts of Poitou, from areas where the general Oïl pronominal system still prevails, such as Guérande or elsewhere on the western coast. A strong argument is that the Poitevin pronominal system works as the strongest dialect variable of all: in such places as the outskirts of Poitiers or the island of Ré, where Poitevin has melted into regional western French, “I” and “le” still prevail, in spite of the strength with which the process of language shift through diglossia has led the speakers. Another argument is that this variable is strikingly dense on the island: neither southerners nor northerners fluctuate in using one of the two systems. No covariation whatsoever is to be observed. These clues advocate in favor of a twofold process determining variation on the island in the last 1000 years: (a) Poitevinization of the formerly non-Poitevin northern variety, (b) insularization of the mainland Poitevin varieties in the last two centuries resulting in v1 and v2 as in 13.9. These three waves of migration may well account for dialect diversity on such a small island (19 kms long, 1–4.5 kms wide): (1) settlement of non-Poitevin populations at an early stage in the northern part of the island, where v5–6–7 are spoken nowadays, (2) Poitevin settlements of mainland peasants in the central and southern parts (La Guérinière and l’Épine, Barbâtre), (3) demographic collapse of Barbâtre and second wave of Poitevin settlements after the Revolution. Of course, no speaker is aware of this scenario, as knowledge of Oïl pronominal morphology and a historic approach is required for such conclusions. The usual explanation of linguistic diversity on the island given by speakers is that “our ancestors came from far, far away; they came from the sea, and they were very dark-haired; they came from far away.” Actually, they came from non-Poitevin or Poitevin areas next door in waves of migration, which amounts to quite a different scenario. I do not mention this fact in order to discard folk linguistics or perceptual dialectology. I do it in order to illustrate how points of view may be diverse: a linguist looks for explanations and

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5 A

7

4

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Networks A = Poitevinization B = insularization I C = insularization II A & B sub-networks are originally Poitevin, whereas A was not.

B 3 2C

1

Figure 13.9. Network relations on the island in the last 1,000 years.

conclusions, whereas folk speakers have other cognitive and communicative goals when focusing on metalinguistic topics. Figure 13.10 shows occupational areas in the island in the first half of the 20th century. Though occupational networks partly overlap networks resulting from migrations shown in Figure 13.9, they cannot account for geolinguistic patterning as convincingly as migration waves do. Nevertheless, these areal specializations in agriculture, fishing, or salt production strongly determine sociolinguistic variation, particularly as far as interference with French is concerned (as in Table 13.11, the R-variable; the palatal L vs. glide alternation as in Table 13.20 goes farther than the v2-v1 opposition, as v7 has also chosen the [j] reflex instead of the distributed lateral, which obviously sounds more dialectal, though no islander ever quoted this fact to me).

3.

The Respondent’s Lesson You boil it [the Jujub] in sawdust: you salt it in glue: You condense it with locusts and tape: Still keeping one principal object in view To preserve its symmetrical shape. The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day, But he felt that the Lesson must end, (…) While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks More eloquent even than tears,

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It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books Would have taught it in seventy years. Lewis Carroll, The hunting of the Snark, Fit the Fifth: The Beaver’s Lesson. Any fieldworker studying ethnic, oral languages, e.g., anyone involved in linguistic atlas lexical surveys, has experienced at least once the delight of coming across exceptionally talented respondents. Sapir wrote very insightful pages on that topic, and most scholars working on native languages in the USA with respondents have experienced the amazing skills some speakers display in providing data accurately and in offering their intuitions of how grammatical or phonological systems work. Why should sociolinguists involved in linguistic awareness surveys neglect the possibility that LA may actually be shaped like an iceberg, i.e., people know and feel far more about variation of their local DN than they can tell us explicitly in an interview. This amounts to saying that the cognitive, covert structure of LA is part of linguistic ability. It just lacks the attention it really deserves for Occupational networks sardine fishing

Salt-marshes Agriculture * L'H

° Le V

Crabs and fish N *

La Bosse ° L'Épine *

* La G

Barbâtre *

Agriculture

La Fosse °

Figure 13.10. Occupational networks on Noirmoutier. NB: *=village, °=hamlet.

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the progress of a general theory of language. I would gladly call this paradox the Respondent’s Lesson. Any dialect speaker would give us such advice as that below about how we as linguists should conduct our fieldwork in perceptual dialectology. I will present the claims of Gilbert Leroy — a worker from Le Vieil then in his fifties — made during interviews with him on linguistic awareness in Noirmoutier in 1988, as a typical sample of current intuition chains on how to carry out research. What is fairly paradoxical is that linguists might easily discard such advice without questioning why he should so quickly toss these arguments away. I shall use the derivation symbol ⇒ for “read as”, translating from folk metalinguistics, e.g., “Some of the words they use are funny” ⇒ (read as) Their encoding of words is interesting. 3.1 Leroy’s Claims a. Introspection: “You folks should have advised me beforehand; I would have thought it over, and only in this way should I have been able to answer.” [I cannot improvise on this topic and need to gather my thoughts.] This illustrates Preston’s constraints on availability, detail and accuracy (Preston 1996). b. Empirical Primacy: “You folks should listen carefully when they [speakers of other dialects] talk to each other; you would pick up the difference by yourself. [Why do you ask me?]. Gather a handful of them and switch the tape-recorder on.” This suggests a primacy for control (Preston 1996): language should be observed in situ and by people performing their genuine competence. As far as we can see, it shows that informants agree with professional linguists devoted to fieldwork in the groundedness of recording empirical data. These two procedures of introspection and empirical survey correlate with the following opinions (or dialectodoxia): 3.2 Questions and Respondent’s answers 3.2.1 How do they speak in La Guérinière/Barbâtre/L’Épine? 3.2.1.1 They don’t speak like we do. a. They have a different accent [⇒ their suprasegmental, metric and segmental patterns are somewhat different]. b. They have different words [⇒ they make specific lexical choices of their own and may show interference from French for different items of the lexicon ⇒ Atomistic and Interferential Lexical Theories, ALT & ILT]. 3.2.1.2 We/I can’t speak like them. a. They are used to speaking that way [⇒ dialect performance is a cognitively routine task]. b. We/I can hardly imitate them, and only for specific, highly stereotyped scenes [⇒ we have/have no folk cultural artifacts about them].

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3.2.2 Do you know who speaks what? 3.2.2.1 We know how they speak well enough to place them. a. we have (or have no) Prosodic Theory for 3.2.1.1.a: some are high pitched and/or acute, others are low-pitched and/or grave b. we have (or have no) Lexical Theory for 3.2.1.1b: some of the words they use are funny [⇒ interesting] c. We have (or have no) linguistic artifacts such as imitations, tags, and verbal art samples of neighboring dialects [⇒ Control, Character Dependency]. 3.2.3 Do you understand each other? 3.2.3.1 We do/do not understand their speech when we happen to speak together [Interdialectal Intelligibility ⇒ IDI]. The next remark will come from Joseph Billet, a farmer from the “Mainland” (Marais nord), who settled in his twenties in La Tresson, a hamlet right in the middle of the island, on the narrowest spot, where plenty of summer buildings and cottages have spread during the past forty years. When I asked him, mindless of the ambiguity of the question “Quel patois est le plus patois, dans l’île?” (Which variety is the most different from other varieties/from French?), Joseph answered “Lequel est le moins français, veux-tu dire?” (The least like French.) This will yield the next observation in our catalog. 3.2.4 Which variety in the microcosm is most different? 3.2.4.1 Don’t ask me which “patois” (= variety) is more “patois” [i.e., more dialectal]: ask me which patois sounds least like French (i.e., local varieties such as “patois” are subordinated to French, following FPS — French Patois Subordination, which is part of the Evaluative Dependency of Folk Linguistics, as argued convincingly in Preston, 1996]. 3.3 Summing up main Properties of Linguistic Awareness (LA): I. Demarcative Function (DF) II. Idiosyncrasy Principle (IP) III. Placing Abilities (PA) IV. Communicative Function (CF): interdialectal intelligibility V. The French-Patois subordination institutional constraint (FPS, the concept of Linguistic Subordination is from Haugen, 1966) DF and CF were functional variables suggested by Jean Seguy, initiating dialectometry with a complete survey of variation in a Catalan microcosm made up of five villages (Séguy 1973a, Allières 1975) according to Guiter’s data from the ethnolinguistic atlas of Roussillon. The IP encompasses other conceptual tools, such as the Symbiotic and Esoteric Functions (SF and EF), which can be defined as follows:

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Symbiotic Function (SF): dialects are bound to occupational, socioeconomic networks of communities put into complementary relations in a natural surrounding (ecosystem). This might remain a mere observation impossible to correlate to actual dialect variation, as a linguist might do, but speakers happen to stick to categorizations dependent on crafts, know-how, distance ventured off to the sea by fishing boats (the farther you go, the more genuine sailor, the more “real” you are), etc. An opening of the drawer of socioeconomic complementarity in local surroundings entails opening the file of identity items based on a fusional relationship between ego and such cultural artifacts as dialect variation, oral history, lifestyles, etc. SF accounts for the affective merging of life and language in a social or geographic community. Esoteric Function (EF): dialects are bound to peer groups, who take care to preserve a strongly distinct variety in their repertoire for the needs of in-group communication, among which exist technolectal constraints in farming, fishing, and building crafts. See Fossat 1971 and 1980 for dialect technolects embedded in peer networks. Both functions feed the LIP (Local Idiosyncrasy Principle) at the level of control of linguistic variables, as speakers tend to cling to recognizable norms. Moreover, SF and EF operate as filters for members’ recruitment into peer groups, and they play a strong part in neutralizing the concept of mother-tongue in dialect transmission, as most “patois” in France are passed on to rising generations through peer group interactions in traditional rural activities such as fishing and farming. The FPS constraint also accounts for this peculiar transmission of language as peer-tongue rather than mother-tongue, therefore its secondariness instead of primacy) in language acquisition. The conceptual world at stake might be represented as a multilinear structure: Table 13.22. The Conceptual world. Constraints

FPS

Functions

DF

≠

EF Abilities

CF SF

PAb

French-Patois subordination (FPS) Demarcation (DF) ≠ Communication (CF) Esoteric Function (EF) Symbiotic Function (SF) Placing Ability (PAb)

4.

What can we linguists say about the limits of speakers’ linguistic awareness?

a. Atomistic Patterning results from short-time analytic and memory tasks (as a result of survey artifacts); people tend to focus their attention on lexicon and specific phonological clues, most often quoted according to a lexical approach.

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b. Average speakers are not generally very good at describing, imitating, or reading surrounding varieties, though they do have a lot more to say about their neighbors’ lifestyle, character, skills and behavior. The fact that linguistic variation appears to be secondary in discourse and is systematically correlated to behavior could be dubbed Character Subordination (CS). c. Speakers’ placing ability is highly variable depending on the media used to test it (such as having dialect speakers listen to tapes, as in Ravier 1973) and to what extent their lifestyle and crafts keep them in touch with the varieties at stake. I claim that these abilities are naturally boundless and that both the scarcity and canonicity (stereotypes) of what we get on our tape recorders or in our notebooks is due to fieldwork artifacts. Though people do not master a metalanguage, they do intuitively hear and discriminate most of what sounds different in others’ speech. d. Speakers tend to rely on their immediate conversational mates and stick to these when imitating, according to the First Hand Constraint; neighboring varieties are available to ego and ego’s peer group through the idiolects of specific individuals in touch with him/her. This empirical constraint might well be universal in any linguistic interference, including foreign language learning. We do not learn foreign languages properly only through coursebooks, descriptions, news, or other oral/written textual corpora and grammars. We learn language because we have to cope with specific people who have something to do in our lives, and, as learners, we tend to imitate idiolects as actual models for performance skills. e. Speakers may err or give completely wrong information or make approximative or overgeneralized statements. This might be a problem for a linguist who would need to rely on extremely scarce information such as the only surviving evidence of a missing cell in a chain, but it should not fool us when exploring Linguistic Awareness as a component of Linguistic Ability. This is the result of the First Hand constraint described in (d) and of the Observers’ Artifact mentioned in (c), which blurs access to the Extended Dialect Awareness (EDA) described below.

5.

The Corbrejaud Test: A perception test of variation in v4–v3, v4–v7: In search of EDA

The following test is limited to a very short list of 100 identification items and to only one speaker, but it does point to very clearly different patternings of EDA according to the type of dialect listened to. Here, a sailor in his forties from L’Épine (v4) accepted the task of listening to samples of neighboring varieties, namely v3 and v7, pointing out every difference he noticed from his own dialect. Each of the two target varieties belongs either to the same southern sub-network (v3) or to the northern sub-network (v7). Every time the informant whistled or said “stop!”, the linguist stopped the tape-recorder and underlined the segment or the morpheme at stake in his transcription. Then, materials pointed out by the informant were classified according to linguistic components: phonetics and phonemics

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of vowels (Phtique & Phonol V in the charts below) and consonants (Phtique & Phonol C), and morphology and syntax. The same item could be pointed out several times, so that the test is purely cumulative, not qualitative. The informant’s attention was very keen on phonetic properties of vowels in his own sub-network, i.e., v3, and this perceptual acuity extends to other components when v7 is the target, with phonological and morphological clues increasing, while phonetic properties of vowels are still strong in perception. Though this test was first thought of as provisional, it seems to account for much of perceptual strategies, focusing on vowel properties and systemic items (phonological and morphological). But while it is not worth much, because I only did it once and with very few materials, the most interesting fact is that the variables pointed out by the respondent were not the usual ones. He ignored most of clichés from neighboring varieties (Labov’s markers and stereotypes) and focused on things I usually thought I was the only one to hear in islander speech: atrity in short syllabic nuclei, lateralization of /r/ in v3, etc. V4 entend V3–100 arrêts de magnétophone 5

Morphologie

8

Phonol V

11

Phonol C

37

Phtique V 5

Phtique C 0

10

20

30

40

C = Phonology, consonants; Phtique V = Phonetics, vowels; Phtique C = Phonetics, consonants. “Phonologie C/V” points to categorial oppositions between phonemes, whereas “phonétique C/V” hints at contextual or free variation. For example, facts as in (13.11) — the R variable — can be accounted for by Phtique C, whereas /e/ labialization in v1-4 as shown in (13.8) belongs to Phonol V phenomenology. The -I/JE dialectal option in pronominal systems as in (13.1) is typically a morphological variable (morphologie in the chart above).

Figure 13.11. A v4 respondent’s comments on v3.

These principles match the analytic categories suggested by Dennis Preston (1996). Table 13.23. Availability (First Hand Constraint) Accuracy (First Hand Constraint, Character Subordination) Detail (Atomistic Patterning of LA) Control (First Hand Constraint)

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syntaxe

7

Morphologie

10

Phonol V 4

Phonol C

10

Phtique V 2

Phtique C 0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Figure 13.12. A v4 respondent’s comments on v7 (Details as in Figure 13.11).

What I have defined as the First Hand Constraint seems to act as a very strong bias in evaluating LA, challenging our methods of acquiring evidence of the extension of LA.

6.

Conversational data

The more I worked with dialect-speakers trying to adapt to their particular Performance Profile (monodialectal or composite, as in mixed couples, each coming from a different village), the more I realized that any pre-established questionnaire or survey was poor or failed to grasp the actual extent of LA. Striking evidence for the limited scope of questionnaires came from a wife and husband in their seventies in L’Épine. The wife, from v7, had married a man from v4. Answers to questionnaires were poor, while different lexical, morphological and phonological items came up continuously in free conversation in Poitevin. I was amazed to be able to gather so much material from casual speech in no time, with a technique worked out by the informants themselves; each difference in casual speech revealing his/her partner as a speaker of v4 or v7 would systematically be enhanced and analyzed, as informants knew I was interested in their LA. 6.1 Corpora Samples and Comments The following conversational folk linguistic sample with G. Leroy is given first in English, followed by the French original, and finally by a linguist’s interpretation of the folk linguistic positions taken. [Morphological and phonological variables: see (1) (variable /e/ Past Participle, masculine → [e] in v3, [œ] in v4, [Áaj] in v6–7 according to the informant); word type 〈ÉREINTÉ〉 = (a) “kidneyache”; (b) exhausted, overworked.]

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NB: Actually the variable patterning should rather be /e/ Past Participle → [Áaj] in v4, v5 and v6–7 for masculine agreement. If agreement is feminine, the informant is metalinguistically correct. Q = Question, or any utterance from the linguist, A = Answer. [1-Q] You say they don’t have the same accent, that it varies from one commune to another. [2-Q] But what does “accent” mean to you? [3-A] Well, not the same pronunciation of words. [4-Q] Do you mean “not the same way of singing words”? [5-A] Well, I mean the expression of the word, you know, [6-A] it differs: it means the same, but it is not spelled the same way. [8-A] For instance [9-A] it comes back to my mind, now. [10-A] as in La Guérinière. [11-A] in L’Herbaudière, for instance [12A] [they say] “i sé éreinté” (= je suis éreinté = I am exhausted, lit. my back is sore with tiredness), you see, [13A] whereas we say “i sé éreintaï” [14A] It means your back is sore with work, [15Q] Oh, really? [16A] GL: yep, [17A] That’s it! [18A] You see, [19A] Here you are! [20A] Convincing, isn’t it? [21Q] Yes, indeed! [22A] As you can see, they don’t pronounce it as we do! [23A] In town (Noirmoutier-en-l’île, v7), I would rather say it sounds like in L’Herbaudière, [24A] L’Épine as well, [25Q] uh, “éreinteu”, over there. [26A] Yes, you’re right: they are “éreinteu”, over there! [27A] Yes, that’s true! [28A] You’re right! [29A] No, but I mean that you can write it the same way, you know what I mean. [30A] But if you want to write “éreintaï”, [31A] well, you won’t spell it “éreinteu” [32A] nor “éreinté”. [33Q] Uh, how would you spell “éreintaï”, by the way? [34A] Well, probably with “a”, “i” and a double point over the “i”. JLL: Mais quand tu dis qu’ils ont pas le même accent 1-Q que :. d’un d’une commune à l’autre ils ont pas le même accent euh:. 1′Q qu’est-ce tu veux dire par “accent”? 2-Q Gilbert Leroy : Bé c’est pas la même prononciation du m[ot] 3-A de:. du mot, quoi JLL: Tu veux dire “pas la même façon de le chanter ou:. 4-Q de le:. GL : Bé de 5-A de l’expression de de du mot par lui-même. C’est pas le même 6-A ça veut dire la même chose mais c’est pas la même expression 7-A

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Bon, C’est par exemple Tiens, ça me revient à l’idée maintenant : comme à La Guérinière à L’Herbaudière par exemple, hein, [i se eêt’ej] (= je suis éreinté), bon, tandis que nous on va dire [i se erêtaj] ah, ça veut dire que t’as mal aux reins (= “kidneyache” = “very tired, exhausted”) JLL : ah ouais? GL : hein, voilà, tu vois! voilà, t’as vu! JLL : Ah, d’accord! GL : ah, c’est pas :. c’est pas la même prononciation (…) à :. euh:. en ville (= Noirmoutier-en-l’île, v7) ça serait plutôt encore là… le le même parlanparlange (= patois) qu’à L’Herbaudière. A l’Épine aussi, hein. JLL : hum:. [erêtø] (à l’Épine) ! GL : ah, ils sont [erêtø] eux ah oui, c’est vrai ah oui, t’as :. t’as raison, hum m(ais) enfin… Non, mais je veux dire que ça s’écrit pareil, si tu veux aller par là mais si tu veux écrire [erêtÁaj] euh :. ça sera pas [erêtÁœj] ni [erêtÁe] JLL : Et comment tu l’écrirais euh :. [erêtÁaj]? GL : Ouais, bé peut-être avec “a”, pis :. un “i” et :. avec euh :. deux deux accents, enfin des…

8-A 9-A 10-A 11-A 12A 13A 14A 15Q 16A 17A 18A 19A 20A 21Q 22A

23A 24A 25Q 26A 27A 28A 29A 30A 31A 32A 33Q

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comment on appelle ça, déjà? (= des trémas).

245

34A

1-Q : You say they have a different “accent”? 1-’Q : You say “accent” goes by village units? 2-Q : What is an “accent”? 3-A : Accent means to utter words differently. 4-Q : Is “accent” a prosodic fact? 5-A : “Accent” is a difference in the expression (= utterance) of words. 6-A : “Accent” has an influence on the shape of the word. 7-A : “Accent” has no influence on meaning, whereas it does on form. 8-A : I can mention variables. 9-A : I can mention a variable matching this theory from one of the segments of my dialect network (⇒ delayed cognitive availability of specific differential items). 10-A : v4 is such a place (where X or Y is uttered). 11-A : L’Herbaudière is such a place (where X or Y is uttered). 12-A : L’Herbaudière is such a place (where [i se eêt’ej] is uttered). 13-A : We pronounce differently. 14-A : X means “kidneyache”, “very tired, exhausted”, etc. 15-Q : I am getting the point. 16-A : You see the point. 17-A : This is a fact. 18-A : This is a good example. 19-A : Now you have evidence. 20-A : You should be convinced by now. 21-Q : I reckon so. 22-A : Phonological form differs between the two varieties. 23-A : v7 and v5 are rather close to each other. 24-A : v4 is closer to other varieties [such as v3–2]. 25-Q : There is still a difference in v4 as far as the variable you just mentioned is concerned. 26–28-A : I do agree with you on this point. 29-A : Still, I think v4 clusters with [v3–2] at the phonological level and differs at the phonetic level. 30–32-A : Spelling gives evidence of my last proposal. 33-Q : Suggest a spelling for items of the variable. 34-A : “-aï” would do well for [erêtÁaj]. These statements were framed according to Preston’s quite exciting suggestions for content-analysis in folk linguistics (1994). As linguistics is a science dedicated to levels of representation of lexical items and their components (phonology) as much as syntactic levels of representation and logical form, looking for underlying structures behind surface structures, why shouldn’t content-analysis of folk linguistics look for logical underlying statements? Discourse is precisely a domain of high semantic syncretism, in which bundles

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of ideas surface rapidly with complex expressions deriving from basic underlying statement patterns such as those given just above. The informant’s logic is as interesting as the ideology which we may infer from what he has said. To sum up, we can say a few things about challenging prospects opened up by perceptual dialectology: a. b. c. d.

e.

Perceptual dialectology provides insights into speakers’ experience and awareness of how language works. Therefore, perceptual dialectology, as an approach to language awareness (LA), investigates the language faculty and shares the same prerequisites as theoretical linguistics (the study of the human mind). LA is highly dependent on ad hoc parameters, such as sociolinguistic constraints, communicative functions and individual as much as social abilities (see Tables (22) and (23)). These parameters make LA surface in a particularly intricate bundle of clues, stereotypes and casual discourse, challenging sociolinguistics and folk linguistic methodology, on the borderline of psycholinguistics and other social sciences, such as pyschosociology. We may suggest as a challenging hypothesis that LA goes much farther than traditional research points out. LA might be actually unbounded.

Noirmoutier was a very peculiar place to study LA: the place is quite small (like a chestnut); some postcards show it as a tiny spot in the sea, which can be embraced in a single blink of the eye. Its population amounts to fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and the place is overwhelmed by tourists in the summer (over 100,000). It is located 70 kms from Nantes, an important urban center in western France. Nevertheless, its inhabitants believe there are four varieties on the island, and most linguists would agree with them (see Figure 13.4.2). Moreover, sociolinguistic variation is even stronger, though nobody seems to notice it on the island. Many tourists have been visiting the island every summer for over twenty years. Most of them do not know that the islanders have a language of their own. They would even be more surprised to know that this dialect is Poitevin, i.e., akin to varieties spoken in the departements of Vendée, Vienne, Deux-Sèvres, Charente intérieure and Charente maritime. Recently, a woman in her forties who had visited the island a couple of times during the summer over twenty years ago, and who had then got acquainted with islanders, said to me, after listening to a tape of Noirmoutrin speech: “Uh! Do you mean they really speak like that? I had heard something like that when I lived with them, but I didn’t know it was a language; I thought they where just speaking nasal!”

References Allières, Jacques. 1975. “La fonction ethonodémarcative en linguistique” [The function of ethnic identification in linguistics]. In Actes du IIème Colloque de Linguistique fonctionnelle de ClermontFerrand: CRDP de Clermont-Ferrand, 175–180.

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Carton, Fernand. 1972. Recherches sur l’accentuation des parlers populaires dans la région de Lille [Research on accent in the popular speech in the region of Lille]. Lille: Service de reproduction des thèses, université de Lille III. Chauveau, Jean-Paul. 1989. Evolutions phonétique in gallo [Phonetic evolution in Gallo-Romance]. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Chiorboli, Jean. 1986. “Individuation sociolinguistique corse : dynamique et effets linguistiques” [Corsican sociolinguistic individuation: Dynamism and linguistic effects]. EDITOR, 296–306. XVIIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Trèves. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York/London: Convergence, Praeger. Fossat, Jean-Louis. 1971. La formation du Vocabulaire Gascon de la Boucherie et de la Charcuterie : Etude de Lexicologie Historique et Descriptive [The formation of the Gascon vocabulary of butchers and delicatessens: A study in historical and descriptive lexicology]. Thèse d’Etat, Toulouse: Ménard. Fossat, Jean-Louis. 1980. “Pour une autre socio-linguistique : La dialectologie sociale” [Towards another sociolinguistics: Social dialectology]. In Sociolinguistique : Approches, théories, pratiques (2 vols.) (GRECO Rouen), B. Gardin and J. B. Marcellesi (eds), 605–627. Rouen: PUF. Gauthier, Pierre and Thomas Lavoie (eds). 1995. Français de France et français du Canada [The French of France and of Canada].Université Lyon III: Centre d’Études Linguistiques Jacques Goudet. Gauthier, Michel, Fr. Bossy, J. J. Chevrier, J. L. le Quellec, E. Nowak, and V. Pivetea. 1993. Grammaire du poitevin-saintongeais [A grammar of Poitevin-Saintongeais]. Parlanjhe-Geste Éditions. Goebl, Hans. 1981. “Eléments d’analyse dialectométrique (avec application à l’AIS)” [Elements of dialectometric analysis (applied to AIS)]. Revue de Linguistique Romane 45:349–420. Goebl, Hans. 1984. Dialektometrische Studien, Anhand italoromanischer, rätoromanischer und galloromanischer Sprachmaterialen aus AIS und ALF [Dialectrometric studies, Anhanditaloromance, Rheatroromance, and Gallo-romance speech material from the AIS and ALF], 3 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Goebl, Hans. 1992. “Trois coups d’œil rapides sur la situation sociolinguistique dans les Alpes centrals” [Three quick glimpses at the sociolinguistic situation in the Central Alps] (Grisons, Tyrol du Sud/Haut-Adige, Carinthie méridionale). La Bretagne linguistique, n°8: 165–193, Université de Brest. Goebl, Hans. 1994. “Bref examen des concepts de “langue standard”, “langue commune”, “sociolecte”, “dialecte”, “patois”, etc… du point de vue du romaniste germanophone” [A brief examination of the concepts standard language, common language, sociolect, dialect, patois, etc … from the point of view of a Germanophone romanist]. In Le plurilinguisme européen. Claude Truchot, (ed.), 117–135. Paris: Champion. Goebl, Hans. 1995. “Experiencias sociolinguísticas de la Europa Central: Hechos, problemas, métodos y perspectivas de su aplicación al asturiano” [Central European sociolinguistic experiences: Works, problems, methods, and perspectives and their application to Asturian]. Letres Asturianes 56:35–55. Haugen, Einar. 1966. “Dialect, language, nation.” In J. B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds), Sociolinguistics. Baltimore: Penguin Books. La Chaussée, François de. 1966. Les parlers du Centre-Ouest de la Vendée [The diaelcts of the centerwest of Vendée]. Paris: d’Artrey. Léonard, J. Léo. 1991. Variation dialectale et microcosme anthropologique : l’île de Noirmoutier (Vendée, F-) [Dialect variation and microcosmic anthropology: The island of Noirmoutier (Vendée, France)]. Unpublished doctoral thesis NR, Université de Provence. Lepelley, René. 1975. “Français régional de Basse-Normandie: les marques du genre et du nombre dans les adjectifs à final vocalique” [Gender and number agreement in vowel final adjectives in the regional French of Lower Normandy]. Le Français Moderne 45:1–11.



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“Les dialectes romans de France” [The romance dialects of France]. 1973. In Proceedings of the conference Les dialectes romans de France à la lumière des atlas linguistiques régionaux, 1971, Pierre Gardette (ed.). Paris: CNRS. Martin, Henri. 1971. Noirmoutier, presqu’île? [Noirmoutier, the first island]. Fontenay-le-Comte: imprimerie Lussaud. Martin, Henri. 1972. Au pays noirmoutrin; Guide historique et touristique [The Noirmoutian country: A historical and tourist guide]. Fontenay-le-Comte: imprimerie Lussaud. Mounier, Emmanuel. 1946. Traité du caractère [An essay on character]. Paris: Le Seuil. Pignon, Jacques. 1960. L’évolution phonétique des parlers du Poitou [The phonetic evolution of the diaelcts of Poitou] (Vienne et Deux-Sèvres). Paris: d’Artrey. Preston, Dennis, 1994. “Content-oriented discourse analysis and folk linguistics.” Language Sciences 19, 2:285–331. Preston, Dennis. 1996. “‘Whaddayaknow’: The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5.1:40–74. Ravier, Xavier. 1973. “L’incidence maximale du fait dialectal” [The outer limits of dialect intelligibility]. In Les dialectes romans de France à la lumière des atlas régionaux. (Colloque CNRS), 43–56.Paris: Éditions du CNRS. Séguy, Jean. 1973a. “La fonction minimale du dialecte” [The minimal function of dialect]. Les dialectes romans de France, 27–42. Séguy, Jean, 1973b. “La dialectométrie dans l’Atlas Linguistique de la Gascogne” [Dialectometry in The Linguistic Atlas of Gascony]. Revue de Linguistique Romane, 1–24. Svenson, Lars O. 1959. Les parlers du Marais vendéen [The dialect varieties of Marais Veneéen]. 2 vols. (Vol. 1 phonétique et lexique; Vol. 2: atlas linguistique), Göteborg: Romanica Gothoburgensia. Thibaud, Aimé. 1931. “La Vendée légendaire” [Legendary Vendée]. In P. Devigne, Chroniques (Marsaoût), Le Phare de l’ouest. Thiers, Jacques. 1986. “Épilinguisme, élaboration linguistique et volonté populaire, trois supports de l’individuation sociolinguistique corse [Epilinguistics, normalisation and folk will for linguistic survival: Three basic components of the sociolinguistic emergence of Corsican].” Langages 83:65–74 Viereck, Wolfgang, et al. 1997. The Computer Developed Linguistic Atlas of England 2. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.



C 14 Regional Differences in the Perception of Korean Dialects Daniel Long and Young-Cheol Yim

1.

Outline of the study

In this paper, the authors examine the language perceptions of South Koreans, analyzing the differences among speakers from different regions. We focus on the perceptions of the pleasantness of speech and draw some comparisons with the results of similar surveys conducted on Japanese and other languages. The methodology of the survey was based on that used in previous studies in Japan (e.g., Long 1999a,b). 471 Korean university students were given a blank map of the Korean peninsula (including areas in both the southern Republic of Korea and in the northern Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) with the do (province) boundaries shown. Informants were instructed to (1) draw lines to designate areas where speech differs, (2) write the names of those speech areas, (3) give characteristics of those speech areas, and (4) rank those speech areas in order of pleasantness. 372 of the informants completed the pleasantness task and it is these informants whom we shall focus on throughout most of this paper. Let us now examine the results. We see in Table 14.1 that the overwhelming majority of the names given to the perceptual speech varieties correspond to political units, and also that there is very little variation in the number of informants who drew the various speech regions (286 for Kangw˘on, Ch’ungch’˘ong 287, Ch˘olla 297, Ky˘ongsang 297). Furthermore, the informant whose map is shown as Figure 14.1 has generally (but, importantly, not always) followed provincial boundaries in drawing his or her speech regions. This tendency was typical of the vast majority of our informants, and it may be due to our including province boundaries on the blank maps which we provided to informants. It should be noted, however, that similarly constructed questionnaire maps used in Japan and the U. S. yielded quite different results. In studies performed in five different regions in the U. S., Preston (1989: 117) found the most commonly drawn speech regions to be “South” (94%), “Midwest” (55%), “New England / Northeast” (49%), “New York City” (44%), and “Texas” (43%). In a study of Japanese informants from eight regions,

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Table 14.1. The most commonly drawn speech regions. Speech Region drawn

Numbers of drawers

Percentage of all infs.

Seoul Ky˘onggi Kangw˘on Ch’ungch’˘ong North Ch’ungch’˘ong South Ch’ungch’˘ong Ch˘olla North Ch˘olla South Ch˘olla Ky˘ongsang North Ky˘ongsang South Ky˘ongsang Cheju

254
43 286 287
30
37 297
48
53 297
45
45 261

64.8 11.0 73.0 73.2
7.7
9.4 75.8 12.2 13.5 75.8 11.5 11.5 66.6

Total Informants

392

Figure 14.1. One respondent’s hand-drawn map.

Long (1999b) found the most commonly indicated speech regions were “Tohoku” (82%) and “Kansai” (77%), “Kyushu” (49%), “Nagoya” (46%), and “Standard” (35%). While informants’ perceptions in these studies do seem to have been influenced by political

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251

boundaries to some extent, we see a variety in the dimensions of their perceived speech regions. These U. S. speech variety labels include one city, one state, and three regions larger than states. The Japanese labels include one city, the standard variety, and three regions larger than prefectures. Thus informants in both of these countries tended to draw dialect regions across state (prefectural) boundaries, unlike our Korean informants whose speech regions overwhelmingly corresponded to provinces. Another factor which has possibly contributed to these differences is the number of political entities in these countries; 50 U. S. states and 47 Japanese prefectures compared to 10 Korean provinces. Amid this uniformity, one area in which we did find variation was in the perceptions of the six “North” and “South” provinces (North and South Ch’ungch’˘ong, Ch˘olla, and Ky˘ongsang). Most informants combined these into one speech region; some informants, however, drew them separately. Because informants’ perceived speech regions tended to follow provincial boundaries in this way, this paper will concentrate on other aspects of the data, namely the areas indicated as the “most pleasant” speech region, and on the areas designated as being “standard”. We will also examine the treatment of the speech varieties of North Korea. Although provinces were often indicated by the informants, cities were ignored, with one important exception. Seoul dialect (or Seoul speech) was indicated by 254 informants. There were only 16 answers for “Pusan speech”, and zero for any other major cities. These results are particularly surprising considering the “metropolitan area” status accorded to 5 cities (Pusan, Taegu, Inch’˘on, Kwangju, Taej˘on), which places them (along with the “special city” of Seoul) on equal footing with the provinces under the central government. It may be that informants would have provided more information about cities if they had been indicated on the map. The fact remains, however, that Seoul was referred to by numerous informants in our survey in spite of the fact that it had not been indicated on the survey map. This makes the references to Seoul even more noteworthy. Some terms for language varieties (variety descriptors) tended to be used in combination with some place names (locative descriptors) more than others. These combinations are seen in Table 14.2. (Numbers emphasized in the text are shown in bold.) The variety descriptors -mal, bang’˘on, and sat’uri all appear on informants’ maps several hundred times, but there seems to be a difference in the kinds of linguistic varieties they are used to describe. Mal (translated here as “-speech”) is used most commonly for Seoul (79.9) and North Korea (75.5), suggesting perhaps that -mal is used for language varieties associated with a greater sense of legitimacy.1 The descriptor -sat’uri (“accent”) is almost never used to describe these varieties (Seoul 0%, North Korea 6.8%), but is commonly applied to Kangw˘on (34.8), Ch’ungch’˘ong (33.9), Ch˘olla (32.2), and Ky˘ongsang (38.0). Finally, the descriptor bang’˘on (“-dialect”) is used much more (57.9) in referring to Cheju than to the other dialects.2 To the 2027 responses in Table 14.2 are added 70 answers for “Standard” (p’yojun-˘o), 16 for “Pusan speech” and 11 miscellaneous variety labels with North Korean place names (“P’y˘ongyang”, etc.), or generic regional terms (“central dialect”), for a total of 2124 speech variety regions drawn.

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Table 14.2. Combinations of locative descriptors and variety descriptors in speech variety labels. Variety descriptor Locative descriptor

–mal (speech, -sat’uri words) (accent)

-bang’˘on (dialect)

Place name only

Total

Seoul

203 79.9%



0


51
20.1%



0

254

Ky˘onggi


12
40.0%



6
20.0%


12
40.0%


13

43

Kangw˘on


70
27.7%

85 34.8%


89
36.5%


42

286

Ch’ungch’˘ong


87
28.6%

103 33.9%

114
37.5%


50

354

Ch˘olla


86
25.4%

109 32.2%

143
42.3%


60

398

Ky˘ongsang


75
22.8%

125 38.0%

129
39.2%


58

387

Cheju


50
21.5%


48
20.6%

135 57.9%


28

261

33 75%



3

6.8%



8
18.2%



0

44

479

681

251

2027

North Korea Total

2.

616

Dialect divisions of Korea

Before we examine the actual geographical aspects of informants’ language variety perceptions, let us get an overview of the dialect divisions of Korean. Figure 14.2 shows the dialect divisions proposed by Shimpei Ogura in 1940, based on his surveys of phonological, lexical and grammatical variants. Although other dialect divisions have been proposed since, this schema is still in common use (see Umeda 1989). There are six dialect divisions in Korean: Northwest (North and South P’y˘ong’an, P’y˘ongyang, most of Chagang), Northeast (North and most of South Hamgy˘ong, Ryanggang, small part of Chagang), Central (North and South Hwanghae, Ky˘onggi, Seoul, Kangw˘on, North and South Ch’ungch’˘ong, and small areas of North Ch˘olla and S. Hamgyong), Southwest (North and South Ch˘olla), Southeast (North and South Ky˘ongsang) and Cheju (Cheju Island). A detailed discussion of the linguistic differences among Korean dialects is beyond the scope of this paper, but we can note the following characteristics. Geographical variation in consonants is rather limited and tends to be phonetic rather than phonemic. In Northwest dialects and the Korean spoken in the Yanbian region of the People’s Republic

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253

Figure 14.2. Distribution of Korean dialects, after Ogura 1940.

of China (Jilin Province), for example, the /tw/ /‘tw/ /twh/ consonants are pronounced [ts], [‘ts] and [tsh] respectively. Variation in vowels is more complex, with the number of contrasting vowel phonemes differing from one variety to the next. Standard Korean and more conservative central dialects have nine vowels (Umeda 1957), Seoul speakers middle-aged and younger tend to have eight or even seven, and some southern dialects (e.g., Ky˘ongsang) have only six. This also affects the number of contrasting compound vowels. A phonemic contrast

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between long and short vowels exists in the standard(s), but is being lost in younger Seoul speakers (Nakamura et al. 1991), and has already disappeared in some dialects such as Hamgyong and North Ch˘olla. There is regional variation in the phonemic significance of contrastive pitch between syllables, with pitch accent seen in the North and South Ky˘ongsang and Hamgyong, and in a sense South Ch˘olla, and some areas of Kangw˘on, but not in the Seoul dialect or in the spoken standards of North or South Korea (Hayata 1976; also W.-J. Kim 1983, S.-O. Yi 1983). Some morphophonemic sound changes vary between the standards of South and North Korea. A good degree of lexical and grammatical variation has been documented as well, especially for the Ky˘ongsang and Cheju dialects.

3.

Perceptions of North Korean speech

Phonologically, the standard languages of North and South Korea are very similar. According to generally accepted dialect divisions (Umeda 1989), the Seoul dialect belongs to the Central dialect region, while that of P’y˘ongyang belongs to the Northwest dialect region. While the spoken standard of the south is based on the speech of Seoul, the northern standard functions as a super-regional variety there because it is based neither on the dialect of P’y˘ongyang nor any other regional dialect of the north. There are pronunciation differences between the two standards which are linked to slight orthographic disparities between the two standards. The South Korean standard is referred to as p’yojun-˘o, lit. ‘standard language’. In order to distance themselves from the spoken standard of the south, the North Koreans began referring to their spoken standard as munhwa-˘o (lit. ‘cultured language’) in 1966 (C.-W. Kim 1978: 254). As we saw in Figure 14.2, the central part of the Korean peninsula comprises a single, dominant dialect region that straddles the current North-South national border. In fact, the border cuts through the middle of two Korean provinces (Ky˘onggi and Kangw˘on) as well. Informants’ responses indicated overwhelmingly, however, that they did not perceive this central dialect region as a single speech variety. 65% of the total of 471 informants who participated in the survey completely ignored the northern part of the peninsula. The remaining 35% (166 people) includes those who provided any information whatsoever regarding North Korea. This includes those 44 informants who used speech variety labels such as “North Korean speech”, those who listed some sort of traits for the north, and those who included the north in their ranks of “pleasantness”. Informants’ comments did not necessarily reveal their knowledge of North Korean speech; some indicated their ignorance with comments such as “I don’t know”. Of those who did offer information, the comments were often less than positive. These included “funny” or “stilted”, as well as a very common comment which seems to indicate the speakers themselves rather than the speech varieties, “pitiful”. However, simply because most informants did not supply specific information about

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255

North Korea speech varieties, this does not mean that they ignored the border. On the contrary, most informants provided detailed information about the South, but abruptly ceased their descriptions at the demarcation line, ample evidence of the role that the border plays in their perceptions of language variety. Why do our informants perceive this dialectal boundary between the north and the south, one which was not said to exist in dialect maps half a century ago? There are three possible explanations. The first is that informants were simply ignorant of anything about the language north of the border; they did not know whether it was similar to their own or not. This ignorance could result simply from the geographical distance between many regions of the north and many regions in the south. It is only logical (all other factors being equal) that people are more familiar with regions close to their own than with those further away. This relationship between distance and knowledge (or information) is shown in Gould and White (1986). Thus it could be that most people (and not just the younger people who were raised after the political division) in the southern regions have little knowledge of the dialects in the northern areas far from themselves. The ignorance could also be the result of the information blackout between the two countries. A second possibility is that, in the half century since the political division took place, the speech on either side of the borderline has indeed split up into two different “political dialects” (as C.-W. Kim 1978 suggested two decades ago they might), and that our informants were aware of this divergence, even though few provided specific details of it. A third possibility is that South Koreans perceive the speech of the north to be more different from their own than it actually is, because of their strong perceptions of political and social differences with the north. This is what Dailey-O’Cain (1999), in reference to the reunified East and West Germany, has termed the “wall in the mind”.3 King has written of this perceived difference in the north and south language varieties, stating, “There is growing concern in both North and South Korea about ‘linguistic divergence’ between the official languages of the North and South, but the differences are linguistically insignificant and will be easily overcome with unification” (King 1994: 1869) This would seem to negate our second possibility. Finally, on a related topic, we find that not one of our 471 informants made any mention of the speakers of Korean across the North Korean border in the People’s Republic of China. This is in spite of the fact that the North Korea-PRC border was shown on the informant questionnaire, with sufficient space for comments. The presence of speakers of Korean in the PRC is far from an obscure bit of trivia; Rim (1988) estimates their numbers at 1.7 million, and maps of Korean-speaking regions in KoreanJapanese dictionaries include an inset just to highlight the Korean areas of China. Whether this indicates that the informants were unaware of the speakers of Korean in the PRC, or simply that their perceptions of language regions are dominated by political boundaries is unclear. However, the latter explanation is feasible when we recall that provincial boundaries within South Korea as well as the border with North Korea dominated informants’ perceptions of speech divisions.

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4.

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Perceptions of the area of “Standard”

The spoken standard language of South Korea has been characterized as not clearly delineated. C.-W. Kim says, “At present, the standard language is vaguely defined as that of educated speakers in Seoul. This is a definition of principle, not of practice. With the social upheaval that the Korean War and mass mobility have brought, genuine Seoul dialect speakers, if they still exist at all, are a minority” (C.-W. Kim 1978: 256). Previous studies of the perceptions of other languages have concentrated on the geographical location of speech varieties identified as “standard” or “correct”. This topic proved to be far less interesting in the case of Korea, however, as almost all those who indicated a standard region located it in the province of Ky˘onggi, the area surrounding Seoul (Figure 14.3). Rather the interesting topic was whether informants of a certain region had labeled a region as standard or not.

Figure 14.3. “Standard (p’yojun-˘o)” region; all informants, n=70.

Data in Table 14.3 from the current survey shows the number of people, according to informant region, who drew a region that they labeled “Standard”. Overall, we see that “Standard” was drawn by 17.9% of the informants. We find that informants drew over

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF KOREAN DIALECTS

257

three times as many “Seoul” speech variety maps (either “Seoul speech” or “Seoul dialect”), with these maps accounting for 64.8% of the total. Table 14.3. Frequency of “Standard” and “Seoul” maps by informant region. Informants’ home region

Percentage who drew “Standard” maps

Percentage who drew “Seoul” maps

Seoul Ky˘onggi Kangw˘on N. and S. Ch’ungch’˘ong N. and S. Ch˘olla N. and S. Ky˘ongsang Cheju

18.2 14.3 22.7 22.3 18.9 13.0 11.8

69.1 71.4 50.0 61.4 65.1 72.0 55.9

Total

17.9

64.8

The total number of “Standard” drawers was only 70, so the small differences in the percentages among the informant groups should not be overemphasized. Nonetheless, it does bear mention that Ky˘ongsang informants are among the least likely to label a speech region “standard” and the most likely to label one “Seoul”. It would seem that Ky˘ongsang informants are more reluctant than their counterparts to bestow the honor of “standard” on a specific region, preferring instead to think of a Seoul dialect. Although the differences among informant groups here are small and the results thus inconclusive, we should keep them in mind, because we will see other unique tendencies among Ky˘ongsang informants below in our data for “most pleasant” speech region, as well in data presented below from previous studies by Yim. 5.

Korean Dialect Attitudes

Before we examine the results from the current study for “most pleasant” speech regions, let us examine some data on dialect attitudes obtained from a previous large-scale study conducted on Korean speakers from various regions. These data provide us with an insight into the dialect consciousness situation in Korea. In a large-scale survey by Yim (1993; Sanada and Yim 1993), 11.4% (155 respondents of the total 1365 informants in this survey) responded that there were places in Korea where their dialects would not be understood. The percentages varied from one informant region to another, however (Table 14.4, second column). With the Cheju informants, over a third replied in this way. The percentage of Cheju speakers who said their dialects would not be understood if they went to other regions was double or triple that of informants from other regions. We find this perception of mutual intelligibility with Cheju when we examine the data from the opposite perspective as well. When these 155 informants were asked to

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specify the regions in which their dialects would not be understood, about half of the informants named Cheju. The percentages of the responses to this sub-question were as follows: Cheju (49.4), Ch˘olla (19.5), Ky˘ongsang (16.2), Seoul (2.6), Ch’ungch’˘ong (2.6), North Korea (2.6), Ky˘onggi (1.3), Kangw˘on (0.7). We see from these results that Cheju occupies a unique position in Korea in that it is widely regarded as lacking mutual intelligibility with other dialects. We shall see later in this paper some data for “most pleasant” in which Cheju informants themselves displayed unique tendencies in their perceptions of their own dialects. Other survey results prove enlightening as well. In response to a question about pride in their native dialects, about twice as many Ky˘ongsang informants responded in the negative as did informants from other regions (Table 14.4, third column). As is typical in dialect attitude questions, not all responses were affirmative or negative; some informants responded neutrally. For this reason, we have given the percentages for the affirmative answers as well in the “Proud of my dialect” column in the table. Here again Ky˘ongsang informants are the most negative about their dialect. Table 14.4. Dialect Attitudes by Informant Region. Home Region of My dialect Not proud Proud of Dislike my Like my Informant is not of my my dialect dialect dialect intelligible dialect

Want to speak Standard

Don’t want to speak Standard

Seoul Ky˘onggi Kangw˘on Ch’ungch’˘ong Ch˘olla Ky˘ongsang Cheju

62.8 60.9 58.5 56.8 54.8 63.9 65.8

27.9 31.9 36.6 33.3 39.5 30.1 31.6


9.4
2.9
9.8
5.9 17.4 12.1 36.8


6.1
4.4
7.3
3.8
6.8 12.0
2.6

54.0 58.3 68.2 62.7 57.9 48.1 55.3


4.3
1.4 12.2
1.9
4.2 13.2 10.5

64.7 70.2 60.9 62.7 68.7 59.1 55.2

With the question of attachment towards one’s home dialect, we find the same tendency appears for Ky˘ongsang informants to respond negatively towards their own dialect (columns five and six). On the other hand, Ky˘ongsang informants’ results for a question regarding their desire to speak the standard variety showed a tendency very similar to that of informants from other regions (columns seven and eight). Yim (1993: 119–120) interprets these unexpected results as evidence of a “dialect (inferiority) complex” on the part of the Ky˘ongsang informants. This “dialect complex” is difficult to explain in light of all the successful people which this area has produced. What is more, North and South Ky˘ongsang, are the locations of Taegu and Pusan, respectively, among the largest urban centers in the country. In spite of the fact that these data are from various age groups (unlike the present study which focuses on college students) there are nonetheless some striking similarities in the results of the two studies. We shall see below, in the “most pleasant” speech region responses from the present survey, data which further illustrate this dialect complex.

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF KOREAN DIALECTS

6.

259

The “Most Pleasant” speech region

Let us now look at the areas indicated by informants as having the “most pleasant” speech. Of the 471 informants, 371 completed the “most pleasant” task on the survey. In Table 14.5, we see that Seoul informants tended to choose their home dialect or the standard (but not a region called “Seoul dialect”) as the most pleasant speech region. 65.7% of the Ky˘onggi informants who completed this task indicated the region they had labeled “Seoul” as the most pleasant speech region. The percentage of Ky˘onggi and Kangw˘on informants who picked their home dialects as most pleasant was comparatively low. With informants from Ch’ungch’˘ong, Ch˘olla and Cheju, however, we see a very large portion choosing the home dialect. A notable exception to this trend is Ky˘ongsang, where less than 14% of the informants chose their home dialect as most pleasant. Table 14.5. Areas given as “Most Pleasant” by Informant Region. Informant Region

Seoul as “most pleasant”

Standard as “most pleasant”

Home Dialect Other as as “most “most pleasant” pleasant”

Seoul Ky˘onggi Kangw˘on N. and S. Ch’ungch’˘ong N. and S. Ch˘olla N. and S. Ky˘ongsang Cheju


0 65.7 31.8 32.1 33 49.0 26.5

19.6 11.4 18.2 14.3 17 13.7
2.9

56.9
5.7 13.6 39.3 44.7 13.7 47.1

Total

23.5 17.1 36.4 14.3
5.3 23.5 23.5

Total no. of Inf.
51
35
22
84
94
51
34 371

As seen in Table 14.5, some informants labeled their “most pleasant” region as “standard” while others labeled it as “Seoul”, but when looking at the hand-drawn maps, we see that, in many cases, these referred to the same geographical areas. Thus, it is necessary to examine the actual areas designated as “most pleasant”. Figure 14.4 differs from the map of all 70 informants’ perception of the area of “standard Korean” which was seen in Figure 14.3. It is created from the mean figures for the seven informant groups. We chose this method of representation to compensate for the fact that our 7 informant groups had differing numbers. We will refer to these values as the “national average”. (The small number of informants [70] who had drawn “standard” made this technique impractical for that map.) Overall we see that the Ky˘onggi region was chosen most often (at the 50–60% level), with the Kangw˘on and Ch’ungch’˘ong at a very distant second (10–20% level). In Figure 14.5 we see that the Seoul informants overwhelmingly agreed that their own region (Ky˘onggi-do) had the most pleasant speech. This level of agreement (over 80%) is not seen in the “most pleasant” maps for any of the other regions. It is a bit intriguing to

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Figure 14.4. “Most Pleasant” 7 region, National Average.

see the Seoul metropolitan area (which lies more or less in the center of Ky˘onggi) excluded from the highest level here. This may just be a fluke of the composite mapdrawing technique (i.e., 79% and 80% would be shaded differently on this map). On the other hand, this may represent a preference on the part of urban Seoul informants for the speech of the surrounding hinterlands. Figure 14.6 shows that this high opinion of the home region was shared somewhat by informants from Ky˘onggi, the region surrounding Seoul. There is a striking drop from the 80–100% level of agreement seen in the Seoul informants’ map to the 40–60% level. This of course results from a greater disparity in the regions that each individual informant from this region chose as most pleasant. In Figure 14.7, the greatest number of informants from Kangw˘on chose the Ky˘onggi region as most pleasant. Interestingly, the preference for Ky˘onggi speech is even more pronounced here among Kangw˘on informants than it was among the Ky˘onggi informants themselves. The faint, but obvious, shading of their own province indicates that their own region’s speech occupies a respectable second place on the pleasantness scale. In Figures 14.8 and 14.9, informants from Ch’ungch’˘ong and Ch˘olla show results

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Figure 14.5. “Most Pleasant” region of Seoul informants, n=51.

very similar to each other (and to the Kangw˘on informants). The majority of informants in these regions indicated that the speech of the area around Seoul is the most pleasant, with their own respective regions showing a close second. Figure 14.10 represents a dramatic departure from the results we have seen for Kangw˘on, Ch’ungch’˘ong and Ch˘olla, in that the speech of the Ky˘ongsang informants’ own region has an extremely poor showing. At the same time, there is a higher level of agreement on the supremacy of Seoul speech than was seen among either the Ch’ungch’˘ong or the Ch˘olla region informants. In fact, the percentage of Ky˘ongsang informants who rate Ky˘onggi-do as most pleasant (60–80%) exceeds the level (40–60%) observed even among Ky˘onggi informants themselves. Moreover, although the levels for the Ch˘olla region intensify to the 20–40% level only in the map by Ch˘olla informants themselves (an easily explainable result), at least some informants in the other informant groups have chosen the Ch˘olla dialect as “most pleasant” (as evidenced by the 1–20% levels in Figures 14.5, 14.6, 14.7, 14.8 and 14.11). The sole exception is Ky˘ongsang, where not a single one of the 51 informants indicated a preference for the speech of Ch˘olla.4 Results of the informants from the island of Cheju (Figure 14.11) are also strikingly different from those seen thus far. Although both the Ky˘onggi and home regions are positively rated, the order is the opposite of that seen in the Kangw˘on, Ch’ungch’˘ong or

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Figure 14.6. “Most Pleasant” region of Ky˘onggi informants, n=35.

Ch˘olla informants, with the home region being the most commonly chosen (40–60%), and the Ky˘onggi area coming in second (20–40%). As we see in Table 14.6, Cheju stands out as being the only region in which people chose the home region’s speech as most pleasant more often than they did the Ky˘onggi areas (“Seoul” and “Standard”). Table 14.6. Regions indicated as most pleasant. Home region of Informants

Top choice for “most pleasant” Second most common choice for “most pleasant”

Seoul Ky˘onggi Kangw˘on Ch’ungch’˘ong Ch˘olla Ky˘ongsang Cheju

Ky˘onggi Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Home region

home region home region home region Ky˘onggi (Seoul)

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Figure 14.7. “Most Pleasant” region of Kangw˘on informants, n=22.

7.

Standardized score maps of “pleasantness”

We have shown thus far that the informants of many regions perceived Seoul speech as the most pleasant, but what does this tell us about the peculiarities of each informant region? The majority of informants from Ch˘olla, for example, chose Seoul, but so did the informants of other regions as well. Our next task is to discover what is unique about the answers of the Ch˘olla informants. Tabulating standardized scores for all the points on the map allows us to find this. In essence, these scores allow us to compare the Ch˘olla informants’ answers to the “national average” (Figure 14.4), and discover what is unique about the Ch˘olla informants’ perceptions. Long 1997 (following Gould and White 1986) refers to the area of the national averages (i.e., those traits common to the maps of all regions) as the “national surface”. Another way to look at standardizing the values is that we are scraping away the “national surface” to reveal the “true surface” of each individual informant group. Next, we will analyze the standardized score maps for each informant region. Because Seoul was chosen by informants from all over the country as most pleasant, it does not make a particularly strong showing on the standardized score maps for informants from Seoul and Ky˘onggi (Figures 14.12 and 14.13). The Ky˘onggi region appears

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Figure 14.8. “Most Pleasant” region of Ch’ungch’˘ong informants, n=84.

slightly above average (55–69.6) in Figure 14.12 and slightly below average (30.4–45) in Figure 14.13, but in neither case are these statistically significant values. The results for the other five informant regions are strikingly different. With the national surface scraped away, we see that informants of Kangw˘on, Ch’ungch’˘ong, Ch˘olla and Cheju have a quite favorable impression of their home dialects. In Figures 14.14, 14.15, 14.16 and 14.18, areas in the home region appear in the darkest shade, indicating scores higher than 69.6.5 These levels are sufficiently greater than the national mean to a statistically significant degree (p < .05). Ky˘ongsang, in Figure 14.17, is the sole exception to this general trend. Most informants from this region have not rated their home dialect highly. This trend reinforces the evidence of a “dialect inferiority complex” among Ky˘ongsang speakers cited in Yim 1993. One young male informant from the South Ky˘ongsang city of Pusan explains, “The accent of the region is strong and speakers attract attention when they converse in public. They cannot alter their speech and this leads to their complex … But, along with Cheju, the Ky˘ongsang dialect is a well-liked one, because men’s speech sounds macho and the women’s sounds cute.” In Figure 14.18, we see that the home province stands out among the Cheju informants. We also see that the number of Cheju informants who have included South

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Figure 14.9. “Most Pleasant” region of Ch˘olla informants, n=94.

Ky˘ongsang on the mainland in their “most pleasant” speech area is significantly higher than the national average. The comments made by the Cheju informants who chose Ky˘ongsang as most pleasant were generally positive traits such as “amiable” and “engaging”, but also included characteristics such as “rough and tough”, giving us some insight into the complex attitudes behind this choice.

8.

Summary

We can summarize the main trends found in our Korean perceptual dialect map data as follows: (1) single-province dialect regions, (2) the overbearing role of the North-South political border, (3) the absence of a geographical location for “standard”, (4) Seoul speech as “most pleasant”, (5) each home regions’ speech as “pleasant”, (6) Ky˘ongsang informants’ dialect inferiority complex. Unlike Japan and the U. S. where there were regional dialects, most Korean informants drew each province as a separate dialect. This tendency probably relates to a high degree of regional consciousness, and a comparatively small number of administrative units in Korea. With the exception of Seoul, practically no cities were indicated as dialect

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Figure 14.10. “Most Pleasant” region of Ky˘ongsang informants, n=51.

regions. This is surprising in the light of similar German and French studies in which perceptions of urban speech varieties figured prominently. (Dailey-O’Cain 1999, Kuiper 1999). One possible reason for this difference is the difference in the nature of our Korean questionnaires; informants might have provided more information about Korean cities if they had been indicated on the map. Another possibility is that since Korea is more recently industrialized, the urban/rural dialect dichotomy perceived in these Western European countries has yet to develop there. Most informants did not provide details for the North, but this fact in itself illustrates the importance of the political boundary in the perceptions of the informants. In the Japanese perceptual dialects surveys, there was a strong overall tendency for informants to draw a region they labeled “standard”. On the average 40% of the Japanese informants drew a standard region, while only half of that number (20%) drew a region they labeled “Kanto dialect” (Long 1997). With the Korean data, we saw an extremely strong trend in the opposite direction, with only 18% indicating a “standard” region, and 65% drawing a “Seoul dialect” region. Korean informants were less inclined to think of the standard variety as the speech of a certain region than their Japanese counterparts were. Furthermore, in studies of Japanese dialects, Long found interesting regional variation in informants’ perception of where the standard was spoken. In particular, there

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Figure 14.11. “Most Pleasant” region of Cheju informants, n=34.

was a strong (and statistically significant) tendency for informants from Kansai to be more reluctant to grant the special status of “standard” to the Tokyo region; they were more likely to give this honor to the newly-settled island of Hokkaido instead (Long 1997). In contrast, of those Korean informants who did indicate a standard region, most located it in the province of Ky˘onggi. In almost all informant regions the Ky˘onggi (Seoul) area was the first choice for “most pleasant”, followed by the home dialect in second place. Notable exceptions to this were the Ky˘ongsang informants among whom the home dialect was hardly ever chosen. Also of note were the Cheju informants who chose their home dialect over Ky˘onggi’s as “most pleasant”. This type of tendency (more people rating the home dialect as “most pleasant” than the standard) was very rare even in the Japanese data in which home dialects enjoyed a reasonably favor favorable pleasantness rating. When the national surface, consisting of Ky˘onggi, was stripped away from the “most pleasant” maps, the unique characteristics of each informant region were revealed. For Kangw˘on, Ch’ungch’˘ong, Ch˘olla and Cheju, the home region appeared so strongly that the differences from the “national average” were statistically significant. Ky˘ongsang was the exception to a general trend for home regions to be indicated as pleasant, a fact which is amplified in the standardized value maps. These results support

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Figure 14.12. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Seoul respondents.

evidence from previous surveys which suggest that many Ky˘ongsang informants suffer from a “dialect inferiority complex”, a severe form of what Labov has termed “linguistic insecurity”. Although Ky˘ongsang informants show signs of linguistic insecurity in their low self-evaluations of their own dialects, they also do not appear very eager to bestow the honor of “Standard Korean” on a particular region, namely Seoul. Rather they prefer to think of that region’s language variety as “Seoul speech” or “Seoul dialect”. In the results of a similar survey conducted in Japan on informants from Tokyo and 7 regions in Western Japan, we found a very clear tendency for informants to give favorable “pleasantness” ratings to (1) the Kansai area, (2) the Kanto area (location of Tokyo which is often regarded as the Standard speech), and (3) their own home regions (Long 1999a). In various parts of the U. S., informants have displayed tendencies to rate their home regions as “most pleasant” (Preston 1997). Unlike Korea and Japan, Americans from different regions do not seem to agree on the supremacy of a single dialect region when it comes to pleasantness (Table 14.7). Korea differs from Japan in that it is perceived to

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Figure 14.13. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Ky˘onggi respondents.

have only one linguistic center, unlike Japan with two (Kansai and Kanto). Table 14.7. Indicators of perceptual centralization in three countries. Most common pleasantness Japan ranking

Korea

U. S.

1st 2nd 3rd

Kansai Kanto home dialect

Ky˘onggi (Seoul) Home dialect

Home dialect

Linguistic centers

Two

One

none

What factors may account for these differences? There is more regional variation among the dialects of Korea and Japan because (in spite of their relatively small geographical sizes) the languages have longer histories than does U. S. English. Thus, it would seem at first that people in Korea and Japan should have chosen their home dialects even

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Figure 14.14. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Kangw˘on respondents.

more than they did, i.e., that their results should have more closely mirrored the U. S. survey results. However, it is because of this variation that standardization has been such an important issue in these countries. And in both of these countries, “standardization” basically means learning the speech of the nation’s largest city. The results indicate that Korea and Japan are more “linguistically centralized” than the U. S., in that speakers throughout both countries highly evaluate the speech of the capital not only as being “standard” (something which is much easier to account for) but also as pleasant. What does this imply? It is plausible that the speech of Seoul and Tokyo has spread throughout these countries to the extent that speakers accept those varieties not only as intellectually attractive (i.e., correct or standard), but as appealing on an emotional level as well (i.e., pleasant). On the other hand, these positive images of Seoul and Tokyo speech may well reduce negative reactions of regional speakers towards these language varieties and facilitate their continued diffusion into outlying dialect areas. Moreover, these factors could be cyclical, with these positive perceptions of the capital regions being both a cause of (further) standardization, as well as an effect of the standardization that has occurred thus far.

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Figure 14.15. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Ch’ungch’˘ong respondents.

In discussing this centralization and the perceived pleasantness of Seoul and Tokyo speech in the two countries, however, it is important not to forget the perceptions observed in the standardized values maps, i.e., that when these overall tendencies (the “national surface”) are stripped away, a clear tendency to rate the home regions highly is revealed. This tendency was found in all eight informant regions surveyed in Japan, and in almost all of the seven regions surveyed in Korea. In all three societies discussed here, Korea, Japan and the U. S., the necessity of having a command of the spoken standard for societal advancement, and indeed the seeming inevitability of increased linguistic leveling (to a degree, but not totally) as a result of the increasing mobility of speakers are important topics both to the average citizen and to those dealing with various aspects of language policy (school teachers, speech coaches, bureaucrats, politicians). At the opposite end of the spectrum, another similarity in these three societies is the increasing importance being placed on the conservation of traditional language varieties in the name of cultural preservation, and the growing realization of the serious psychological

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Figure 14.16. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Ch˘olla respondents.

and educational consequences of dialect inferiority complexes. Moreover, there is an increasing emphasis on respecting the linguistic identity and first-language rights of individuals who have grown up speaking varieties that differ from the standard. Yim (1994) has shown that almost half of the sociolinguistic research on the Korean language falls under the heading of language planning, i.e., research relating to solving practical problems. Groups and individuals on both sides of the demarcation line publicly express their wish for the reunification of their land. Germany’s example has shown that reunification is not merely a problem of political structures, but of people’s mindsets as well. It is hoped that techniques for the analysis of language perceptions such as those outlined here will shed light on the intricacies of language attitudes and facilitate the alleviation of problems related to them.

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Figure 14.17. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Ky˘ongsang respondents.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by a Chung-Ang University Special Research Grant for 1997. The authors wish to thank the two anonymous readers for their suggestions which helped to improve this paper, which originally appeared in Gengo Kenkyu: Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan, issue 117.

Notes 1. Preston (1996) has suggested that (unlike the way in which linguists view language) everyday people see dialects as sub-varieties of some super variety. Perhaps the young informants have come to see North Korean speech as not a sub-variety of their language, but as a parallel variety, different but equal. Here again, the social (political, educational, orthographic) situation may have played a large role in forming this impression in their minds. 2. Anonymous Reader E pointed out that most Koreans are exposed to the Ky˘ongsang and Ch˘olla dialects on an everyday basis; they hear them on television or through personal contact. With the Cheju dialect, however, the Reader points out that it is quite possible for even a Korean with a fair amount of contact

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Figure 14.18. Standardized Scores for “Most Pleasant” region of Cheju respondents. with people outside his region to go through life with virtually no exposure to the Cheju dialect. Furthermore, because of the great differences between this island dialect and those on the mainland, most Koreans would be unable to understand the Cheju variety anyway, precluding its use for comedic/ dramatic effect. It is likely then this difference between comprehensible but odd-sounding sat’uri, and incomprehensible and foreign-sounding bang’˘on which we find revealed in Table 14.2. 3. Anonymous Reader J has pointed out that the names that South Koreans use to refer to the northern and southern states are slowly changing. South Korea has traditionally referred to itself as Nam Han (South Han), in contrast to Puk Han (North Han), but the former term is increasingly being replaced by Hanguk (Han Nation), perhaps revealing an underlying perceptual divergence. 4. Anonymous Reader E has suggested that this may be symptomatic of the fierce rivalry often cited between the two regions. 5. On the Ch’ungch’˘ong informants’ map, the Hamgy˘ong region in North Korea is shown as having been chosen more often by these informants to a statistically significant degree (under 69.6). In reality, only two informants from this region chose the area as most pleasant, but since the number of informants from other regions who chose Hamgy˘ong was zero, the area where these two informants overlapped shows up as significantly high. Incidentally, one of these informants commented that Hamgy˘ong speech was “strong, masculine”. The other (who indicated all of North Korea as most pleasant) commented that the North was “country (bumpkin)” and “comical”.



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References Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 1999. “The perception of post-unification German regional speech.” In Preston (ed.), 227–242. Gould, Peter and Rodney White. 1986. Mental Maps. Boston: Allen and Unwin (2nd ed). Hayata, Teruhiro. 1976. “An attempt at a family tree for accent in some Korean dialects.” Gengo Kenkyu¯ 73: 1–26. Kim, Chin-W. 1978. “Divergence in language policies in Korea.” In Papers in Korean Linguistics, ChinW. Kim (ed.), 245–257. Columbia, SC: Hornbeam. Kim, Wan-jin. 1983. “Phonological structure of the Korean language.” In The Korean Language, Korean National Commission for UNESCO (ed.), 157–170. Seoul: Si-sa-yong-o-sa. King, R. 1994. “Korea: People’s Democratic (sic) Republic (North): Language situation & Korea: Republic of (South): Language situation.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, R. E. Asher (ed.), 1868–1869. Oxford: Pergamon. Kuiper, Lawrence. 1999. “Variation and the norm: Parisian perceptions of regional French.” In Preston (ed.), 243–262. Long, Daniel. 1997. “The perception of ‘standard’ as the speech variety of a specific region: computerproduced composite maps of perceptual dialect regions.” In Issues and Methods in Dialectology, A. Thomas (ed.), 256–270. Bangor: University of Wales, Department of Linguistics. Long, Daniel. 1999a. “Mapping non-linguists’ evaluations of Japanese language variation.” In Preston (ed.), 199–226. Long, Daniel. 1999b. “Ho¯gen ninchi chizu ni mirareru jimoto ho¯gen no aidentiti” [Home dialect identities as seen in perceptual dialect maps]. In Kotoba no nijusseiki [Language in the 20th Century], H. Shôji (ed.), 194–207. Tokyo: Domesu. Nakamura, Tamotsu, Tong-Jun Kim and Hiroyuki Umeda. 1991. “Kankokugo Seoul ho¯gen no sedaisa ni tsuite.” Gakujutsu Geppo¯ 44.4: 348–354. Ogura, Shimpei. 1940. The Outline of the Korean dialects. [Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 12]. Tokyo: Toyo Bunko. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual Dialectology, Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis R. 1996. “Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness.” Language Awareness 5.1: 40–74. Preston, Dennis R. 1997. “The South: The touchstone.” In: Language Variety in the South Revisited, C. Bernstein, T. Nunnally and R. Sabino (eds), 311–351. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. Preston, Dennis R. (ed.). 1999. Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Rim, S.-H. 1988. “Zaichu¯goku cho¯sen minzoku no bairingarizumu” [Bilingualism among ethnic Koreans in China]. Gengo 17.9: 72–78. ˘ on’ o˘ -hak u˘i Ch˘on’gae [Developments in SocioSanada, Shinji and Young-Cheol Yim. 1993. Sahoi O˘ linguistics]. Seoul: Japanese Language Promotion Center. Umeda, Hiroyuki. 1957. “Phonemic system of modern Korean.” Gengo Kenkyu¯ 32: 60–82. Umeda, Hiroyuki. 1989. “Cho¯sengo.” Gengogaku Daijiten. Sanseido. Yi, Sang-Ok. 1983. “Remarks on tone in Middle Korean.” In The Korean Language, Korean National Commission for UNESCO (ed.), 171–189. Seoul: Si-sa-yong-o-sa. Yim, Young-Cheol. 1993. Zainichi, Zaibei Kankokujin, oyobi Kankokujin no Gengo Seikatsu no Jittai [Language Life of Koreans, Korean-Japanese and Korean-Americans]. Tokyo: Kuroshio. Yim, Young-Cheol. 1994. “Kankoku no shakai gengogaku: nihon to no hikaku o chu¯shin ni.” Nihongogaku 13.10: 31–39.



C 15 A Perceptual Dialectology of Anglophone Canada from the Perspective of Young Albertans and Ontarians Meghan McKinnie and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain

1.

Introduction

In recent years, the importance for sociolinguists of studying not only facts about language variation, but also non-linguists’ perceptions of language variation, has come to be recognized. Methods for studying these perceptions were refined by Preston (1989) in his work on the United States, but with the growing number of perceptual dialectology studies being carried out in countries such as Germany (Dailey-O’Cain 1999; 2000), France (Leonard, this volume; Kuiper 1999), Japan (Long 1999), Turkey (Demirci and Kleiner 1999), Hungary (Kontra, this volume), and Wales (Coupland et al. 1999), it seems appropriate to be able to add Canada to this list. In the past, dialectological studies which have been carried out in Canada thus far have tended to be mainly descriptive in nature. Usage surveys such as those of Scargill and Warkentyne (1977) in the 1970s and 1980s provide fascinating information on the lexical choice of Canadians across the country, and the phonology of Canadians has also been examined extensively by Noseworthy (1972), Chambers (1979), Lehn (1959) and Avis (1972), to name just a few. Yet unlike Preston’s perceptual dialectology studies which examine Americans’ attitudes toward English spoken across the United States, the attitude studies carried out in Canada tend to examine Canadians’ attitudes toward American and British English rather than Canadians’ perceptions of Canadian varieties of English spoken across the country. For this reason, it seems appropriate that we investigate this untouched territory. This study examines the perceptions of Canadians from Alberta in western Canada and from Ontario in central eastern Canada, providing a look at their perceptions of the cultural and linguistic make-up of the country, as well as their attitudes toward English speakers in other geographical areas in Canada.

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2.

MEGHAN MCKINNIE AND JENNIFER DAILEY-O’CAIN

Previous research: Perceptual dialectology in the United States

Since the United States and Canada share one of the world’s longest borders, it is first of all interesting to ask if the same generalizations can be made about Americans’ perceptions of different varieties of American English, and Canadians’ perceptions of the variation in their own country’s English. Generalizing from many of the perceptual dialectology studies that have been carried out so far in the U. S. (Preston 1989a,b,c,d; Hartley 1999), several tendencies can be noted about Americans’ perceptions of their own English. As for ‘correctness’, respondents from linguistically secure areas (areas where people believe the English they speak is quite ‘correct’) tend to make use of the entire spectrum of the scale that they’re given. They tend to rate their own and other positivelyregarded varieties of U. S. English very highly, while stigmatized varieties are rated much closer to the bottom of the scale. As Preston found (1989d), for example, the mean for respondents from the very linguistically secure area of southeastern Michigan for their own state was over eight on a scale from one to ten (with ten as best), while stigmatized Alabama received a rating of closer to three. Respondents from less linguistically secure areas, however, tend to use less of the scale, rating both stigmatized and positivelyregarded varieties more toward the middle. The ‘pleasantness’ ratings in the United States tend to look somewhat different from the ‘correctness’ ratings. Respondents both from linguistically secure and linguistically insecure areas tend to cluster their ratings more toward the middle of the scale than they do with “correctness’. For example, southern Indiana respondents rated their own state’s variety as between seven and eight on a scale from one to ten, and the state with the most stigmatized variety, New York, received a rating of between five and six (Preston 1989d). Respondents from linguistically secure areas of the United States have maintained a slightly greater tendency to have stronger opinions than their less linguistically secure counterparts in other states, although these are not as starkly contrasted as their ‘correctness’ ratings. Southeastern Michigan respondents, for example, had a mean rating of between seven and eight for their own and five other states, and stigmatized Alabama received a rating of between four and five (Preston 1989d).

3.

Methodology

In this study, the same general procedure was followed as in previous perceptual dialectology studies in terms of data collection. 100 Albertans and 100 Ontarians1 between the ages of 18 and 242 were asked to fill out a questionnaire in which they rated the English spoken in each of the ten Canadian provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan) and the two territories (the Northwest Territories and the Yukon3). Each respondent was asked to judge each province or territory’s variety, in terms of perceived ‘correctness’, ‘pleasantness’, and how similar each of those varieties is to the variety they themselves speak. The scale used for our purposes differed from Preston’s

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scale (1989d) in that our scale ranged only from one to five instead of from one to ten, and was reversed, with one as most ‘pleasant’, ‘correct’, or ‘similar’, and five as least ‘pleasant’, ‘correct’, or ‘similar’. In part two of the questionnaire, the subjects were provided with a map of Canada with only the provincial and territorial boundaries marked, and asked to demarcate areas in which they believe people speak the same as each other but differently from people in other areas of the country. They were also asked to provide names they might use for the language variety spoken in each of the demarcated areas. This provides interesting qualitative data to add to the significant amounts of quantitative data which this study provides. Finally, the respondents were asked to indicate their gender and occupation or major field of study.

4.

Data: ‘Pleasantness’ ratings

In analyzing the data, the first task was to calculate a mean rating for the perceptions of the levels of ‘pleasantness’, ‘correctness’, and ‘similarness’, as seen by Albertans and Ontarians as two separate groups. In terms of ‘pleasantness’, each province or territory was rated on a scale ranging from one, ‘very pleasant’, to five, ‘not at all pleasant’. As can be seen in Table 15.1 we observe that the Albertans find their own English to be quite pleasant-sounding, with a mean of 2.05 on the scale from one (most ‘pleasant’) to five (least ‘pleasant’). However, it is interesting to note that British Columbians are seen by Albertans as speaking an English that is even more pleasant than the English they themselves speak, with a mean of 1.95. Albertans also view the English of the other prairie provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, as quite ‘pleasant’, though not quite as pleasant as their own English. Next are two of the Atlantic provinces from the east coast of Canada, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, which are seen by Albertans as only slightly more ‘pleasant’ than Ontario, which receives a mean rating of 2.63. Nova Scotia follows, and next are the two northern territories, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Rated as least ‘pleasant’ by Albertans is Newfoundland, with a mean rating of 2.89, and Quebec, with a mean rating of 3.06. Note also that these two provinces have the highest standard deviations, indicating that there was more disagreement among Albertans about the provinces whose English they rated as less ‘pleasant’. Ontarians seem to have a slightly different view of this picture. Although, unlike Albertans, they do rate their own English as the most ‘pleasant’, this is actually somewhat deceptive. Ontarians, with their rating of 2.17, rate their own English as less ‘pleasant’ than the Albertans did their own English, with a mean of 2.05. Like Albertans, however, the Ontarians view British Columbia as also having a very ‘pleasant’ English. After a large gap, the prairie provinces and most of the Atlantic provinces follow. Newfoundland, the two territories, and Quebec are then seen as speaking a somewhat less ‘pleasant’ English, with Quebecers again ranking lowest with a mean of 3.07. As with the Albertans, Newfoundland and Quebec have higher standard deviations than the other provinces, which indicates a higher level of disagreement among respondents. Also noteworthy is that as in the U. S. studies, perceptions of “pleasantness” tend to cluster closer to the middle of the scale, with

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Table 15.1. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Pleasantness’ (1 = very pleasant;’ 5 = ‘not at all pleasant’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

British Columbia Alberta Manitoba Saskatchewan New Brunswick Prince Edward Island Ontario Nova Scotia Yukon Northwest Territories Newfoundland Quebec

1.95 2.05 2.33 2.39 2.59 2.60 2.63 2.64 2.68 2.77 2.89 3.06

1.09 1.09 1.07 1.09 1.07 1.08 1.19 1.11 1.14 1.12 1.29 1.22

no province being rated better than two or much worse than three, for either group. Table 15.2. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Pleasantness’ (1 = ‘very pleasant’ 5 = ‘not at all pleasant’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

Ontario British Columbia Alberta Prince Edward Island Saskatchewan Manitoba New Brunswick Nova Scotia Newfoundland Yukon Northwest Territories Quebec

2.17 2.22 2.57 2.67 2.68 2.69 2.76 2.81 2.94 2.95 3.02 3.07

1.20 1.12 1.05 1.11 0.93 0.95 1.06 1.06 1.35 1.02 1.07 1.25

Examining this type of data is often easier and clearer in map form. One method of accomplishing this is by using means, and shading the provinces differently according to arbitrary cutoff points, but a k-means cluster analysis provides a more statistically sound way of doing this. K-means cluster analysis is a statistical technique which is used here to identify relatively homogeneous groups based on the characteristic being evaluated. Once the decision had been made about the number of clusters we wanted to group the cases into, this statistical technique compared each province to each other province according to each individual’s rating. The result is five groups of provinces which pattern

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2.11 2.61 2.63 2.68 3.06

Figure 15.1. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘pleasantness’.

together, and for which mean ratings could be subsequently calculated. One notices first that Albertans group themselves immediately with British Columbians and with one of the other two prairie provinces, Manitoba, into the cluster that has the highest mean rating for ‘pleasantness’. In the next most ‘pleasant’ cluster are the two territories and Saskatchewan, the other of the prairie provinces. Ontario follows and is in its own cluster, followed by all of the Atlantic provinces as one group. Finally, Quebec falls last and is also in its own cluster. In terms of Albertans’ perceptions of pleasantness, the cluster analysis reveals a definite east-west division, with the western provinces being rated as more ‘pleasant’ than the eastern ones. The Ontario cluster analysis for ‘pleasantness’ is somewhat different. Despite the geographic disparity between the two provinces, Ontarians also group themselves immediately with British Columbians, and in the cluster rated as most ‘pleasant’. The second grouping is that of the prairie provinces, followed by the three more southern

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Atlantic provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland is clustered together with the two territories in terms of “pleasantness”. Finally, Quebecers fall into their own category as the least pleasant-sounding province in the country, just as they did for the Albertans.

2.20 2.65 2.75 2.97 3.07

Figure 15.2. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘pleasantness’.

5.

Data: ‘Correctness’ ratings

The most interesting aspect of the ‘correctness’ data is its sheer uniformity, though differences may also be observed. Each province and territory was rated on a scale ranging from one, ‘very correct’, to five, ‘not at all correct’. The Alberta respondents view British Columbia as having the most “correct’ English, followed by their own English and

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Ontario English. The other two prairie provinces are next, followed by the southern Atlantic provinces and the two territories. Newfoundland and Quebec are rated as having far less ‘correct’ English than the other provinces, with means of 2.83 and 2.98, respectively. As with the ‘pleasantness’ ratings, the standard deviations for Newfoundland and Quebec indicate more disagreement about the ‘correctness’ of the English spoken in these provinces. The Ontario respondents also rate British Columbia as having the most “correct’ English, followed by themselves, Alberta, and the other prairie provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. As with the Albertans, the southern Atlantic provinces are next, followed by the territories. Newfoundland and Quebec are again last, and again with higher standard deviations. Table 15.3. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Correctness’ (1 = ‘very correct.’ 5 = not at all correct’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

British Columbia Alberta Ontario Manitoba Saskatchewan Prince Edward Island Yukon Nova Scotia New Brunswick Northwest Territories Newfoundland Quebec

1.79 1.93 2.00 2.05 2.09 2.35 2.36 2.38 2.47 2.48 2.83 2.98

0.76 0.83 0.90 0.89 0.96 1.00 1.02 1.04 1.05 1.03 1.21 1.15

Table 15.4. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Correctness’ (1 = ‘very correct’; 5 = ‘not at all correct’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

British Columbia Ontario Alberta Manitoba Saskatchewan Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia New Brunswick Yukon Northwest Territories Newfoundland Quebec

1.78 1.85 2.02 2.09 2.36 2.46 2.49 2.54 2.77 2.84 3.12 3.36

0.86 0.98 0.95 0.87 0.98 1.08 1.12 1.18 1.07 1.11 1.41 1.23

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What is most interesting about this data, perhaps, is for both Albertans and Ontarians, even the two most stigmatized varieties of Canadian English are not rated very negatively. Ontarians evaluate Newfoundland English and Quebec English as only slightly higher than three, on a scale where three is the mid-point, which indicates that they find these varieties neither particularly ‘correct’ nor particularly ‘incorrect’. And as we observed with the ‘correctness’ means for the Albertans, both of the provinces with the most stigmatized forms of English remain to be evaluated as more ‘correct’ than ‘incorrect’ with means of better than three. This is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that we know from this data that both Albertans and Ontarians are very linguistically secure about their English, and if the Canadians were to pattern like the Americans, this should indicate a willingness to make harsher judgments about correctness. This is not, however, the case. Also unusual about the ‘correctness’ data here is the fact that many of the respondents, both Albertans and Ontarians, simply did not perceive a difference between the provinces. 44 respondents overall, or a full 22% of the sample, circled only one number on their questionnaires for all provinces, and of those, the vast majority circled ones, indicating that the people in all of the Canadian provinces and territories speak an English that is extremely ‘correct’. Several of the respondents who chose to do this also wrote comments about their choices at the bottom of the questionnaire, and these additional qualitative data are also enlightening. A young man from Alberta elaborated: “Grammatically, I assume there isn’t much of a difference.” Similarly, a young woman from Ontario wrote: “Accents obviously differ, and some are harder to understand, but I think all are ‘correct’.” These comments suggest that while Canadians may perceive phonological differences from region to region, these differences are, overall, not enough to make even the most stigmatized varieties ‘incorrect’. When the data for correctness is examined using the cluster analysis, the Albertan and Ontarian maps, as we might assume based on the means, are quite similar. Albertans group British Columbia and the prairie provinces together, and into the cluster rated most highly for ‘correctness’. Ontario, its own cluster, ranks a close second. The two territories and the southern Atlantic provinces are grouped together, followed by Newfoundland and then Quebec, each in its own cluster. Ontarians again group Ontario with British Columbia, despite the geographical distance, and these form the cluster rated as most ‘correct’. The three prairie provinces are next, followed by the southern Atlantic provinces grouping together with the Yukon Territory in the west, indicating that these are all perceived as similar in their levels of ‘correctness’. Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories group together, and Quebec is again in its own cluster, and perceived as least ‘correct’.

6.

Data: ‘Similarness’ ratings

The similarness data was evaluated on a scale ranging from one ‘exactly the same’, to five, ‘unintelligibly different’. For ‘similarness’, the means tend to cover more territory on the scale, indicating that respondents were more willing to rate the different provinces’ English as being similar or dissimilar to their own, than they were willing to make the

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1.96 2.00 2.41 2.83 2.98

Figure 15.3. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘correctness’.

same judgments based on ‘pleasantness’ or ‘correctness’. Let us first examine the perceptions of the Alberta respondents. As might be expected, Albertans rate the English spoken in their own province as most similar to the way they speak, with a mean of 1.30, but British Columbian English is a close second with a mean of 1.48. Next in degree of ‘similarness’ are the two other prairie provinces, and then followed by Ontario. The two territories are next, and the southern Atlantic provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick follow close behind. After a large gap, Newfoundland’s English is rated as quite dissimilar, with a mean rating of 3.69. The English spoken in Quebec is even less similar, with a mean rating of 3.88. Notice also that the standard deviations for ‘similarness’ are much lower overall, indicating that there is more agreement among respondents about how similar these varieties are to their own, than there is about how ‘pleasant’ or ‘correct’ they are. Ontarian respondents show similar patterns, rating the English spoken in their own

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1.82 2.16 2.57 2.98 3.36

Figure 15.4. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘correctness’.

province as unsurprisingly most similar to the English they speak, with a mean of 1.22, and as with the Albertans, British Columbia ranked second, with a mean of 1.67. The prairie provinces of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan were next, followed by the southern Atlantic provinces and the two territories. Again similarly to the Albertan data, Newfoundland English is seen as quite dissimilar, with a mean of 3.56, and Quebec is even less similar, with a mean of 3.73. In the cluster analysis of the Alberta ‘similarness’ data, British Columbia clusters with the prairie provinces as a single English regarded as being the most similar to the way Albertans themselves speak. Ontario clusters separately, and is seen as being next most similar. The two territories cluster together, followed by all of the Atlantic provinces, including Newfoundland. Finally, Quebec English is seen as least similar to Albertans’ own English. Ontarians view the English spoken in Ontario as an entire cluster, and most similar

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Table 15.5. Alberta Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Similarness’ (1 = ‘exactly the same’; 5 = ‘unintelligibly different’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

Alberta British Columbia Manitoba Saskatchewan Ontario Yukon Northwest Territories Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia New Brunswick Newfoundland Quebec

1.30 1.48 1.75 1.81 2.04 2.39 2.62 2.95 3.04 3.09 3.69 3.88

0.69 0.56 0.73 0.94 0.90 0.95 1.02 0.93 0.96 0.93 1.00 0.88

Table 15.6. Ontario Respondents’ Perceptions of ‘Similarness’ (0 = ‘exactly-the-same’; 5 = ‘unintelligibly different’). Province Name

Mean

Standard Deviation

Ontario British Columbia Manitoba Alberta Saskatchewan New Brunswick Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia Yukon Northwest Territories Newfoundland Quebec

1.22 1.67 2.24 2.39 2.58 2.85 2.90 2.92 3.01 3.08 3.56 3.73

0.72 0.95 0.93 1.01 1.01 0.93 1.07 1.00 1.04 1.05 1.10 1.13

to the way they speak. British Columbia was second, followed by the prairie provinces as a cluster, the Atlantic provinces and the territories as a single cluster. Quebec is again viewed as least similar.

7.

Data: Influence of province of origin

Before moving on to the map task data, one final observation can be made using the rating data. Based on what we know from the cluster analysis data, the Canadian provinces generally tend to be rated according to groups that appear repeatedly. The provinces that make up these

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1.59 2.04 2.50 3.19 3.88

Figure 15.5. Alberta respondents’ perceptions of ‘similarness’.

groups can be combined into new variables, which can then be more easily evaluated in terms of the three independent variables: gender of respondent, occupation or major field of study of respondent, and whether the respondent is from Alberta or Ontario. In order to perform this analysis, three new variables were calculated: Prairies (calculated using a mean of the ratings for Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), Territories (including the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories), and Atlantic Canada (including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland). British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec were left as single variables. After the new variables were calculated, a one-way analysis of variance test was performed on each variable. Although the independent variables of gender of respondent and occupation or major field of study proved insignificant, whether the respondent was from Alberta or Ontario proved quite frequently significant. In terms of ‘pleasantness’, the prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) are viewed significantly more positively by

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1.22 1.67 2.40 3.05 3.73

Figure 15.6. Ontario respondents’ perceptions of ‘similarness’.

Albertans than by Ontarians, and this difference is significant at .005. Similarly, Ontarians also view themselves as significantly more pleasant-sounding than the Albertans do, and this difference is significant at .05. In terms of ‘correctness’, Albertans view both the two territories and Quebec as more ‘correct’ than Ontarians do, and these differences are both significant at .05. In terms of ‘similarness’, Albertans judge the English of the prairie provinces as significantly more similar to the way they speak than Ontarians do, and Ontarians judge the English of Ontario as significantly more similar to the way they speak than Albertans do, neither of which is particularly surprising. There is also a statistically significant difference for the territories; Albertans find the English spoken there to be significantly more similar to the way they speak than the Ontarians do, a difference significant at.0005. Just as interesting, however, is what the two groups do agree on. Despite the proximity of Alberta and the huge distance to Ontario, the two groups see their own English as equally

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similar to the English spoken in British Columbia. The ratings for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces are also consistent between the Albertans and Ontarians.

8.

Data: Map task

For the map task, respondents were provided with a map of Canada with only provincial boundaries to guide them, and asked to draw the dialect boundaries as they perceived them. Since the differences between the maps drawn by Albertans and the maps drawn by Ontarians were comparatively trivial, they will be analyzed as one group. The first step in analyzing these maps is to determine which are the relevant attitude variables. This was achieved by examining all of the maps and listing all of the different regions drawn in the entire study. The relevant aspect of the data here is not what names respondents use to describe the regions, but the geographic regions themselves. Therefore, despite the fact that one Alberta respondent called the prairie provinces “Western’ and one Ontario respondent called it ‘Hick’, both of these were considered the same region and fall into the category of ‘Prairies’. A total of 10 regions were found that were drawn by at least 10% of the respondents, some of which were smaller regions within the larger ones. Since the vast majority of the regions drawn corresponded to the provincial boundaries, transferring the data to a map was a relatively simple task. Some of the boundaries were perceived by a large number of the respondents, such as 96% who perceived a boundary dividing Quebec from Newfoundland, while others were perceived by far fewer of the respondents, such as the boundary dividing the Yukon from the Northwest Territories at 14% or British Columbia from Alberta at 16%. The Atlantic provinces were seen as a single region by 48% of the respondents, in the sense that the region was distinctly divided from Quebec, while 33% made a distinction between Newfoundland and remaining Atlantic provinces. Two smaller regions were also drawn; 11% drew a distinct dialect region in southern British Columbia which approximately corresponds to the area in which most of the population lives, and 13% demarcated a region in southern Ontario.

9.

Discussion

In the discussion of these results, it is possible to make use of the labels from the map task to help make clearer from where some of these perceptions are coming. Both Albertan and Ontarian respondents find their own province’s variety to be both quite ‘pleasant’ and quite ‘correct’, indicating very high levels of linguistic security. This is also reflected in the labels each group chose for those areas in the map task, such as “regular”, “normal English”, and “average Canadian accent”. Both groups of respondents also agree that British Columbian English is also quite ‘correct’ and ‘pleasant’. In fact both groups even rate it higher than their own in terms of ‘correctness’. This, too, is reflected in the map names used, such as “more proper”, “normal”, and “Canada’s most correct English”. British Columbia is perceived as a very positive place to be, in some respects the

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Percentage of respondents drawing boundary 10-25 26-45 46-65 66-85 86+

Figure 15.7. Percentage of respondents drawing boundaries.

“California” of Canada (an appellation even confirmed by one informant who referred to British Columbian English as “Californian”). Noteworthy also is that the three provinces consistently rated most highly in terms of ‘correctness’ are Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia, which are also the most powerful Canadian provinces in terms of economic strength. The southern Ontario region drawn in the map task, however, was not evaluated as positively as the rest of Ontario, and received negative evaluations based on its proximity to the United States. For this region, names such as “American style” and “Industrial Northern States type accent” were common. The Prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan are also perceived as quite ‘correct’, and fairly ‘pleasant’ as well, though Alberta more so than its poorer

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cousins. Yet as a region the prairies are definitely not rated on the same level as British Columbia, and the map labels can help us figure out why. Alongside geographical names such as “Prairiese”, we also find labels for this region such as “redneck/cowboy slang”, “bland midwestern English”, and “hick”. The western stereotypes associated with this area probably account for why it is not perceived to have as ‘correct’ or ‘pleasant’ an English as British Columbia. The two territories, the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, were rated much worse than the provinces in terms of both ‘correctness’ and ‘pleasantness’, especially by the Ontarians. The labels used for this region also reflect this. Most of the labels used here mention the large numbers of native Canadians who live in the territories, and labels such as “Native”, “Influenced by First Nations”, “Bad native accents”, and “Inuenglish” are prevalent. The significant differences between the perceptions of the Albertans and the Ontarians are almost certainly a matter of familiarity — being much closer to the territories, the Albertans are more likely to have met people from this large and sparsely-populated region, and are therefore less likely to see themselves as being very different from them. This explanation is validated by the data on ‘similarness’ — Albertans find the English of the territories to be much more similar to their own than Ontarians do. The Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland also scored lower both in terms of ‘correctness’ and ´‘pleasantness’, as well as less similar to both Ontarians’ English and Albertans’ English. Newfoundland especially was singled out negatively in this way, and also drawn as a separate region in the map task. The distinction between Newfoundland and the other Atlantic provinces is also reflected in the labels used in the map task, where neutral geographical names such as “maritime English” and “coastal English” are used for the more southern Atlantic provinces, while more overtly stereotyped names such as “drawl”, “Newfie talk”, “extremely fast lower class”, and “Fee-yersherman speak” are used alongside the more neutral names for the English spoken in the more northern Newfoundland. Quebec is an anomaly in this study. It always forms its own cluster in the cluster analysis, is consistently drawn as a separate region in the map task, and is rated at the bottom of the scale in terms of both ‘correctness’ and ‘pleasantness’, as well as distinctly different in terms of degree of ‘similarness’. The reason is fairly obvious; it is the only province in which French is the dominant language. This is also reflected in the labels used in the map task to describe it: “Frenglish” or ‘Franglais” are both common, as well as simply ‘French”. More overtly negative labels include “Bad French Bad English”, “Broken English”, and “garbled”. Interesting, though, is that although the means for both Quebec and Newfoundland reflect overall more negative perceptions, the standard deviations for these provinces also suggest that there are greater differences from respondent to respondent. This suggests that Newfoundland English and Quebec English are simply the most distinct forms of English in Canada, and while some people find that distinctiveness to be negative, others evaluate it quite positively. Overall, ratings for ‘pleasantness’, ‘correctness’, and ‘similarness’ are quite similar to each other. A far more interesting aspect of this, however, is the fact that no regions tend

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to be rated either as very unpleasant or as very incorrect. This isn’t as surprising for ‘pleasantness’, because as we have seen in the data from the United States studies, respondents from linguistically secure and linguistically insecure areas alike tend to cluster their ratings more toward the middle of the scale on ‘pleasantness’ ratings. For ‘correctness’, however, there is an enormous distinction between this study and the U. S. studies. Based on the U. S. studies, we would expect that people as linguistically secure as Albertans and Ontarians would be more willing to evaluate stigmatized varieties as extremely negative, but this is not the case. These results, combined with the 22% of informants who simply chose to rate all of the provinces the same in terms of ‘correctness’, suggest that “correctness” seems to be not nearly as important a characteristic for which to evaluate language for Canadians as it is for Americans. Although the object of study in perceptual dialectology is ostensibly language, what often emerges in such studies is a reflection upon what people think of other people and of themselves. In this study the areas of Canada which are judged to have the most stigmatized varieties in terms of ‘correctness’, ‘pleasantness’, and ‘similarness’ are also those areas which tend to be more politically or economically unstable, a finding similar to the findings of the U. S. studies and other perceptual dialectology studies from around the world. Yet one important difference between this study and other studies, however, is that Canadians seem to be less critical of themselves and their fellow countrymen than Americans are of themselves and their fellow countrymen. It is our hope that both these similarities and these differences can contribute to a better understanding of the attitudes of Canadians in particular, and of general tendencies in perceptions of language valuation, as well.

Acknowledgments This paper is an extended version of a talk given at NWAV(E) 27 in Athens, Georgia, October 1998.

Notes 1. Special thanks to Jack Chambers and Gord Easson for their help in organizing the data collection in Ontario. 2. Most of the respondents were students at either the University of Alberta in Edmonton, or the University of Toronto. 3. This study was carried out in the summer of 1998, prior to the split of the Northwest Territories into the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.



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References Coupland, Nikolas, Angie Williams, and Peter Garrett. 1999. “‘Welshness’ and ‘Englishness’ as attitudinal dimensions of English language varieties in Wales.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 333–343. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 1999. “Perceptions of post-unification German speech.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 227–242. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 2000. “Competing language ideologies in post-unification Germany: when east meets west.” In Relocating Germanness: Discursive disunity in unified Germany, Patrick Stevenson and John Theobald (eds.), 248–266. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Demirci, Mahide and Brian Kleiner. 1999. “The perception of Turkish dialects.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 263–281. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hartley, Laura. 1999. “A view from the West: Perceptions of U. S. Dialects by Oregon residents.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 315–332. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kuiper, Lawrence. 1999. “Variation and the norm: Parisian Perceptions of regional French.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 243–262. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Long, Daniel. 1999. “Geographical perceptions of Japanese dialect regions.” In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Volume 1, Dennis Preston (ed.), 199–226. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Noseworthy, Ronald. 1972. “Verb usage in Grand Back.” Regional Language Studies. 4: 19–24. Preston, Dennis. 1989a. “Hawaiian perceptions of United States dialect distribution.” In Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics, 25–50. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis. 1989b. “Where they speak correct English: the view from Southern Indiana.” In Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics, 51–70. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis. 1989c. “Five visions of America.” In Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics, 113–124. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis. 1989d. “Standard English spoken here: The geographical loci of linguistic norms.” In Status and function of languages and language varieties, Ulrich Ammon (ed.), 324–354. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Scargill, M. H. 1977. A short history of Canadian English. Victoria, B. C.: Sono Nis Press.



C 16 Madrid Perceptions of Regional Varieties in Spain Juliana Moreno Fernández and Francisco Moreno Fernández

1.

Introduction

Perceptual dialectology takes as its starting point the attitudes of speakers toward their own and other linguistic varieties.1 Detailed knowledge of how linguistic varieties are perceived — languages, dialects, ways of speaking — can be very valuable information, both for the study of internal aspects of language (e.g., language variation and change) as well as for the analysis of some external dimensions (choice, loss, and maintenance of varieties, factors often related to language planning and politics). In light of the interest these types of studies arouse, the collecting of information about the perception of linguistic varieties in any speech community is of the utmost importance. However, such information can have particular value for the most widely spoken languages in the world and/or for those which offer a more interesting and complex dialectal configuration. The Spanish language satisfies both these conditions. These pages are dedicated to the analysis of some aspects of Spanish perceptual dialectology, and they refer, in a concrete way, to the linguistic situation of Spain. Unfortunately, language attitude studies related to Spanish and the other languages of Spain have not been an item of priority in linguistic research. This lack is striking not only because of the interest in attitudes brought about by the coexistence of languages in the Iberian Peninsula, even from a non-linguistic perspective, but also due to the importance that the Spanish of Spain has in the entire Spanish-speaking world.2 Of the many aspects of Spanish language attitudes, the best known are those that affect the areas in which there is an official language besides Spanish; the aspects less analysed and known are the attitudes held by speakers who do not dwell in bilingual areas toward Spanish, toward the other languages of Spain, toward the coexistence of languages in Spain, and toward Spanish dialectal complexity in Spain and in the world. Language attitude studies have been more common in those areas which have been most affected by language planning and policies, e.g., bilingual areas (Etxebarria); this has been the case, for example, in Galicia (Fernández and Rodríguez), in Catalonia (Vallverdú), and in the Basque Country (Gobierno Vasco). Nevertheless, group studies

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have not been very frequent, for any of the languages of Spain, in which acceptable comparison parameters have been used (Siguán). Attitude studies of other minority varieties in the North of Spain have been very scarce, where varieties are generally broken up into fragments, as is the case with some languages of Asturias or of Aragón (Martín Zorraquino, Ford, Arnal and Giralt). With reference to Spanish outside those communities of Spain that have two official languages, studies referring to dialect attitudes have been clearly inadequate and partial. It is important to recall here the study of Alvar on the naming of the language in Andalusia (Alvar 1975) or the analyses of attitudes that are carried out in a complementary way in some sociolinguistic investigations (Molina), but very little more can be said. The use of the matched-guise technique (Lambert; Giles and Coupland), for example, has been virtually unknown in the study of attitudes toward Spanish or toward the other languages of Spain (García and Moreno Fernández). The situation of Spanish outside Spain has received greater attention with respect to the study of attitudes, but proportionally it has scarcely been investigated. Worth mentioning are works that are being carried out in the USA on the study of attitudes toward Spanish or some of its regional varieties in teaching contexts (Ramírez); it is also important to mention the studies carried out by Alvar, Quilis, and Humberto López Morales in diverse Hispanic countries, such as Cuba, Puerto Rico or Equatorial Guinea (Alvar 1986). The North American investigations frequently use the matched-guise technique; the studies of Alvar, Quilis, and López Morales use questionnaires with direct questions about attitudes, often supported by stimulus tapes. At the same time, studies carried out in different Spanish American countries have not customarily used empirical techniques to measure attitudes (Blanco de Margo; Solano and Umaña; Lastra). Again we note that the investigations of attitudes toward Spanish and the indigenous languages in America are far less abundant than these interesting and complex linguistic situations call for (Granda; Lastra). Although we have cited only a few of the studies carried out regarding Spanish and the languages it coexists with, it is evident that the investigation of attitudes and perceptions has to be developed and enlarged in the entire Hispanic world; such studies are perhaps especially important in areas like Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Andean regions, Paraguay, Guinea, and Spain. Based on this firm belief, our investigation is concerned with the perception of linguistic variety in Spain among speakers from the city of Madrid. The specific objectives to be fulfilled include the following: i. A partial study of the perception of the different languages of Spain; ii. A partial study of the perception of the regional varieties of Spanish in Spain; iii. A partial study of the perception of the speech of Madrid, in relation to the other languages and regional varieties of Spain, and iv. A study of the influence of various social factors on the perception of the languages and regional varieties that are found in Spain. These general objectives are sought only partially since this work is part of a wider and more detailed investigation of language attitudes in Madrid. Toward this end, we have

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distributed a test in which a number of speech samples (previously submitted to a quantitative analysis) have been presented to respondents, and the results of this study will complement questionnaires we use in other locations to achieve the same objective. It should be understood, however, that this partial and tentative nature of our conclusions will not prevent us from discovering relatively unknown sociolinguistic facts about Madrid, nor will they prevent us from confirming the usefulness of questionnaires and quantitative analyses for the study of language attitudes. All this requires a background presentation of the most outstanding sociolinguistic features of the city of Madrid and of the linguistic situation of Spain. Proper analysis and interpretation of the data that we have gathered requires appropriate information about the languages of Spain, the regional varieties of Spanish, and their historical, geographical, and social contexts.

2.

Madrid and the linguistic situation of Spain

Spain is a country in the European Union with about 40 million inhabitants. The capital is Madrid (with nearly 4 million inhabitants), and it is located exactly in the center of the Iberian Peninsula, as can be seen in Figure 16.1.

2

1

3

4 9

8

5

6

7

11 10

13

12

15

16

14

17

Figure 16.1. Map of Spain with areal divisions: 1: Galicia. 2: Asturias. 3: Cantabria. 4: País vasco. 5: Navarra. 6: Aragón. 7: Cataluña. 8: Castilla-León. 9: Rioja. 10: Extremadura. 11: Madrid. 12: Castilla-La Mancha. 13: Valencia. 14: Baleares. 15: Andalucía. 16: Murcia. 17: Canarias.

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Briefly, the linguistic situation of Spain is made up of four main languages and diverse regional varieties of each one of them, although here we will be concerned with the varieties belonging to the Spanish language, also called “español” or “castellano”. The four languages are Spanish (official in the whole State), Galician (official in Galicia), Catalan (official in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia, where it is called “valenciano”), and Basque or euskera (official in the Basque Country and in Navarre). It should be kept in mind, however, that there is a significant number of speakers in the officially bilingual territories who know and use only Spanish;3 similarly, the geographical domain of these other languages within each area is sometimes smaller than the territory in which they are official, as is the case in Navarre and in Valencia. On the other hand, it is important for our objectives to remember that Catalan and Galician are Romance languages but that Basque is a non Indo-European language, absolutely unintelligible to the speakers of the other languages of Spain. The dialectal situation of the Spanish language inside Spain presents important internal differences; so many, in fact, that it can be said that the Spanish of Mexico and that of Chile have more in common, in spite of the distance between them, than the Spanish of Cantabria and that of Murcia or the Canary Islands. In general, Spanish regional varieties can be classified into two groups: one corresponding to the most innovative varieties, mainly at the phonetic level (loss and weakening of consonants in syllable-final position, devoicing) and another corresponding to the most conservative varieties. The latter are mainly in the northernmost two-thirds of the Peninsula; the Spanish of Castile would be included — Leon, Asturias, Cantabria, Aragon, Navarre, as well as that of Galicia, the Basque Country or Catalonia; the most innovative languages are in the southern third of the peninsula (mainly in Extremadura, Andalusia, Murcia) and in the Canary Islands. The territories of Navarre, Aragon and Asturias, developed by the Middle Ages, have very different linguistic characteristics from those of Castilian; there the Aragonese, Navarre-Aragonese, and Astur-Leones varieties were spoken. However, at present there are only local traces of those languages (bables in Asturias; fablas in Aragon) and numerous elements of them, more or less residual, which have been incorporated into Spanish. The speakers of these areas are in fact recognised by those of other Spanish regions for those elements of Navarre, Aragonese, or Leones origin and, mainly, for their intonation. Madrid is located between the two Castilian communities (Castile-Leon and CastileLa Mancha) whose dialectal character, especially in the North, can be described as conservative. Madrid as well as Castile-La Mancha is a land of contacts, of roads, of boundaries: this territory borders on six regions — the Old Castile, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia and Extremadura — all of them with an acknowledged historical and linguistic personality (see Figure 16.1). The center of the Iberian Peninsula is, partly as a result of its geographical configuration, a region of strong contrasts, lacking precise geographical character — a great central plain surrounded by mountainous systems — and whose socio-economic life is articulated around a great urban centre, Madrid, the hegemonic capital, is omnipresent as the reference point. The cultivated speech of Madrid constitutes the canon of the learned norm of the peninsular center and, at the same time, its main source of linguistic innovations.

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN

299

The popular varieties of the city of Madrid, which are intertwined with the most learned and have an influence on them, pick up many of the dialectal characteristics of the emigrants coming to the capital. Immigration to Madrid has been intense and constant during the last decades, to such a point that today those people from Madrid whose family origin is Madrid can be said to be in a minority. The main ingredients of these migratory floods have been people coming mainly from Castile-La Mancha, Andalusia, Extremadura and Castile-Leon, although there have also been immigrants from other areas including the bilingual ones (see Figure 16.2): this was already the case by the middle of the century and it has continued until the last few years. 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

1955

co

Pa

ís

V

as

ic

ia

a

al G

en

ci

ña

al

lu

V

Ca

ta

ur

a

n

ad

m

eó Ex

tre

-L

ía uc

lla

al

sti

Ca

nd A

Ca

sti

lla

-L

...

1992

Figure 16.2. Immigration to Madrid. 1955 and 1992. (Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Resumen Estadístico. 1955. Anuario Estadístico. 1992. Vol. I. Comunidad de Madrid. INE.)

It is important to know that the speakers coming to Madrid from Andalusia or Extremadura have been bearers of some more innovating linguistic characteristics and of a well differentiated phonetics from the Castilian — mainly the phonetics of Castile-Leon — and perfectly identifiable by the madrileños (people from Madrid), although in many families the Andalusian characteristics and the more marked forms from Extremadura have disappeared in the second generation. It is also important to note that the contact between speakers from Madrid and those of Castile-La Mancha has been very close for two reasons: the first is immigration, and the second is the ease in communications by road and railway that has transformed Madrid into a great working and leisure center which is visited quite frequently, by a floating population, coming from every city of the La Mancha region. To conclude this characterization, we add a note of singular sociolinguistic value: the center of the Iberian Peninsula has, among its cities, two that have enjoyed greater prestige and had greater linguistic influence, next to Seville, during the entire history of Spain. In the XVI and XVII centuries, this was Toledo; more recently, it is Madrid. It is certain that other Castilian cities, such as Valladolid or Burgos, have enjoyed great prestige and recognition, but they have not reached the importance of the first two mentioned. The sociolinguistic importance of this resides in the fact that the intellectuals, the better educated classes, and the more mobile groups have traditionally echoed the norms of the capital.

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

By way of summary of the linguistic situation of Madrid and of Spain, we emphasise the following facts for our study: a. b. c. d.

Spain exhibits considerable linguistic diversity, among both languages and dialectal varieties. Those languages and the most marked varieties (Andalusian, Extremeño, Canary) are recognised by the speakers of other regions in Spain. Madrid has received immigrants from all the other regions, and consequently the people from Madrid have had the opportunity to get to know the speech of persons of considerably varied origins. The speech of Madrid is considered as a model of prestige, diffused, in great measure, by mass media. In general, the people from Madrid are aware of this and have a high opinion of their own variety. The Spanish of Madrid has a conservative Castilian character, in which, however, the influence of the languages of the South of Spain is obviously seen, partly due to the important presence of immigrants from Andalusia and Extremadura.

Quite naturally, the perceptions of the people from Madrid should be a reflection of the current linguistic situation, as well as that of the economic, historical, and social factors that have just been presented.

3.

Methodological questions

The partial study of the perception by nonlinguists of the languages and dialect varieties of Spain was carried out by means of the application of a traditional technique in the area of “perceptual dialectology” (Rensink 1955; Preston 1988). That technique has been applied to a sample of speakers from Madrid, and the results have been subjected to multidimensional and correspondence analyses. 3.1 The sample The respondents for our investigation were selected on the basis of their being from Madrid. Anyone living in Madrid, born in Madrid, or coming to Madrid as an immigrant is considered a “madrileño”. The immigrants in our study must have come to Madrid by the age of ten. Among those born in Madrid, we have worked with those speakers whose parents were also born in Madrid (50%) and with speakers whose parents were born in other areas of Spain; in this latter case, speakers of varied regional origins have been selected, trying not to favor any particular one. The sample of speakers was built on a socially stratified model composed of ninety respondents. The data are stratified by “sex” (50% men; 50% women), “educational level”, and “age”. Three educational levels were used: university (33%), secondary (33%) and secondary not completed (33%). Three age groups were included: 18 to 35 (33%), 36 to 55 (33%), and 56 or over (33%).

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN

301

The selection of speakers was determined by other factors, considering different routes inside the different neighborhoods of the city and data concerning immigration into Madrid in the last twenty-five years. 3.2 Material for the collection of data The collection of the data involved a technique which sought the evaluation of local differences. The material of the test is made up of two elements: a. b.

A map showing division into the autonomous regions of Spain (as well as the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in the North of Africa) was shown to the respondents; Figure 16.1 can be used as a model. The respondents were shown a brief questionnaire, referenced to the map: On a scale of 1 to 4, determine in which of these areas they speak as you do: 1. they speak exactly as I do 2. they speak a bit different from the way I do 3. they speak quite differently from the way I do 4. I find it difficult to understand them

This is known as a social distance scale, in this case, referring to linguistic distances, one frequently used for the study of attitudes and opinions (Ander-Egg 1995: 255–263). It should be noticed that this material was not presented to the speakers in isolation, but as one more element in a number of tests dedicated to the study of linguistic perception and attitudes of people from Madrid. The tests included this one concerning the perception of linguistic distances, several matched-guise technique studies (stimulus tapes and questionnaires based on the semantic differential technique), and one asking direct questions. 3.3 Procedure During the process of collecting materials, the respondents were presented with the materials for the evaluation of local differences. The procedure consisted in asking each to write down on the map, for each of the indicated areas, the number from 1 to 4 that reflected the speaker’s opinion of the distance between his or her form of speech and that of the inhabitants of each of those areas, according to the instructions outlined above. The presentation of this material and that of the general instructions, which were also offered verbally, was not accompanied by any other type of comment related to geography, the areas which were the purpose of the questionnaire, or their linguistic characteristics.4 The materials collected consisted of ninety sheets — one for each informant — with maps in which numeric annotations were included with the values 1, 2, 3 or 4. 3.4 Statistical analysis The analysis of the data was carried out with the aid of several computer applications (e.g., SPSS, VIEW). In addition to elementary descriptive statistics, several multivariate

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

analyses were done. Multivariate techniques not only allow the comparison and analysis of data for more than two variables (in our case, answers were obtained for seventeen areas) but also permit grouping them according to similarity or distance. In this way, internal relationships and groupings of the data can be discovered, which would be difficult to appreciate otherwise. Multivariate techniques have been used successfully since the 1970’s in the most diverse fields of the physical and human sciences, from medicine to economics. Although the results must be evaluated with caution and interpreted in the light of each discipline (so as not to reach absurd conclusions), it is also true that very few quantitative techniques approach their explanatory possibilities. We applied two multivariate techniques: correspondence analysis and multidimensional analysis (multidimensional scaling). Correspondence analysis is similar to factor analysis and allows us to locate in a plane of two dimensions each one of the variables (areas) and the points corresponding to the absolute values collected in the questionnaires (1, 2, 3, 4). In this way it can be shown graphically which areas have received the same rating. Multidimensional analysis is based on the rating values arranged into a data table. Their dissimilarity is calculated and multidimensional graphics are built in which each variable is represented by a point that occupies a relative position to all others: the computer application displays the co-ordinates of each point. The interpretation of those graphics allows us to evaluate which variables (i.e., areas) are nearer and further from one another, according to the perception of the respondents, that is, of the speakers from Madrid. Our quantitative analyses followed this plan: first, correspondence and multidimensional analyses were carried out for all respondents for all variables; next multidimensional and co-ordinate graphics were obtained for the social variables of the sample: i.e., graphics for men, women, speakers of each age group, and educational level.

4.

Results of the statistical analyses

Correspondence analysis shows us a spatial distribution of the areas and of each of the rankings used in the evaluation. Figure 16.3 reproduces this two-dimensional representation. The numbers in bold type correspond to each one of the areas (numbered from 1 to 17, as in Figure 16.1). The numbers between asterisks (*) represent the relative position of the ranking. Although we do not want to limit later interpretations and analyses, we want to draw attention here to the following points: 1.

Answer number 1 is located in the center of the graph. The point corresponding to Madrid is in the low-central part of the graph. The areas ranked closest to Madrid are 12 (Castile-La Mancha) and 8 (Castile-Leon). 2. Answer number 2 appears at the right of the graph. The nearest areas to this evaluation, very far from Madrid, are 15 (Andalusia), 17 (the Canary Islands), 10 (Extremadura), 6 (Aragon), and 16 (Murcia). 3. and 4. The points corresponding to answers 3 and 4 are in the upper-left part of the graph. Around both we find the areas in which a language besides Spanish is used:

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN

*3* 1 13

*4*

DIM. 2

7

4

2

14

5 *1*

3

9 12 8

303

15 *2* 17 10 6 16

11 -1

-0,5

0

0,5

1

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.3. Correspondence analysis. Areas 1–7 and respondent sites 1–4.

7 (Catalonia), 1 (Galicia), 4 (Basque Country), 13 (Valencia), and 14 (Balearic Islands). Somewhat farther away, next to answer 1, Navarre is found. Multidimensional analysis offers us a spatial representation of the areas rated. That location is the result of a calculation in which the existing relative distance is determined for each area, according to the evaluation given by the respondents. First we study the group data, that is, information contributed by all the respondents. Later the analysis of the data is based on the social categories of sex, age (18–35, 36–55, 56+), and educational level (university students, secondary graduates, and respondents who did not complete secondary studies). The results of the analysis are presented in table and graph form: in the tables we show the co-ordinates of three dimensions; the graphs represent the position of each community, indicated by a number, in a two-dimensional plane. The analysis of the group data (all the informants) is provided in Table 16.1, and the two-dimensional representation appears in Figure 16.4. Figure 16.4 shows that the bilingual communities of Spain are located in one area, to the right of the graph. At the top those areas which have especially well differentiated dialect characteristics are grouped (16 Murcia, 10 Extremadura, 17 Canary Islands). In a third grouping we find 6 (Aragon), 8 (Castile-Leon), 3 (Cantabria) and 2 (Asturias). Madrid (11) appears distant from the other groupings, although very close to the point corresponding to 12 (Castile-La Mancha). The position of 15 (Andalusia) is also worth noting, since it is well differentiated from the other areas, as are those of 9 (Rioja) and 5 (Navarre), both of which stand closer to the dialectally marked areas than to the bilingual ones. The data contributed by men from Madrid is shown in Table 16.2, and the twodimensional representation appears in Figure 16.5.

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

2 16

1 DIM. 2

10

17

5

6 8 3 2

0

4 11 12

-1 9

-1

13 14

1

7

15

0

1

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.4. Multidimensional analysis. All respondents.

Table 16.1. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of complete sample. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−1.31 −0.35 −0.61 −0.87 −0.52 −0.81 −1.58 −0.65 −0.68 −0.40 −0.54 −0.34 −1.03 −0.97 −0.17 −0.67 −0.01

−0.06 −0.10 −0.04 −0.12 −0.82 −0.03 −0.03 −0.07 −1.48 −1.08 −0.41 −0.50 −0.10 −0.13 −1.87 −1.08 −1.10

−0.04 −0.38 −0.03 −0.06 −0.93 −0.72 −0.16 −0.46 −1.68 −0.67 −0.55 −0.14 −0.19 −0.51 −1.27 −0.93 −1.12

305

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN Table 16.2. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of MEN. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−1.10 −0.67 −0.56 −0.85 −0.64 −0.84 −1.51 −0.68 −0.70 −0.04 −0.89 −0.32 −0.80 −1.06 −0.23 −0.94 −0.65

−0.09 −0.12 −0.33 −0.08 −0.46 −0.13 −0.04 −0.16 −0.12 −1.09 −0.12 −0.35 −0.07 −0.13 −2.27 −0.02 −1.46

−0.04 −0.38 −0.07 −0.02 −1.59 −0.60 −0.04 −0.41 −1.87 −0.29 −1.10 −0.46 −0.09 −0.02 −0.17 −0.63 −0.02

2 DIM. 2

1 0

10 11 512 6 3 16 9 8 2

17

13 4 141

-1

7

15

-1

0 DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.5. Multidimensional analysis. Men.

1

2

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

Figure 16.5 presents quite clear groupings. The bilingual areas of 7 (Catalonia), 1 (Galicia), 4 (Basque Country), 13 (Valencia), and 14 (Balearic Islands) are grouped together. In quite separate areas are, on the one hand, 10 (Extremadura) and 17 (Canary Islands) and, on the other, 15 (Andalusia). The rest of the areas appear to be grouped together. The analysis of the women’s responses is shown in Table 16.3, and the two-dimensional graph is shown in Figure 16.6.

2 1

8

DIM. 2

23

13 1 6 7

0 -1

16

17

4

9 15

-1

5

12 11

0

14

1

10

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.6. Multidimensional analysis. Women.

Contrary to what is observed in Figure 16.5, there is no clear grouping in this case, except the one observed in the center of the graph. The areas of most marked Spanish dialectal varieties appear in the periphery: 10 (Extremadura) to the right, 16 (Murcia) and 17 (Canary Islands) at the top, and 15 (Andalusia) at the bottom. In this case, the Basque Country (4) also appears in the outlying area, now distant from the communities of 7 (Catalonia), 1 (Galicia), and 13 (Valencia) which are in the center next to 2 (Asturias) and 6 (Aragon). Madrid (11) again appears next to 12 (Castile-La Mancha). The analysis of the age group 18–35 is shown in the co-ordinates of Table 16.4 and in the two-dimensional representation of Figure 16.7. Figure 16.7 shows, in the lower part, the grouping of the bilingual areas. In the peripheral and upper areas of the graph we find the areas in which Spanish is used in some of its most innovating dialectal varieties: 10 (Extremadura) to the left and 17 (Canary Islands) to the right. The figure does not reveal any particularly close groupings

307

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN Table 16.3. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of WOMEN. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−0.10 −0.05 −0.12 −1.20 −0.64 −0.51 −0.07 −0.54 −1.50 −1.76 −0.32 −0.05 −0.05 −0.98 −0.61 −0.40 −0.36

−0.08 −0.29 −0.29 −0.76 −0.27 −0.04 −0.26 −0.75 −0.73 −0.72 −0.86 −0.83 −0.18 −0.30 −1.12 −1.54 −1.18

−0.07 −0.66 −0.71 −0.93 −0.59 −0.95 −0.07 −0.97 −0.44 −0.94 −1.28 −0.02 −0.01 −0.44 −0.08 −1.38 −0.02

Table 16.4. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 18–35. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−0.04 −0.08 −1.12 −0.32 −0.83 −0.64 −0.11 −0.28 −0.09 −1.23 −0.35 −0.12 −0.25 −1.16 −0.53 −0.70 −1.60

−1.30 −0.18 −0.17 −0.73 −0.36 −0.25 −1.00 −0.21 −0.71 −0.76 −0.08 −0.36 −1.46 −0.05 −0.78 −0.58 −0.72

−0.13 −0.10 −0.04 −0.23 −0.20 −1.30 −0.62 −0.54 −0.80 −0.20 −0.91 −0.08 −0.22 −0.33 −0.90 −0.12 −1.49

(with the exception of the Balearic Islands and Cantabria); in general, all areas reveal a relatively similar distance from one another. The co-ordinates of the social group formed by people from 36 to 55 years old is shown in Table 16.5 and the graph is reproduced in Figure 16.8:

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

2 10

1 DIM. 2

14

0

15

8 2

3

9

12 4

-1

1

-1

13

0

11

17

16 5 6

7

1

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.7. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 18–35.

Table 16.5. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 36–55. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−0.76 −0.83 −0.63 −0.81 −1.05 −1.06 −0.93 −0.57 −0.95 −0.91 −0.65 −0.68 −0.71 −0.97 −1.20 −1.10 −1.23

−0.54 −0.24 −0.31 −1.15 −0.08 −0.36 −1.14 −0.24 −0.02 −1.32 −0.26 −0.11 −0.69 −0.58 −1.26 −0.20 −0.99

−0.09 −0.41 −0.08 −0.11 −1.10 −0.78 −0.04 −0.36 −1.38 −0.59 −0.76 −0.72 −0.15 −0.05 −0.51 −1.60 −0.12

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN

2 1 DIM. 2

0 -1

13

4

7

1

14

3

5 2 16 9 12 8 6 11

-1

309

17 15 10

0

1

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.8. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 36–55.

The two-dimensional graph of Figure 16.8 clearly shows the perception of three differentiated groups. The first of them, to the right, contains the bilingual communities of 7 (Catalonia), 4 (Basque Country), 14 (Balearic Islands), 13 (Valencia), and 1 (Galicia). The second, below, includes 10 (Extremadura), 15 (Andalusia), and 17 (Canary Islands). The third, to the left, provides a reduced space for the other areas — 12 (Castile-La Mancha) and 8 (Castile-Leon), both located near 11 (Madrid). The data contributed by respondents over 56 years of age is shown in Table 16.6 and in Figure 16.9: The people from Madrid over 56 consider most areas to be very close or closely grouped, linguistically speaking. The only distinct areas are those in which linguistic innovation is common — 15 (Andalusia), 10 (Extremadura), and 17 (Canary Islands). On the other hand, the point corresponding to 11 (Madrid) is clearly distant from all the other areas. The answers given by respondents with university degrees are shown in Table 16.7 and Figure 16.10. University graduates from Madrid perceive the linguistic differences of Spain by first gathering in the right part of the graph the bilingual communities — 7 (Catalonia), 1 (Galicia), 4 (Basque Country), 14 (Balearic Islands), and 13 (Valencia). Likewise, the innovative dialects are distinct, though in opposite ends: on the one hand 15 (Andalusia); on the other, 17 (Canary Islands) and (Extremadura). The rest, including 11 (Madrid),

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

Table 16.6. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of AGE 56 and over. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

2

DIM. 2

Y

Z

−0.14 −0.01 −0.14 −0.18 −0.10 −0.55 −0.06 −0.11 −0.27 −0.64 −1.64 −0.24 −0.13 −0.63 −1.97 −0.40 −0.96

−0.42 −0.13 −0.00 −0.21 −0.06 −0.40 −0.71 −0.18 −0.30 −1.52 −1.71 −0.68 −0.05 −0.25 −0.10 −0.29 −0.97

−0.06 −0.27 −0.12 −0.02 −0.39 −0.14 −0.05 −0.02 −0.33 −1.10 −0.78 −1.09 −0.17 −0.24 −0.58 −1.79 −0.53

11

1 0

X

15

12 1 9 2 14 3 13 4 5 8 16 7 6

-1 10

-1

17

0 DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.9. Multidimensional analysis. Age group 56+.

1

2

311

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN Table 16.7. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of UNIVERSITY GRADUATES. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

2 1 DIM. 2 0

5

10

16

6 8 11 3 12 9 2

X

Y

Z

−1.30 −0.29 −0.60 −0.84 −0.81 −0.88 −1.62 −0.58 −0.72 −0.18 −0.84 −0.45 −0.69 −0.77 −0.12 −0.63 −0.29

−0.04 −0.26 −0.13 −0.02 −0.27 −0.11 −0.09 −0.10 −0.49 −1.14 −0.05 −0.23 −0.12 −0.06 −2.38 −0.69 −1.28

−0.02 −0.61 −0.21 −0.31 −0.29 −0.28 −0.68 −0.73 −0.24 −1.30 −0.06 −0.32 −0.99 −0.01 −1.40 −0.04 −1.34

17

13 14

4

1

7

-1 15 -1

0

1

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.10. Multidimensional analysis. University education.

2

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

Table 16.8. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of SECONDARY STUDIES. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

X

Y

Z

−0.03 −0.03 −0.12 −1.49 −0.58 −0.33 −1.89 −0.02 −0.07 −0.42 −0.14 −0.10 −0.04 −0.66 −0.65 −0.35 −0.37

−0.95 −0.19 −0.11 −0.09 −0.12 −0.37 −0.34 −0.45 −0.34 −0.67 −0.24 −1.13 −1.44 −0.07 −0.80 −0.70 −0.78

−0.08 −1.45 −0.32 −0.43 −0.34 −0.37 −0.04 −0.22 −1.07 −0.08 −0.57 −0.18 −0.10 −0.45 −0.48 −0.92 −1.18

appear concentrated on the left of the figure. Results from respondents with secondary studies are shown in Table 16.8 and Figure 16.11. The two-dimensional graph of Figure 16.11 shows only one prominent concentration of points in the center of the diagram, around the community of Madrid (11). In the outlying upper part are the areas of 15 (Andalusia), 17 (Canary Islands), and 10 (Extremadura). In the left is 4 (Basque Country), the right 7 (Catalonia), and below 13 (Valencia), all communities in which more than one official language is spoken. Finally, data from respondents who have not completed their secondary education are shown in Table 16.9 and Figure 16.12. Figure 16.12 presents a spatial display of the rated areas in which 11 (Madrid), at the top, and 9 (Rioja), to the left, are set very far apart, especially the latter. The rest of the points take up the right half of the graph, relatively concentrated, but with some areas displaced toward the periphery, in this case, again areas of innovation — 16 (Murcia), 17 (Canary Islands), 10 (Extremadura), plus 5 (Navarre) and 4 (Basque Country).

5.

Analysis and interpretation of the results

In the previous section we have presented, in a descriptive way, the results of the quantitative analyses. In that description, all comments having to do with any evaluation or characterization that people from Madrid might have of the differences in Spain have been avoided. In spite of that, our results allow us to see some interesting trends.

MADRID PERCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL VARIETIES IN SPAIN

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2 16

1 DIM. 2

0

4

17 15

9 3 2 11

14

8

-1

12

10 6 5

7

1

13

-1

0

1

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.11. Multidimensional analysis. Secondary education.

From a group perspective, our respondents demonstrate that they perceive the bilingual areas of Spain — or at least most of them — as well-differentiated and distant from Madrid: the group formed by Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Galicia, and the Basque Country is perceived as a group within which especially important differences are not recognized, and it is located among values 3 and 4 of the survey (they speak in a very different way; they speak in a way difficult to understand). In these cases, of course, value 4 recognizes the use of unintelligible languages for speakers from Madrid (Catalan, Galician, and Basque). It should be noted that the respondents did not include Navarre among the bilingual areas, although in the North of this territory Basque is spoken, perhaps because many of the respondents ignored that fact or perhaps because they did not consider it significant. Apart from this group, the respondents perceive the differences for a group of areas that for the most part have received value 2 (they speak a bit different). This second group is formed mainly by areas in the south half of the peninsula (Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia) plus the Canary Islands. In all of them Spanish is used in a way that can be considered as innovative and stands out clearly enough from Castilian to the north, including Madrid. Aragon usually occupies a position close to this group when it doesn’t merge into it, and, as noted above, there are well-differentiated dialect characteristics there (mainly with regard to intonation). At an intermediate distance, valued in some cases as 1, in others as 2 and a few times

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Table 16.9. Co-ordinates of Multidimensional Scaling. Analysis of WITHOUT SECONDARY STUDIES. Number

Area

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Galicia Asturias Cantabria País Vasco Navarra Aragón Cataluña Cast.-León Rioja Extremad. Madrid Cast.-Man Valencia Baleares Andalucía Murcia Canarias

2

Y

Z

−0.02 −0.15 −0.55 −0.45 −0.98 −0.26 −0.47 −0.03 −2.39 −0.73 −0.65 −0.20 −0.33 −0.16 −0.44 −1.10 −0.96

−0.24 −0.80 −0.50 −1.08 −0.11 −0.03 −0.00 −0.28 −0.46 −1.72 −1.73 −0.58 −0.67 −0.28 −0.07 −0.95 −0.14

−1.38 −0.06 −0.27 −0.80 −0.17 −0.50 −1.46 −0.47 −0.50 −0.95 −0.91 −0.77 −0.67 −0.89 −0.24 −0.60 −0.12

11 4

1 DIM. 2

X

16

12 1 15 6 7 14 8 2 13 3

0 9 -1

17 5

10

-1

0

1

2

DIMENSION 1

Figure 16.12. Multidimensional analysis. Less than secondary education.

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as 3, are the areas of Asturias, Cantabria and Rioja, although this last one often appears as independent or far away from the other groups. In the group analyses, the communities perceived as closest to Madrid (valued as 1: they speak exactly as I do) were those of Castile-Leon and Castile-La Mancha, mainly the latter. This linguistic identification with the two Castile areas is easily accounted for since, as has already been pointed out, a very important part of the immigrants arriving in Madrid during the last century come from these neighboring regions (Figure 16.2). However, this argument loses part of its force if one keeps in mind that a very important part of the population came from Andalusia and Extremadura, regions that are not so strongly identified; in fact it quite often happens that the second generation of these immigrants experience a transdialectalization process toward the Castilian pattern of Madrid (Moreno 1996). As has already been explained, the perceptions represented in Figures 16.3 and 16.4 correspond to the entire group of respondents from Madrid who formed the investigation sample. Of course, the results of our analyses have already allowed us to demonstrate that the attitude or the perception of people from Madrid is not homogeneous; important differences can be seen among the social groups. In the variable “sex”, remarkable differences can be observed in the perceptions of men and women. While men identify and group the bilingual communities of Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Galicia and the Basque Country and they identify as distant, although not necessarily grouped, the dialectal areas of the Canary Islands, Andalusia, and Extremadura, the women perceive some innovative varieties as distant — Murcia, Extremadura, the Canary Islands along with Rioja and the Basque Country, but they consider Catalonia and Galicia plus Aragon and Asturias as being nearer to the Castilian pattern (that of Madrid). Women seem to give greater importance to the different Spanish spoken in some areas than to the fact that in some of them another language is spoken. For example, women do not isolate the Basque Country, even though Basque is an incomprehensible language for those Spanish speakers who have no knowledge of it. The variable “age” also presents very interesting internal differences. Such differences make us think that changes are taking place in the perceptions, but change must be confirmed by means of wider analyses and, if possible, confirmed by real-time data. The youngest speakers in the sample perceive a linguistic situation in which the areas rated appear relatively dispersed in a central area, one that forms a triangle in whose vertexes appear, as the most distant or differentiated ones, Extremadura, the Canary Islands and the communities of Catalonia, Valencia and Galicia. This perception, compared to those of the other generations, could be described as relatively confusing or “hardly discriminating”. The second generation (36–55), however, shows clearer attitudes and perceptions, discriminating and grouping as distant communities those that make use of another language besides Spanish, those that use a well identified dialectal variety, and, on a third level, those whose varieties are closer to Madrid. Those over 56 years of age reveal a perception in which Madrid is seen as well-differentiated from all others, particularly those where a more innovative or distinct Spanish is used (Extremadura, Canary Islands and Andalusia).

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Remarkable distances are also seen among the respondents with different educational levels. The people with a university degree perceive three categories or very marked groups that, once again, correspond to the bilingual areas, to the communities with innovative dialectal varieties, and to those areas with varieties close to that of Madrid. Among the respondents with a secondary education, the areas are perceived as distributed in a quite wide space, in which, however, the areas of Catalonia, Valencia and the Basque Country can be isolated. Lastly, the most outstanding perception comes from the respondents without secondary education: Madrid — also Rioja — is a region located at some distance from all others, which, themselves, are widely distributed. Considering these results, we dare to propose, as working hypotheses for other investigations, the existence in Madrid of two prototypes of perceptions of the linguistic differences in Spain: 1. 2.

A perception that demonstrates a greater sensitivity toward the differences of languages; A perception that demonstrates a greater sensitivity toward the differences among dialect varieties.

Prototype number 1 seems to prevail among the men, the middle-aged respondents, and those with a university degree; prototype number 2 seems to prevail among the women and the youngest respondents.

Figure 16.13. Perceptual areas, combined, showing greatest differences.

The generation gap which has emerged in this study is a very interesting one because it moves from a model in which even the bilingual areas are viewed as members of the

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territory of Castilian speech (the older generation), to a model in which a considerable distance exists among the communities that speak two languages, on the one hand, and those that use a marked dialect variety, on the other hand (the middle age generation), and from there to a model in which fewer discriminations are made and where compact concentrations of areas don’t appear (the younger generation). The position that bilingual areas occupy in the three-dimensional tables and two-dimensional graphics depend in a great measure on a greater sensitivity shown toward the different languages or toward the Spanish variety used. Thus the Spanish of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Galicia, or the Basque Country, although it is in line with the most conservative Castilian, reveals, as expected, common characteristics of each region, many of them derived from the contact with Catalan, Galician, or Basque. Some very general conclusions concerning the local area can be derived from these data. Briefly there are two modes of perception at work again. First, there are those who perceive Madrid as a well-differentiated area from all the others (older, less well-educated respondents) and those who see Madrid as a member of a group of homogeneous areas (the two Castiles, Cantabria, Navarre, Asturias, etc.) located at some distance from the bilingual areas and from those areas which display characteristics considered by people from Madrid as more dialectally marked (well-educated, male respondents). On this matter a change in generational attitude could also be considered: the older generation seem to regard Madrid as something distant from the rest, probably because they see Madrid as a prestigious model or they have a traditional idea of the capital, deeply rooted in the first half of the XX century; the younger generation, however, see Madrid as a place which linguistically shares many elements with most of the peninsular territories, with the exception, in a relative way, of those that are considered more marked, either by their languages or by their dialectal varieties. At any rate, proximity is always taken into consideration or, better yet, the identity of language from Madrid with those from Castile, that is to say, the linguistic area it has always belonged to in historical terms.

6.

Conclusions

The results — qualitative and quantitative — that we have obtained as to the perception that people from Madrid have of both the languages of Spain and Spanish dialectal varieties show the importance of this type of investigation. While waiting for further and more complete analyses of the linguistic attitudes in Madrid, starting from this single sample of data, we have been able to discover the following facts: a. b.

that the linguistic perception of people from Madrid reveals both the complexity and differentiation of the situation in Spain with regard to the languages and Spanish regional varieties; that the linguistic perception of the people from Madrid is clearly determined by diverse social factors: sex, age, educational level; they have appeared as significant explanatory variables;

318

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JULIANA MORENO FERNÁNDEZ AND FRANCISCO MORENO FERNÁNDEZ

that, among the people from Madrid, there are two prototypes with regard to the perception of the linguistic situation in Spain: in the first place, there are those speakers who reveal a greater sensitivity toward the diversity of languages and toward the distances that exist among them; in the second place, are those that reveal a greater sensitivity toward Spanish dialect differences.

Concerning this last observation, however, it is necessary to comment that, although two types of perceptions or sensitivities have stood out, it is difficult to find in one concrete speaker such perceptions in a pure state: there are numerous intermediate possibilities that reveal rich and valuable shades in the linguistic sensitivity of people from Madrid. From a purely sociolinguistic perspective, it is obviously necessary to comment that we have confirmed that the vision the men from Madrid have of the linguistic situation in Spain is rather different from that of women: it could be said that the pattern of a greater sensitivity toward the diversity of languages in Spain is more clearly appreciated in the men. This same reality is observed in the well-educated speakers between 36 and 55 years of age. As to the method, it is necessary to refer, once again, to the enormous utility that the multivariate techniques are showing in the field of social sciences, a field in which one almost always works with complex causes or factors. Among the many possibilities offered by multivariate techniques, we have decided to work with correspondence analysis and multidimensional analysis (multidimensional scaling) because their results and graphic representations are especially clear in representing linguistic distances and differences in the perception of the languages. It is not necessary to insist on the need to work with speech samples, surveys of specific features, or quantitative analysis in the study of sociolinguistics, particularly if one begins with the study of linguistic attitudes and dialect perceptions. In addition, the quantitative analyses do not hinder the possibility of applying qualitative techniques. This study has sought to make a contribution to better knowledge of linguistic attitudes in Spain, especially towards its linguistic and dialectal configuration. The linguistic perceptions that have been discovered have shown the variety of social, economic and cultural reality of the city of Madrid and of the linguistic territories — islanders and peninsular — that make up the personality of Spain. Acknowledgments This work is linked partially to the project 97–0076 subsidized by the Community of Madrid (Spain).

Notes 1. This study follows the line of investigation known as perceptual dialectology, promoted for several years by D. Preston from Michigan State University (Preston 1982; 1988; 1989; 1993). On the other hand, the analysis that we offer is part of a much wider investigation about linguistic attitudes in Madrid that is being carried out by Juliana Moreno and directed by Humberto López Morales; likewise it is co-ordinated with projects of the “Seminar of Socioliguistics and Geolinguistics” of the University of Alcalá (Spain), directed by Francisco Moreno.

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2. It is significant to note that, on occasions, greater interest has been shown in the attitudes of specialists (linguists and sociologists) (Salvador; Bastardas and Boix) than in the attitudes of the speakers themselves, which are often ignored or given very little attention. 3. In Moreno and Otero (1998) some data on the number of Catalan, Galician and Basque speakers is offered. The population in Catalonia in 1991 was 6,115,579 inhabitants, of which 50% (3,057,779) consider Catalan as their principal or everyday language, which does not necessarily mean that it is their mother tongue (M. Siguán 1994: 21). The population of Valencia in 1991 was 3,923,841, of which 34% did not speak Spanish as their main or usual language (1,334,105); again, this does not mean that Catalan was their mother tongue. The population of the Balearic Islands in 1991 was 745,944, of which 50% did not speak Spanish as their main or usual language (372,972). The population of Galicia in 1991 was of 2,720,445, of which 62.4% had Galician as their mother tongue (1,697,558) (M. Fernández and M. Rodríguez 1994: 39). The population of the Spanish territories where Basque is the co-official language (plus the territory corresponding to the French Basque Country) in 1996 had 2,428,100 inhabitants, of which 18.8% had Basque as their mother tongue or first language (456,300) (in Bobierno Vasco 1996: 4–5). 4. No analysis could be carried out, for example, when the respondents did not write down any value on the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in the North of Africa, that are shown on the map.

References Alvar, M. 1975. Teoría lingüística de las regiones [A linguistic theory of regions]. Barcelona: Planeta. Alvar, M. 1986. Hombre, etnia, Estado [Individual, ethnicity, state]. Madrid: Gredos. Ander-Egg, E. 1995. Técnicas de investigación social [Techniques of social investigation], 24th Ed. Buenos Aires: Lumen. Bastardas, A. and Boix, E. (eds.) 1994. ¿Un estado una lengua? La organización política de la diversidad lingüística [One country, one language? The political organization of linguistic diversity]. Barcelona: Octaedro. Blanco de Margo, M. I. 1990. “El nacionalismo y las actitudes hacia la lengua en la Argentina” [Nationalism and attiudes about langauge in Argentina] Anuario de lingüística hispánica VI: 65–86. Coupland, N., Williams, A. and Garrett, P. 1994. “The social meanings of Welsh English: Teachers’ stereotyped judgements.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 15(6): 471–489. Etxebarria, M. 1995. Bilingüismo en el Estado español [Bilingualism and the Spanish state]. Bilbao: FBV. Fernández, M. and Rodríguez, M. 1994. Lingua inicial e competencia lingüística en Galicia [First language and lingusitic competence in Galicia]. Vigo: Seminario de Sociolingüística-Real Academia Galega. García Mouton, P. and Moreno Fernández, F. 1993. “Sociolingüística en el Atlas Lingüístico (y etnográfico) de Castilla-La Mancha” [Sociolinguistics in the Linguistic (and ethnographic) atlas of Castille-La Mancha]. In Actas del I Congreso Anglo-hispano, R. Penny (ed.), 139–149. Madrid: Castalia. Giles, H. 1970. “Evaluative reactions to accents.” Educational Review 22: 211–227. Giles, H. and Coupland, N. 1991. Language: Contexts and Consequences. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gobierno Vasco. 1996. Encuesta sociolingüística de Euskal Herria [Sociolinguistic investigation of the Basque provinces]. Gobierno Vasco — Gobierno de Navarra — Instituto Cultural Vasco. Granda, G. de. 1980–1981. “Actitudes sociolingüísticas en el Paraguay” [Sociolinguistic attitudes in Paraguay]. Boletín de Filología de la Universidad de Chile 31: 787–805. Lambert, W. 1967. “A social psychology of bilingualism.” Journal of Social Issues 23: 91–109.



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Lastra, Y. 1992. Sociolingüística para hispanoamericanos [Sociolinguistics for Hispanic Americans]. México: El Colegio de México. López Morales, H. 1979. Dialectología y sociolingüística. Temas puertorriqueños [Dialectology and sociolinguistics: Puerrto Rican topics]. Madrid: Hispanova de ediciones. López Morales, H. 1989. Sociolingüística. Madrid: Gredos. Martín Zorraquino, M. A., Fort, M. R., Arnal, M. L. and Giralt, J. 1995. Estudio sociolingüístico de la Franja oriental de Aragón. [A sociolinguistic study of the eastern border of Aragon]. Zaragoza: Departamento de Lingüística General e Hispánica. Molina, I. 1998. Estudio sociolingüístico de la ciudad de Toledo. [A sociolinguistic study of the city of Toledo]. Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá. Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 1990. Metodología sociolingüística [Sociolinguistic methods]. Madrid: Gredos. Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 1991. “Sociolingüística, estadística e informática” [Sociolinguistics, statistics, and computation]. Lingüística 6: 95–154. Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 1996. “Castilla la Nueva.” In Manual de dialectología hispánica. El español de España, M. Alvar (ed.), 213–232. Barcelona: Ariel. Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 1998. Principios de sociolingüística y sociología del lenguaje [Principles of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language]. Barcelona: Ariel. Moreno Fernández, Francisco. and Otero, J. 1998. “Demografía de la lengua española” [A demography of the Spanish language]. Anuario del Instituto Cervantes. El español en el mundo. Madrid: Arco/ Libros, 59–86. Preston, Dennis R. 1982. “Peceptual dialectology: mental maps of United States dialects from a Hawaiian perspective.” Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 14(2): 5–49. Preston, Dennis R. 1988. “Change in the perception of language varieties”. In Historical dialectology: regional and social, Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 475–504. Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton-De Gruyter. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis R. 1993. “The uses of folk linguistics.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(2): 181–259. Quilis, A. and Casado-Fresnillo, C. 1995. La lengua española en Guinea Ecuatorial [The Spanish language in Equatorial Guinea]. Madrid: UNED-Cooperación Española. Ramírez, A. 1992. El español de los Estados Unidos [The Spanish of the United States]. Madrid: Mapfre. Rensink, W. 1955. “Dialectindeling naar opgaven van medewerkers” [Dialect areas of respondents]. Amsterdam Dialectbureau Bulletin, 7: 20–23. Salvador, G. 1983. “Sobre la deslealtad lingüística” [On language disloyalty]. Lingüística Española Actual V: 173–178. Siguán, M. (ed.). 1994. Conocimiento y uso de las lenguas de España [Knowledge and use of the languages of Spain]. Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Solano Rojas, Y. and Umaña Aguiar, J. 1996. “Actitudes lingüísticas del universitario costarricense” [Linguistic attitudes in the Costa Rican university]. In Actas del X Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de la América Latina, 707–712. México: UNAM. Vallverdú, F. 1980. Aproximació crítica a la sociolingüística catalana [A critical review of Catalan sociolinguistics]. Balanç dels estudis de sociologia lingüística als Països Catalans. Barcelona: Edicions 62.



C 17 Attitudes Toward Midwestern American English Nancy Niedzielski

Standard American English (SAE) has been erroneously attributed, even by some linguists, to the Midwest, New England and “the variety used by network news anchors” (Fromkin and Rodman 1983: 87), when, in fact, each of these contain at least a few features that most people consider nonstandard. But the fact that there are few overt stereotypes of dialects from these areas in popular culture (at least at this time) leads people to believe that there is in fact no accent in these regions. This paper examines this phenomenon from the point of view of the speakers of one these “standard-speaking” regions — speakers from Detroit, Michigan. As I show below, speakers in this region are quite comfortable in the knowledge that they are the true speakers of SAE, and most of the country (other than sociolinguists, that is) is helping them to maintain this belief. The question is, how is it that there are regions where the dialect has shifted so dramatically away from what most Americans consider standard, as is the case in Detroit as a result of the Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), but that the speakers continue to believe that they speak Standard American English? I will suggest that Social Constructivist Theory provides a plausible explanation for this phenomenon. Sociolinguists have devised different ways of quantifying speakers’ assessments of where SAE is spoken. In particular, Preston’s work on perceptual dialectology, which examines where nonlinguists believe dialect boundaries to be (e.g., Preston 1989, 1993), has provided insight into Americans’ beliefs about language varieties. While demonstrating that English speakers in the United States believe in the concept of a national standard, this work has also shown that respondents also have no trouble assigning SAE to a particular geographical area. Preston (1993) notes that when respondents are asked to rank regions in the United States for correctness, very few respondents complained about the task… Although they complained that they did not have the information about this or that state, the ranking of most areas for correctness was for them a reasonable task and represented opinions overtly held about sites where better and worse English is spoken (31).

While the actual features of informal or spoken SAE are difficult to provide, the regions associated with SAE are less difficult to specify.

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Among the places most often assigned such “correct” ratings in perceptual dialectology work are California and, most relevant for this study, the Midwest. In fact, Midwesterners (specifically, those from Michigan) often rank their own dialect as the most correct. Preston (1989) reports the results of asking 147 residents of Michigan to assign correctness ratings to regions in the United States.

Figure 17.1. Michigan map of correctness means scores ratings (Preston 1989) where respondents rated each area on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = least correct; 10 -= most correct).

As Figure 17.1 shows, Michigan residents give Michigan the highest “correctness” rating of any area. Speakers from Michigan, then, possess a very high degree of what Labov (1980) calls “linguistic security”. Michigan residents think that, in fact, they are in the vanguard of SAE, and, at least for the time being, most of the residents of other regions seem to agree. The respondents for the study reported here (Niedzielski 1995) confirm this. They were 30 speakers who were born and currently live and work in the Detroit area. All were European-American, and there were sixteen males and fourteen females. Their educational histories were varied: fourteen held at least a Bachelor’s degree, ten had some college, and six had a high school education only. Among other things, I conducted a language attitude interview with each respondent,

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in which several questions were asked. In most cases, the interviews turned into more informal conversations, with the respondents directing the course of the discussion. However, the following questions were asked of every respondent (although not necessarily in the following order): 1. 2. 3.

Do you think that Michigan speakers have a distinct dialect? Do Michigan speakers sound different from network news anchors? Where can you go to hear basic, standard American English?

Out of 30 respondents, 27 answered that Michigan was where one was most likely to find “standard” English, or that white Detroiters had “no accent”, as Table 17.1 shows: Table 17.1. Where can you hear basic, standard American English? Male Female

Michigan

Other

14 13

2 (“British is standard”; “I don’t know”) 1 (“less formal than other areas”)

Most respondents answered this question with no hesitation — for them, it was a well-known fact about Michigan English. A few respondents related stories about being out of the state, and being surprised to find that they were accused of having a dialect. Said one respondent, “I don’t have an accent — I’ve lived in Michigan all my life!” Another found it amusing, that when she was in Tennessee, Tennesseans felt she had an accent, her underlying assumption being that it is those from Tennessee, and not from Michigan, who have accents. What is intriguing is that if someone had commented on their dialect in the past, some respondents were likely to believe that they were idiosyncratic — that perhaps they themselves spoke differently, but that other Detroiters did not. As a native Detroiter, I must admit that I experienced the same phenomenon. If features of my own dialect were pointed out to me as I listened to a tape-recording, for instance, I was sure that I was the only one who sounded like that in the whole state. One respondent stated that “I must have an accent, because sometimes people mention it but none of my friends do. They just sound regular.” Thus the realization that there are “interesting” features in their own speech does not make speakers more aware of these features in the speech of others who share them. Instead, it seems to make speakers more self-conscious about their own speech. For the most part, then, Detroit residents believe that the dialect of the white speakers in Detroit is standard, “correct”, and basically “accent-free”. However, the dialect of Detroit (and other regions that make up what Labov calls the “Northern Cities”) is rapidly diverging from what most Americans feel is “standard”. In fact Detroit has progressed farther than many other cities in what is known as the “Northern Cities Chain Shift” (NCCS), so that most of the Detroiters’ vowels have shifted away from the canonical vowel space presented in textbooks as “American vowels”.

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The vowel spaces for each of the respondents in this study were no exception. Acoustic analysis performed on them shows that they are all taking part in the NCCS (see Niedzielski 1999 for details). How could it be, then, that Detroiters do not appear to perceive these shifting vowels? One hypothesis is that they do perceive the shifts, and reassign the label “standard” to these shifted variants. Table 17.2. Formants of tokens of ‘pop’ played for respondents (n = 42) and responses. Token #

F1

F2

label of token

# and % of respondents who chose each token

1 2 3

770 900 700

1050 1400 1600

hyper-standard canonical /a/ actual vowel produced


4 (10%) 36 (85%)
5
(2%)

Table 17.3. Formants of tokens of ‘last’ played for respondents (n = 42) and responses. Token #

F1

F2

label of token

# and % of respondents who chose each token

1 2 3

900 775 700

1530 1700 1900

hyper-standard canonical /æ/ actual vowel produced


4 (10%) 38 (90%)
0

Table 17.4. Formant values of tokens of ‘close’ played for respondents (n = 21) and responses. Token #

F1

F2

label of vowel

# and % of respondents who chose each token

2 3 4

650 560 500

1200 1050
950

standard /o/ actual vowel produced standard/U/

14 (67%)
6 (29%)
1
(5%)

Tables 17.2–17.4 suggests otherwise: Detroiters seem to “hear” the canonical, standard vowels in the speech of their fellow Detroiters. These tables contain the results of a perception survey conducted in Detroit in 1997 (with a different set of respondents from the language attitudes study mentioned earlier), in which respondents were presented with the tape-recorded speech of a Detroit female speaker and told that she was either from Detroit or Windsor, Ontario. (In this paper, I present only the results for the respondents who were given the “Detroit” label; see Niedzielski 1999 for a comparison of the two labels.) Respondents were told that they were helping with a speech synthesis program and that they needed to match the speaker’s vowels with the best synthesized version of vowel. Thus, they were asked to choose from a list of six resynthesized vowels the vowel they felt came closest to the one they heard the speaker produce. As the data show, most of the respondents chose a variant similar to one that might be found in, say,

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Peterson and Barney 1952, or some other list of what “General American” vowels look like; very few chose the actual variant that the speaker produced. And several respondents chose a vowel that I chose to call “hyperstandard” — one that diverged from the standard not in the direction of the actual variant, but in the opposite direction, For instance, in Table 17.2, we see that 85% chose as the token that best matched the speaker’s /a/, resynthesized with an F1 of 900 Hz and an F2 of 1400 Hz, and 10% chose one even farther back (the “hyperstandard” one, similar to canonical /f/. Only 2 of the possible 42 responses chose the actual token that the speaker produced. Tables 17.3 and 17.4 contain similar results: very few responses were for the actual variant, and most were for a more canonical version of the vowel. And Figure 17.2 shows that the vowel space that the respondents “heard” resembles one similar to those found in textbooks illustrating “American vowels”, rather than a vowel space similar to the speaker’s. A better hypothesis, then, is that these Detroit residents “hear” the standard versions, rather than the actual variant. But how is this possible? Perhaps the Detroit dialect has not become a cultural stereotype, but rather, is only noticed at an individual level. (As noted earlier, when listeners comment on Detroiters’ dialects, Detroiters are likely to attribute this to their own idiosyncrasies rather than to their region.) Wolfram (1991) defines a standard dialect as one that is “devoid of both general and local socially-stigmatized features, as well as regionally obtrusive phonological and grammatical features” — one that is “least likely to call attention to itself” (210). It seems then that it is not the dialect that calls attention to itself, but rather, popular culture (such as the media, prescriptivist doctrine, etc.) that calls attention to the dialect, generally by stigmatizing it. This does not mean that certain features of the NCCS dialects are not stigmatized. If this were the case, then there would be very few comments about Michigander dialects when speakers of it leave the state. I can attest that this is not true. When I first moved to California, people commented on my dialect frequently, which puzzled me greatly at the time. In addition, there are beginning to be parodies of Northern Cities dialects in the media. NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’, ABC’s ‘Roseanne’, Fox’s ‘The Simpsons’ and the movie Fargo all have characters who speak with versions of Northern Cities dialects, and the characters are not the “overtly prestigious” ones Midwesterners might hope for. It may be therefore just a matter of time before NCCS dialects come to be used as stereotypes in popular culture in the way a NYC or southern dialect is today. For the time being, however, this is not the case with characters from Michigan. Most of the characters from ABC’s ‘Home Improvement’, which is supposed to take place in Detroit, do not speak using any NCCS features. In addition, a recent episode of Fox’s ‘The X-Files’ was supposed to have taken place in Traverse City, Michigan, but none of the townsfolk spoke with any trace of an NCCS dialect. (This was in direct contrast to a recent episode of the same program which was set it Memphis. Although the characters in that program may not have had actual Memphis dialects, they did not have a General American one, but rather, made some attempt at a southern dialect.) In addition, speakers of Michigan English will vehemently deny that there is any

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F2, in Hz 3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

u

300

i e

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ε I

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ç

æ

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Figure 17.2. Perceived vowel space (bold and enlarged) chosen for speaker on test tape for five vowels, superimposed on her actual vowel space.

similarity whatsoever between the way the characters in, say, Fargo speak, and the way they themselves speak. I have narrowly escaped fist-fights for even suggesting such a comparison. In the face of glaring acoustic evidence to the contrary, then, Detroiters hold fast to the belief that they are the true SAE speakers. Again, the question is, how is this possible? Social Constructivist Theory (“SCT”, e.g., Gergen 1994) offers an interesting hypothesis: a person’s identity (in this case, the identity of “Speaker of SAE”) is created — must be created in fact — within the context of social interaction, and language is the “interactive medium”. Of the five basic assumptions of SCT, two are directly relevant: (1) that “there are no principled constraints over our characterization of states of affairs” (Gergen 1994: 49); in other words, no direct correspondence to reality (whatever that is — in this case, perhaps the “reality” of the acoustic signal). Rather the correspondence is to what the second basic



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assumption suggests: (2) that “the degree to which a given account of … the self is sustained across time is not dependent on the objective validity of the account but on the vicissitudes of the social process” (Gergen 1994: 51). In other words, a person’s self-identity (in this case, one of “SAE speaker”) may remain fixed, even if “reality” (in this case, acoustic facts) mutates. This theory predicts that in order for Detroiters to remain convinced of their identity as SAE speakers, they would need to have this identity confirmed through most of their social interactions. This appears to be exactly what happens as they deal with other Detroiters, and, crucially, with speakers from other regions. Additionally, the exposure to popular culture can constitute “social interaction”, and very little evidence from popular culture suggests that Michiganders are anything BUT standard speakers. Thus, the “vicissitudes of the social process” for Michigan speakers override the acoustic “reality”, and until that changes (and the means by which this change can happen is beyond the scope of this paper), Michiganders will continue to claim their place in the vanguard of Standard American English, right there by the Californians.

References Fromkin, Victoria, and Robert Rodman. 1983. An introduction to language. New York: Holt. Gergen, K. 1994. Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Labov, William. 1980. Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. Niedzielski, Nancy. 1995. “Acoustic analysis and language attitudes in Detroit.” In Miriam Meyerhoff (ed). (N)WAVES and Means: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 3,1:73–86. Niedzielski, Nancy. 1999. “The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology (Special Issue: Attitudes, perception, and linguistic issues, ed. by Lesley Milroy and Dennis R. Preston) 18(1):62–85. Peterson, Gordon and Harold Barney. 1952. “Control methods used in a study of the vowels.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24(2):175–184. Preston, Dennis R. 1989. Perceptual dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris. Preston, Dennis R. 1993. “Two heartland perceptions of language and variety.” In “Heartland” English: Variation and transition in the American Midwest, Timothy Frazer (ed.), 23–47. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Wolfram, Walt. 1991. Dialects and American English. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.



C 18 The Perception of Urban Varieties Preliminary Studies from the South of Italy Maria Teresa Romanello Translated by George Metcalf

The most recent reflections in the field of Italian linguistic geography consider the description of the city as a linguistic “point” to be somewhat reductive, preferring now to speak of the city as a linguistic area. The traditional point/area dichotomy and the division of points into large, medium, and small, which are both present in the planned edition of the Italian Linguistic Atlas (ALI) (Bartoli, Vidossi and Terracini), as well as in all the research that shares its methodological background,1 take on new meanings in the light of today’s urban complexity. This complexity derives from the existence of many zones within the city itself. These zones differ in environmental, demographic, sociological, and occasionally even linguistic terms. However, the difference between the zones is above all functional, that is, linked to the type of services and infrastructure which are present. This difference produces a hierarchy which is strongly felt by the city’s inhabitants and by the inhabitants of other localities which are themselves in a hierarchical relationship to the city on a broader, i.e., regional, level. Thus it is theoretically possible to identify, within a single urban area, differences and oppositions of various kinds — environmental, linguistic, and anthropological — which operate via the perception and linguistic awareness of the speaker.2

1.

An experiment

A research project has been carried out in the cities of Brindisi and Lecce, the main cities in a distinctive geographical area in the far South of Italy, the Salento peninsula (the “heel” of Italy), which is itself part of the Puglia region. All five provincial capitals in this region (the others are Bari, Foggia and Taranto) are considered to be average-sized for the Italian context in terms of population and the physical area they cover (see Figure 18.1). The figures for the year 1995 are the following:

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Figure 18.1. The research area.

Brindisi: Lecce:

inhabitants: 95,027 inhabitants: 100,170

area: 328.29 km2 area: 238.39 km2

These figures, however, and above all the level of services and urban infrastructure, mean that in relation to the other towns of the Salento subregion these cities may be considered large. Thus the classification into large, medium, and small is not absolute, but relative to the overall system of the region in question. In comparison with Brindisi, Lecce currently seems to have a greater urban complexity and a broader range of services, and it exercises a correspondingly greater attraction on those living in the surrounding area. This is based on objective research by geographers,

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economists, and even linguists, and the inhabitants of the two cities tend to agree. From a linguistic point of view, and specifically in terms of dialect, the two cities belong to the extreme South area of Italy, which includes Salento, Sicily, and southern Calabria (Maiden and Parry, 1997). While having certain general features in common, the dialects of the two cities, which are very much alive, have many distinctive characteristics, which also influence the way in which the inhabitants of the two cities speak standard Italian. They are reciprocally aware of each other’s distinctive features, in both the dialect and in standard Italian, and they also claim to notice dialect variation within their own city. There exists however, the legitimate suspicion that the observations and classifications of the “experts” (particularly linguists, in this case) do not altogether coincide with those of the speakers. We will refer to observations and classifications made by speakers concerning both their own city and that of the others. To accomplish this, we carried out surveys among speakers, who were selected according to various criteria. Since our initial assumption was that the city should be treated as an area, we began our survey by identifying zones of different types within each city that would be representative of the contrasts that determine their heterogeneous nature (and therefore their complexity). In both Brindisi and Lecce four such zones were chosen, using various indices of urban analysis, especially: a. b. c.

quality and structure of buildings, roads, squares road links to the rest of the city and to regional destinations presence and type of services available

Locally recruited data gatherers were used to observe residents’ lifestyles (whether more or less traditional), and their communication network (whether more or less restricted). Contrasting zones were identified within the same administrative district, which gives an idea of the heterogeneous nature of the city.3 The perceptions of the inhabitants, and not some external criterion of a bureaucratic or administrative kind (such as the division of the city into boroughs or districts) were used to define the sub-areas of the city according to whether they were more or less “urban”, i.e., whether they were more “standardized” (in a cultural, social, and economic sense) or more traditional. In Lecce, the two administrative districts chosen were “Mazzini” and “Centro”. Within Mazzini, the two were the area around Piazza Mazzini (A) and San Lazzaro (B). Within Centro, the two zones were Via Palmieri (A) and Via A. Balmes (B).4 In Brindisi, two administrative districts were chosen: “Centro” and “Casale”. Within Centro, we have two zones: the commercial center (more urban, thus in group A), and Sciabiche (less urban, in group B). Within Casale, we have another two zones: the area around the Sailors’ Monument (A) and Villaggio Pescatori (B).5 For each of the chosen sub-areas three speakers were selected as informants, so that twenty-four interviews were conducted in all. These are not claimed to be statistically representative. Nevertheless they may be held to indicate shared attitudes and behaviors, since they were chosen (on the basis of information supplied by data gatherers who were themselves selected from similar social groups) in such a way as to represent “typical inhabitants” of the selected zones in terms of values, lifestyle, and “group loyalty” to the

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Figure 18.2. The City of Lecce.

inhabitants of the zone in general. The three informants from each zone were all adults: one from age bracket a (18–25), one from age bracket b (45–55) and one from age bracket c (60–70). From this, it should be clear that the main variable was that of location. The interviews were conducted in the spring of 1998. The questionnaire that was used (the same for all informants) aims to bring out the informant’s perception of his or her home town and its internal divisions in terms of geography and language. Furthermore, it aims to discern whether this perception is based on objective knowledge or stereotypes and prejudices; it also seeks to establish whether

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Figure 18.3. The Mazzini section of Lecce.

this perception expresses some form of value judgment. The questionnaire is brief. It is divided into four sections which correspond to differing elicitation techniques. In the first section the guided interview technique was considered the most suitable for obtaining information regarding the level and type of knowledge of the informant’s area: I. 1. What is the population of Brindisi/Lecce? 2. How extensive is your town? 3. Into how many districts is your town divided? 4. Do you know all the districts? 5. What is the name of the district where you live? 6. Where are the boundaries of your district? 7. Are you happy to live there? 8. If you were to leave your area, which area would you like to move to? 9. Is there any particular area where you would not like to live? Why? 10. Which area do you think is the most “Leccese” or “Brindisina”, i.e., the most representative of the real nature of your town? 11. How far is the Maritime Station from Piazza Cairoli? (Brindisi) 12. How far is Porta Rudiae from Piazza Sant’Oronzo? (Lecce)

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Figure 18.4. Lecce Center.

13. How far is your house from Piazza Cairoli? (Brindisi) How far is your house from Piazza Sant’Oronzo? (Lecce) In the second section the guided interview seeks to gather information on the linguistic varieties in use in the town and how these are considered, as well as the perception of a possible connection between variation and geographical area: II. 1. Is dialect still spoken in Brindisi / Lecce? 2. If yes, when is it spoken, and to whom? 3. Do you speak it, or do you merely understand it? 4. In your opinion, is the dialect of Lecce / Brindisi different from that of nearby towns? 5. Do the dialects of Lecce and Brindisi differ in relation to each other? And in relation to other cities in Puglia? 6. Are there any differences between Brindisi and Lecce in the way the inhabitants speak regular Italian? 7. As far as you are aware, are there any areas within your city where a special dialect is spoken, with characteristics of its own?

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Figure 18.5. The City of Brindisi.

8. Do you know the meaning of the word sciabbicotu? (Brindisi)/rusciaru? (Lecce) 9. Do you know any nicknames which are used by the inhabitants of Brindisi to refer to those of Lecce (or vice versa)? Or any nicknames which are used generally to refer to people from your town? In order to verify the preservation of traditional lexical forms (even if only in the passive competence of the speakers), translation was considered to be the most suitable technique. In section three, the words included in the sentences to be translated from Italian into dialect are part of a traditional lexical repertoire, which, however, is currently undergoing processes of substitution or disappearance. Reference is made here to two semantic

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Figure 18.6. Brindisi Center.

spheres traditionally used in dialect research: the weather and family relationships. Although limited in quantity, these words can give us an idea of the tension between innovation and conservation in the dialect of our informants. The sentences are given here with translations into English: III. 1–2. Sull’erba c’è ancora la rugiada; ma stanotte scenderà la brina. (There is still dew on the grass; but tonight there will be frost.) 3–4. La pioggia e la grandine hanno rovinato il raccolto. (The rain and hail have ruined the harvest.) 5–6–7. Dopo i lampi e i tuoni c’è l’arcobaleno (After the lightning and the thunder there’s a rainbow.) 8–9–10. Vado a casa dal nonno. Suo padre, che è il mio bisnonno, sta male. (I’m going to my grandfather’s house. His father, who is my great-grandfather, is ill.)

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Figure 18.7. Casale section of Brindisi.

11–12–13. La fidanzata di Paolo, che è tua cugina, si sposa a Maggio. (Paolo’s girlfriend, who is your cousin, is getting married in May.) 14–15. Invece Pietro, il figlioccio di Gino, non si vuole sposare. (But Pietro, Gino’s godson, doesn’t want to get married.) The fourth section may be thought of as the completion of the first. It verifies the ability of the informants to find their way around on a map of the city by asking them to identify routes and locations which should be thoroughly familiar to them. The technique involves showing the informants a map (of Brindisi or Lecce, according to where they live) and asking them to mark the following: IV. 1. the area where they live 2. the route from their house to Piazza Cairoli (Brindisi)/Piazza Sant’Oronzo (Lecce) 3. the boundary of the area they consider to be the most “Brindisina” or “Leccese”.

2.

Knowledge of one’s own living space (Section I)

Awareness of numbers, concerning the order of magnitude of the city where one lives, is practically absent among our informants. The number of inhabitants is not known. Some try to guess, but never with much confidence. Some give figures which are absurd (six million inhabitants for Lecce! — no Italian cities boast this number). The size of the city

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in terms of physical area, in the few cases where this is expressed (question 2 was not generally well received by informants), is described with references of a topographical kind (“as far out as the Vele” in Lecce, “From the Port to Sant’Elia” in Brindisi). The number of administrative districts, the dimensions of one’s own district, the distance from one’s house to the most important reference points of the city, are not part of our informants’ “technical” knowledge. But this does not mean to say that they do not know about their city; the nature of this knowledge, and the ways of expressing it are simply different. The districts, in the minds of the inhabitants, are not administrative divisions, but points of reference whose names are “historical”: for example, in Lecce, Porta Rudiae, Santa Rosa, Le Giravolte, San Lazzaro. For this reason their number may vary widely (from 10 to 15 in Lecce, and up to 20 in Brindisi). The administrative name of the district is often unknown to its inhabitants; but the area may be referred to easily and unambiguously with the name of a junction or particular street: for example, in Lecce, “Via Idomeneo” or “Le Bombarde” for Centro, “Piazza Trecentomila” for Mazzini. Even the physical size of the district is measured in these terms, not with meters or kilometers but with references such as (in Lecce) “Within the three gates” for Centro, and “to the Villa” (public gardens), “up to the Monaci” (a church), or “as far the market by the post office” for Mazzini; in Brindisi, “from the Gabbiano to the Difesa” for Centro. This type of indication or description is so full of traditional reference as to be intelligible only to the inhabitants themselves. It constitutes a form of topographical language, specific to the town. And the boundaries are not always clear, since they are part of the consciousness of the individual inhabitants. A certain overlapping of districts is thus not perceived as such; Via Trinchese, a vital artery for the commercial life of the city, may be considered as belonging to both Centro and Mazzini. In the same way, it makes no sense to try to measure familiar routes through the city in terms of distance; it is sufficient just to say how long it takes to get from one place to another among the main points of the town: “you can cross Lecce in twenty minutes, from the Pranzo area to Porta Rudiae” (2.Bb), and “from here to Piazza Cairoli in five minutes” (Brindisi, 1.Ab). The evaluation of one’s own area was generally positive; it was unconnected to the local property market, which depends on quite different criteria, and opinions were based on affective criteria. A vague desire for more open spaces, which might be a motive for moving to some other district, or even to the country, is countered by the fear of less frequent social contact. There is no lack of comments of an architectural/urban nature (“far away”, “narrow”, “spacious”), but these too turn out to have a sentimental dimension: “The flats in Piazza Mazzini look like concrete coffins”; “I like narrow streets” say the inhabitants of Centro; “In the old town you feel like you’re suffocating”, say those of Mazzini. Some state the motive for this verdict explicitly: informant 2.Bc from Lecce quotes a traditional proverb to the effect that “Home is where the heart is”. 2.Ba from Brindisi, to the first part of question 8, answers “I would die!” Some parts of the city come in for criticism, but precisely which parts depends on who you talk to, since negative observations are mainly restricted to areas other than one’s own. Evidence of social problems, petty crime, et cetera are always present in somebody else’s area and

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never apparently in one’s own. The most striking cases of this are in Sciabiche and Villaggio Pescatori in Brindisi: proud to live there and to have been born there, the inhabitants deny the gravity of problems that sociologists, town planners and the police consider to be a matter of objective fact. In the words of one resident: Ákwai, io Áad˜Ša ab˜iÁta Ákwai ka Áso peskaÁtori, viÁtwinu al˜u Ámari… Ákwandu va ÁmandŠu ak˜asa di Áfig˜jama stau Áb˜wenu Ási, ma no Ávewu Álora ku Ámi ndi Átornu Here, I must live here, for I am a fisherman, near the sea… When I visit my daughter I am happy of course, but I can’t wait to get back home again. (1.Bc)6

Most informants are aware of a zone which best exemplifies the character of the city: both in Lecce and Brindisi this is generally held to be in the old town, but there are differences of opinion. In Brindisi the inhabitants of Centro refer to Sciabiche, but those of Casale refer to Villaggio Pescatori. The size of the zone also varies; it may correspond to a single street, or square, or church (“Via Petrelli”, “Piazza Sant’Oronzo”, or “Santa Croce” in Lecce), or it may correspond to a recognised area (“San Pietro degli Schiavoni” in Brindisi). For some, the distinctive character of the zone is associated with certain linguistic habits; a special dialect is supposedly spoken in Lecce in the area between Arco di Prato and Arco di Trionfo (according to 1.Ac) or in the Giravolte area (2.Bc).

3.

Identifying the linguistic varieties (Section II)

All informants agree in recognizing the use of dialect in the city. There is a widely-held perception that its use is linked to certain variables of a pragmatic nature: above all the participants (with the family or among friends), the setting (small shops or market stalls selling basic goods such as food) and the emotional state of the speaker (when joking, or expressing anger or sporting loyalties). One younger informant also referred to its use among specific groups, for example in criminal gangs. Sociological variables are less important: the difference between younger and older generations is seen primarily as one of frequency of dialect use, or as the awareness of having a choice between Italian and dialect, i.e., between two separate codes. Practically everybody affirmed that they are able to understand dialect, but not everybody that they can actually speak it. One hears evaluative comments such as “Yes, but not fluently”, “Yes, but not the old-fashioned dialect.” Explicit judgments are heard regarding linguistic “points” other than one’s own (Question 4). The dialect of the city is perceived to be distinct from that of satellite towns, but the difference is seen in terms of a higher level of “civilization” (1.Aa from Lecce). On a technical level the difference is seen in rather general terms, as a question of pronunciation or “accent”; naturally the accent of the city is considered superior. The answers to questions 5 and 6 (section II) relate to the way in which both dialect and standard Italian are spoken in one’s own city compared to other provincial capitals in Puglia. Many observers have noted the persistence of linguistic stereotypes and it is here that they are most keenly felt. The inhabitants of Lecce above all describe their dialect as

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“clearer” and their Italian as having “no accent”. This is because “Lecce is the Florence of Puglia” (1.Aa), “After Florence comes Lecce” (2.Bc), and even “Real Italian derives from the speech of Lecce, and not that of Florence as is usually stated” (1.Ac); in any case, “Many words from the Lecce dialect are Italian” (2.Ba). The inhabitants of Brindisi stress the contrast between their dialect and those of Foggia and Bari, whose dialects “cannot be understood”.7 But all our informants agree on this point, including those from Lecce. The linguistic chauvinism which leads the speakers to consider their dialect to be superior (and their way of speaking standard Italian to be free of any local accent) reflects a certain linguistic competence, albeit of a naive, unscientific kind; the dialects of Bari and Foggia belong to a group that is quite distinct from those of Salento, belonging to the intermediate Southern area (e.g., Maiden and Parry 1997). Other intuitions held by the speakers are also substantially confirmed by the research into dialect. Some informants from Brindisi, for example, refer to a crumbling of the linguistic boundaries of their province, which has been recognized by recent research (Sobrero and Romanello, 1981): “In San Pietro they speak like people from Lecce, and in Tuturano as well; in San Vito more like the people of Bari, in Mesagne more like the people of Taranto” (1.Ab). Occasionally there are unexpected references to prosodic features; some Lecce speakers claim to notice an interrogative intonation in the utterances of Brindisi speakers, even when these are declarative; for some Brindisi speakers, the high speed at which the Lecce dialect is spoken affects the way they speak Italian. According to most informants, in Brindisi a special dialect is spoken “near the sea”, that is, “Down in Sciabiche and Villaggio Pescatori”, “by the most old-fashioned people, by the fishermen.” Thus they recognise the existence of a more traditional variety, resistant to innovation, which is linked to a specific area and a specific social group. Examples of features of this variety are not provided however. In Lecce the answers to question 7 were less predictable. Rather than a particular variety of dialect spoken in a particular area, the informants, and especially the younger ones, describe how areas of the city differ in how frequently dialect is spoken. There are areas in which dialect is widely used, and these tend to be the older parts of the city, such as Giravolte, or areas whose inhabitants are of low socio-economic status, such as Santa Rosa or the public housing estates on the outskirts of the city, where dialect is used “to set (the speaker) apart from the luxury of Piazza Mazzini” (2.Ba). There are other areas where dialect is never spoken (in the street at least), such as Piazza Mazzini. The observation is interesting, since dialect is thus perceived as the language of particular social groups with more limited communication networks and sometimes as a marker of social distinctions. The literature on the area cites Sciabbicotu and Rusciaru as the names of the most ancient varieties of dialect, in Brindisi and Lecce respectively: varieties which are diachronic but also diatopic, since they are linked to special areas within the city (Sciabiche and Porta Rudiae). However, there exists no scientific description of their features that would make these varieties specific. It is generally stated that the distinctive features of the former are mainly lexical, while those of the latter are phonetic. But these notions belong more to the collective memory of the speakers than to scientific dialectology. This kind of memory produces a modification of the sense of the words: Rusciaru

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refers to “old-style dialect” for only one informant, 1.Aa. The others who know the term (and this does not include all the informants) use it to refer to people, with the meaning of “vulgar, unsophisticated”. In Brindisi, Sciabbicotu is generally used to refer to the area of similar name, but it describes the inhabitants, not just their language: “people that live near the sea, with boats and nets.” These epithets are not necessarily pejorative; they refer, usually in a well-meaning sense, to a “rustic” mode of behavior. More clearly pejorative are the terms used by the inhabitants of one city to refer to those of another. In fact, to indicate “the others” the same name is used in both cases: pòppeti.8 The most likely etymology for this term, the Latin post oppidum, coincides with the feeling of belonging to the city; one’s own city is the real one, and the inhabitants of the other are “peasants”. The disdain is mitigated, however, by the fact that both sides are aware that the term is used reciprocally and that other names exist for the inhabitants of one’s own city. The inhabitants of Brindisi call those of Lecce capustieddi, equating Lecce with the cape at the bottom of the heel of Italy, Capo di Santa Maria di Leuca (Romanello 1996: 14, 17). The inhabitants of Lecce know this, and also that they are called mangiacani, literally, “dog eaters”. The rivalry with Bari is even more intense, and in this Lecce and Brindisi are allies; the story everyone remembers is the one about a dog from Lecce who shows he is more intelligent than a dog from Bari purely by virtue of his closer vowel sounds.9

4.

Innovation and conservation in dialect (Section III)

The answers to section three of the questionnaire indicate various tendencies: a. In most cases, the relationship between dialect and Italian is perceived and realised by the informants as the projection of phonetic features from dialect onto words which are definitely Italian. In a questionnaire of this kind, where the emphasis is explicitly lexical — and to a lesser extent morphological — we did not always obtain dialect lexemes. However, although Italian words are used in the translation, they are produced with phonetic features from dialect. For example, dialect /ruÁd˜Šada/ for Italian /ruÁdŠada/, /Ákrandine/ for /Ágrandine/, /zbiÁn˜on˜u/ for /bizÁnon˜o/, /wposa/ for /sposa/, etc. Although the number of examples is small, it does allow us to verify certain features of dialect already observed by others: – – – – –

gemination of the voiced bilabial plosive as in /Áb˜rina/, /arkob˜aÁleno/, and of the plosive part of the voiced postalveolar affricate — /ruÁd˜Šada/; devoicing of the velar and alveolar plosive as in /Ákrandine/, /Áumitu/, and of the postalveolar affricate — /kuÁtwina/; metathesis of the consonant — /zbiÁn˜on˜u/; palatalization of the unvoiced sibilant — /wposa/; closure of /o/ to /u/ in unstressed or final position, and, for Brindisi, of /e/ to /i/ — /Ánon˜u/, /tempuÁrali/;

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advancement of /o/ to /e/, especially with prelabialization, in stressed position — /Átweni/ in place of the Italian /Átwoni/. This may also be accompanied by epenthesis of /r/ — /Átrweni/.

These are all phenomena which have been described in the literature on dialects, from the Historische Grammatik by Rohlfs (1949–54) onwards. They evidently form part of the speakers’ metalinguistic knowledge and are used to distinguish their speech from the standard national language. b. Elements of the traditional lexicon are not entirely absent, but in this the two semantic spheres do not follow the same pattern. The traditional forms are generally substituted with Italian ones when referring to atmospheric phenomena, but tend to be conserved when referring to family relationships. It is useful to note here that terms concerning the weather are important above to agricultural communities, whereas words for relatives refer to relationships and connections that maintain their significance even in an urban environment. Thus, we have words such as /Át˜sita/ and /Ástria/ for the Italian fidanzata (girlfriend); /aÁt˜ani/ and /Ásire/for padre (father); /wuÁwet˜u/for figlioccio (godson); /m˜ariÁtare/ for sposare (to marry). The last example is a verb whose subject is a woman; the corresponding traditional dialect verb with the same meaning but referring to a man, /ntsuÁrare/, from the Latin inuxorare, was not produced by our informants. Another traditional feature of this semantic sphere is the transformation of the Italian possessive adjective (which precedes the noun and may include an article) into an enclitic particle; this is accompanied by the reduction of the Italian diphthong to a pure vowel, which is /a/ in all cases and thus, unlike Italian, does not morphologically reflect the gender of the noun: /Ásirsa/ for the Italian suo padre (his father), /biÁznon˜uma/ for il mio bisnonno (my great-grandfather), and /kuÁtwinata/ for tua cugina (your cousin). Of course, these conservative features of the dialect are in competition with the corresponding forms in Italian. c. There seems to be no relation between dialect preservation and geographical location. The traditional answers to our questionnaire were not given exclusively by old people, nor were they given exclusively by the inhabitants of the oldest districts. The translation technique therefore seems to bring to the surface a form of competence which is fairly widespread. It must be remembered, however, that it tells us nothing about language use in reality; the frequency and the nature of the linguistic varieties that are actually used are questions that need to be investigated using other techniques.

5.

Orientation on a map (Section IV)

In the fourth section of the questionnaire there are only three questions, but these are sufficient to verify the informants’ ability to determine their position on a spatial representation (i.e., a map). Since this map is of their own city, the replies tell us something about how it is perceived. The first two questions in particular relate to the individual’s own daily life (home, and the normal route adopted to reach the Piazza which is the symbol of the heart of the city); the third requires the informants to use their

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judgment regarding a particular space. Before completing this section, informants were asked to confirm their answers to section I. Eliciting informants’ responses by means of a graphical representation proved itself to be a rather more awkward procedure than the verbal model. Locating oneself and finding one’s way around on a map are complex operations, and on discovering this some informants, especially the older or less educated ones, became rather uncomfortable. However, all the informants were able to perform the tasks required. The graphical techniques used to answer the questions were quite varied. Some informants used continuous lines, others dotted lines or dashes, others intersecting lines. Sometimes one informant used a number of methods, as in 1.Aa:

Figure 18.8. Respondent map outlines (Brindisi Center).

We shall leave the task of interpreting the symbolic function of these different approaches to the psychologists. In the data obtained we may seek indications that are more clearly linked to the informants’ urban perceptions. In Brindisi and Lecce all informants were able to find their own home (question 1).

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A more difficult task was to trace the route from there to Piazza Cairoli or Piazza Sant’Oronzo (question 2): while certain informants marked the shortest route, corresponding to that which they actually follow in real life, others marked routes which were easier to follow on the map itself, but did not correspond to the shortest route or the route they usually follow. In short, the difficulties involved in relating to a symbolic representation of space prevailed over their daily experience of that space. Others started to mark a route but gave up half-way, irritated and disorientated (for example, 2.Aa). The zone most representative of Brindisi (question 3) — which is often referred to as /aÁb˜aw˜u Ábrindisi/ (“lower Brindisi”),10 especially by the inhabitants of the smarter districts of the city — is generally near the sea: Sciabiche, or Villaggio Pescatori; the Sailors’ Monument is used as a reference point by all, one of the true symbols of this city. Only 1.Bb gave the area around the cathedral, up to via San Pietro degli Schiavoni. As in the first section of the questionnaire, the precise boundaries of the given area varied; for example 2.Ab drew the area so as to include most of the center, highlighting points such as the Roman Columns, Porta Lecce, the railway station, and Porta Mesagne. In Lecce informants frequently made reference to architectural features considered important, practically as symbols of the city; all considered the old town to be most representative of Lecce. They did not consider it necessary to indicate its boundaries, preferring instead to indicate a few reference points: besides Piazza Sant’Oronzo (in which special mention is made of the column of the saint), the Arco di Prato, the Arco di Trionfo, Porta Rudiae, and the Castle of Charles the Fifth.

6.

Further study

We have confirmation here that a map, just like any spatial description, implies a complex semiotic system (Zumthor, 1993). It is not identical to what it represents, and it shows only a part of it, or selected elements. Those who read it may find it difficult or unfamiliar. Frequently they search it for symbols of their space, imaginary or experienced (Romanello 1994), symbols whose meaning to the individual is greater than their apparent one. For the rest, it is known that the ways of representing and describing space (maps, verbal accounts, etc.) are original features of particular cultures. Perhaps we need to reflect more on the fact that the culture of the map reader may be quite different from that of the map maker. The readers superimpose their own “graphic consciousness” on the scheme of the map maker, a consciousness linked to the representation they have in their own mind. This mental representation is composed of elements which are both psychological (i.e., of the individual) and cultural (and thus general). The map of one’s own city hardly ever has any informative value; in daily life the inhabitants have no need of it to find their way around, and, in any case, they would prefer to use other means. However, it does have a meaning insofar as it includes “emblems” which speak to the map reader’s sense of belonging. It is as if the map users try to make the graphic representation — created by others — fit their own mental representation. And for us who try to describe the mechanism of

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this struggle, this is all evidence of how perception is an operation that refers not to something, but to a number of factors, from which something emerges. If it is true that we somehow learn how to perceive on the basis of our experience of the objects which are part of our world, then even the perception of our city is founded on certain salient features. Particular intersections, routes, and places that are part of our daily experience — the more frequently we are drawn to them, the greater their relevance — thus become part of our way of verbalizing, not just our knowledge of the spatial articulation of our city, but also the interpretation of the city as a social territory, and as a heterogeneous Varietatenraum [variation space]. The informants’ declarations express a real sociological knowledge.11 This knowledge, however, may not coincide, or may coincide only in part, with that of the linguist, and it is precisely for this reason that not only the performance, but also the perceptions of the speakers must be studied (Preston 1989). For example, the recognition by the speakers of only two varieties (dialect and standard Italian) in the repertoire of an urban community may be a little simplistic. Linguists may distinguish far more complex articulations, and their interest is especially drawn to contact between one variety and another.12 However, the speakers’ intuition of topographical (i.e., zone-by-zone) differentiation in terms of the frequency of use of the two varieties is highly valuable.13 And the identification, in the speech of the “others”, of prosodic features (such as speed and intonation) in fact comes as a surprise to the linguists, who have not yet devised adequate analytical instruments for descriptions of this kind. In any case, these metalinguistic observations of the speakers show how the distinction between dialect and standard Italian is based on the perceived differences in daily communicative exchanges. As for the quality of both dialect and standard Italian, the usual prejudices are expressed, and these have been amply described (Quastoff 1987/8; Goebl 1993). Judgments on language become judgments on people, and the shift in meaning of words which were originally used to refer to linguistic varieties (see, for example, the case of Rusciaru) coincides with the conclusions of “la branche de la psycologie sociale qui s’occupe des attitudes linguistiques” [that branch of social psychology which is concerned with language attitudes] investigating “les jugements sur la personnalité d’un locuteur” [judgments of the speaker’s personality] (Goeman 1989: 539–40). However, when one tries to understand what dialect means to the speakers with techniques — such as translation — which are based on an explicit awareness of bilingualism, it becomes plain that the rules the speaker has assimilated are above all phonetic. For the cittadini, here used in the sense of “city-dwellers”, dialect means standard Italian pronounced according to the rules of the dialect system. These features are present in the metalinguistic perception of the speakers and may be considered as constituting the specific character of the dialect itself. Precisely for this reason they cut across the topographical boundaries within the city. Those lexemes that are truly of dialect origin and which are conserved in the speakers’ collective memory (and possibly in their speech) seem to represent the residual phase of what Benevenuto Terracini called “il fondo lessicale unitario del punto” (the unitary lexical reservoir of a linguistic point). But this too can no longer be circumscribed — in the present state of affairs — by isoglosses

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within the urban space.14 All this induces linguists to reflect that, in their analysis of urban varieties, they cannot afford to ignore the link between facts of the language and discourse about the language, especially on the part of speakers, even “naive” ones. There is probably more to the link between variation in language and variation in linguistic awareness than a general or overall correspondence.

Notes 1. Concerning the dynamic view of the linguistic “point” and the consideration of cities as centers enjoying a certain prestige (and thus potentially able to exercise their influence on the wider territory) in the Italian tradition of dialectology and sociolinguistics, see Grassi 1982. For further references on the state of the debate, unceasing in Italy, indispensible are Ruffino 1992 and Romanello 1989 and 1994. 2. The theme of the “awareness of the speaker” also recurs in Italian linguistics; cf. Grassi 1995. 3. The “administrative district” — in Italian quartiere — here referred to indicates the area of jurisdiction of certain local government bodies or services. It has no political character — i.e., it does not elect its own mayor or council. The administrative districts of Italian cities hardly ever represent clearly defined entities from a town-planning or sociological point of view. The heterogeneous character of the administrative districts has been one of the problems for Italian urban sociolinguistics. For Lecce see Miglietta (1996) and for Italy the bibliography contained therein (p. 89). 4. The city of Lecce is divided into seven adminstrative districts. In the central area are the Centro and Mazzini districts, and these are, respectively, the historical nucleus of the town and the commercial center of today. Around these are arranged the Rudiae, Ferrovia, Leuca, Stadio, and Santa Rosa districts. Note that via Abramo Balmes (Centro B) is part of the old Jewish quarter. 5. The two administrative districts are separated by a broad inlet (Seno di Ponente). To the landward side are the districts of Paradiso, Commenda, Bozzano, and Sant’Elia. The two “B” zones face the sea, practically opposite each other on different sides of the inlet (Centro B to the South, Casale B to the North). They are inhabited by people who mostly make their living from the sea, above all from fishing. This is the description given by informant 1.Bc of Sciabiche (the underlined parts of the following transcription are in dialect, the rest in standard Italian): wab˜iÁkotu diÁpende da.unaÁrete ke si Ákjama Áwab˜ika… le Áwab˜ika Áprima erano Ákwa Ád˜o Ástava la muÁraˆ˜a di Ásanta teÁresa, di lu Átwirculu Ánautiko, Áantsi diÁkwa dove Átwe la fonÁtana Áfino a dove Átwe.ilgaÁb˜jano Átwera.unastraÁdina ÁmoltoÁstret˜a keÁtwera uXÁforno eÁnui diÁtwum˜u ka. 7ra nuÁfurnu, na straÁdina kaÁp˜en a ntwi kaÁt˜wava naÁmakina, aÁl˜oranonÁtweraÁak˜wa, eÁtut˜e leÁkase Áerano senÁtsak˜wa, sentsaÁfo\˜a, siviÁveva kome del˜eÁbestje, oÁ\˜uno tiÁnia Ákwinditwi Áseditwi Áfili, Átut˜i kurÁkatintra nuÁljet˜u, veraÁmenteÁe (see note 6) “Sciabbicotu comes from a kind of fishnet called a Sciabbica… The Sciabiche used to be here by the wall of Santa Teresa, by the nautical club, or rather here by the standpipe, up to where the Gabbiano is… there was a very narrow street, with a baker’s oven we called a furnu, a street so narrow you couldn’t drive a car down it, there was no water in those days, and all the houses had no water and no drains, they used to live like animals, every family had 15 or 16 kids, and they all slept in the same bed, it’s true you know…” 6. Concerning phonetic transcription of dialect and standard Italian in this study, where two vowels occur together, they are pronounced as a diphthong, the first part being stronger and longer, except when they are separated by a full stop, as in /a.e/, when they are pronounced as separate syllables. The /r/ sound is pronounced as an alveolar trill, as in standard Italian and Spanish. However, in dialect, the groups /tr/ and /dr/ are pronounced as affricate sounds very similar to those at the end of English words such as “catch” and “badge”.

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7. Informant 1.Ba says: o aÁvuto a keÁfare kon i peskeÁret˜wi tanti Áan˜i, Áio non li kaÁpivo, viÁniunu li baÁrisi aÁfa laÁspesa… baÁresi, non li kaÁpia e Áio ntwi diÁtwia noÁparli nuÁpik˜a litaÁljano ka no kaÁpesku na paÁrola… eÁp˜ure sjamo puˆ˜esi ÁÁno “I’ve had dealings with the fishing boats for years, I never understood them, the Baresi (people from Bari) come here to do some shopping, Baresi, and I couldn’t understand them, I said ‘Can’t you speak a bit of Italian because I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ And yet we’re all from Puglia aren’t we?” 8. The term, which is also registered — with numerous variations — in the Vocabolario dei Dialetti Salentini (Rohlfs 1956–61), is widely used in the area, and is also used by the inhabitants of the city to refer to those of smaller towns in the same province. 9. This story is part of a folk tradition: The Lecce dog says to the Bari dog (who is holding a bone in his mouth): “Where are you from?” “From Bari”, is the reply, pronounced with an /a/ so open that the bone falls out of his mouth and is immediately snapped up by the Lecce dog. The Bari dog asks the Lecce dog the same question, hoping to play the same trick; however, the Lecce dog answers: “From Lecce”, with a close vowel, tightening his jaws on the bone even further. In the Brindisi version of this joke, a Brindisi dog asks both a Lecce dog and a Bari dog, who both have bones, the same question. The Bari dog replies with the open vowel and loses his bone, as before; but the Lecce dog bites even harder, closing the vowel even further, saying: “From Licce”. By referring to these differing features of dialect pronunciation, the story shows that the inhabitants of Bari are so stupid as to be easily taken in by the inhabitants of both Brindisi and Lecce. Interestingly, one informant tries to explain the rivalry between Brindisi and Lecce with reference to the alleged theft by the inhabitants of Lecce of the Roman column marking the end of the Appian Way and also the competition between their respective football teams in the 1950’s. The themes of football and the theft of statues are traditional fare in the rich history of inter-city rivalries in Italy (see De Simonis 1984/5: 27–28). 10. The expression coincides with “giù Napoli”, recorded by Klein (1995), as a way of referring to the center of Naples. This type of reference is charged with meanings that go well beyond the purely geographical. In Brindisi and Lecce too, as in Naples, the old town “non è semplicemente un luogo fisico ben definito e delimitato: esso è il simbolo della città stessa e simbolizza quindi anche il rapporto dell’individuo con la città nel suo complesso: tale processo simbolico passa attraverso (pre)giudizi sociali e culturali e quindi, in ultima analisi, anche linguistici” [is not simply a physical place well defined and bounded: it is the symbol of the city itself and symbolizes as well the rapport between the city and the individual in its entirity; such a symbolic process includes social and cultural prejudices and, in the final analysis, linguistic ones as well] (Klein 1995: 223). 11. On the relationship between verbalization, knowledge and awareness, see Dittmar and Schlieben-Lange (1982). 12. For analysis in this direction in urban and non-urban areas in South Puglia, see Sobrero (1992). 13. For Brindisi and Lecce, this intuition coincides with the data that emerge from the observation of linguistic behavior; see Romanello (1994). 14. It cannot be ignored that certain dialect lexemes have been reintroduced in recent times, as part of a kind of dialect and ethnic revival.

References De Simonis, P. 1984/5. “Noi e Loro. Note su identità e confini linguistici e culturali in Toscana” [Us and Them. Notes on identity and linguistic and cultural boundaries in Tuscany]. Quaderni dell’ Atlante Lessicale Toscano 2/3:7–36.

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Dittmar, Norbert and Schlieben-Lange, B, 1982. “Stadtsprache. Forschungsrichtungen und perspectiven einer vernachlassigten soziolinguistischen Disziplin” [City-speech: Research methods and perspectives on an emerging sociolinguistic discpline]. In Mehrsprachigkeit in der Stadtregion, Karl-Heinz Bausch (ed.), 9–86. Dusseldorf: Schwann. Goebl, H. 1993. “Die Dialectale Gliedurung Ladiniens aus der sicht der Ladiner. Eine Pilotstudie zum Problem der Geolinguistischen ‘Mental Maps’” [Dialectal persistence in Ladino from the Ladino point of view. A pilot study of the geolinguistic problem of “mental maps”] Ladinia 17: 58–94. Goeman, T. 1989. “Dialectes et jugements subjectifs des locuteurs. Quelques remarques de méthode a propos d’une controverse” [Dialects and the subjective judgments of speakers: Remarks on controversial methods]. In Espaces Romanes. Etudes de dialectologie et de géolinguistique offertes à Gaston Tuaillon, vol. II, 532–544. Grenoble: Universitè Stendhal. (Translated into English in Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Dennis R. Preston (ed.), 135–44. 1999, Amsterdam: Benjamins.) Grassi, C. 1982. “Ville et campagne dans la sociolinguistique italienne” [Town and country in Italian sociolinguistics]. In Die Soziolinguistik in romanischsprachigen Landern, Norbert Dittmar and B., Schlieben-Lange (eds), 143–152. Tubingen: Narr. Grassi, C. 1995. “Teoria del Dialetto” [A theory of dialect]. In Maria Teresa Romanello and I. Tempesta (eds), 9–28. Klein, G. (ed.). 1989. Parlare in città. Studi di sociolinguistica urbana [Speech in the city: Studies in urban sociolinguistics]. Galatina: Congedo. Klein, G. (ed.). 1995. La città nei discorsi e nell’immaginario giovanile. Una ricerca socio-linguistica a Napoli. [The city in the discourses and the images of the young: A sociolinguistic research in Naples]. Galatina: Congedo. Maiden, M. and M. Parry (eds). 1997. The Dialects of Italy. London-New York: Routledge. Miglietta, A. 1996. “Il ‘code switching’ nella zona 167 di Lecce” [‘Code-switching’ in zone 167 of Lecce]. Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia 20:89–121. Preston, Dennis R., 1989. Perceptual Dialectology. Nonlinguists’ View of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht/ Providence: Foris Publications. Quastoff, U. 1987/8. “Linguistic Prejudice/Stereotypes.” In Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society/Ein International Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft, Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, and Klaus Mattheier (eds), 785–799. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. Rohlfs, G. 1949–54. Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten [Historical grammar of Italian speech and its dialects]. Bern: Francke AG. Rohlfs, G. 1956–61. Vocabolario dei Dialetti Salentini (Terra d’Otranto) [Salentino dialect vocabulary (Terra d’Otranto)]. Munchen: Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Romanello, Maria Teresa. 1989. “La città nell’area linguistica salentina (Puglia meridionale)” [The city in the linguistic area of Salento (Eastern Puglia)]. In G. Klein, (ed.), 111–143. Romanello, Maria Teresa. 1994. Gerarchia urbana e comportamento linguistico nell’area salentina [Urban hierarchy and linguistic behavior in Salento]. Galatina: Congedo. Romanello, Maria Teresa. 1996. “Sulla rappresentazione dei confini linguistici” [On the representation of linguistic boundaries]. Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia 20:7–33. Romanello, Maria Teresa and Tempesta I. (eds). 1995. “Dialetti e lingue nazionali” [Dialects and national languages]. Atti del XXVII Congresso internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (Lecce 1993). Roma: Bulzoni. Ruffino, G., (ed.).1992. Atlanti Linguistici italiani e romanzi. Esperienze a confronto [Italian and romance dialect atlases. Experiences and progress]. Palermo: Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani. Sobrero, A. A. (ed.). 1992. Il dialetto nella conversazione. Ricerche di dialettologia pragmatica [Dialect in conversation. Research in the pragmatics of dialect]. Galatina: Congedo.



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Sobrero, A. A. and Romanello, Maria Teresa. 1981. L’italiano come si parla in Salento [The spoken Italian of Salento]. Lecce: Milella. Zumthor, P. 1993. La Mesure du monde [The measure of the world]. Paris: Edition du Seuil.



C 19 A Perceptual Dialect Study of French in Switzerland Caroline L’Eplattenier-Saugy

1.

Introduction

This study was carried out in francophone Switzerland — also called Romandie — where little work on perceptual dialectology and language attitudes has been done. Its purpose is the uncovering of stereotypes about the regional variety spoken by the respondents in their home area compared to the other varieties of Romand in general and the standard variety in particular, as well as the degree of linguistic insecurity that the respondents feel as speakers of a non-standard variety. The methodology used for this research is based on that of Preston (e.g., 1989a), who led important research in the United States, Michigan and Indiana primarily, on people’s attitudes towards American varieties. Our study is related to Pascal Singy’s work as well (1996), for he is one of the first to have led language attitude research of such importance in Romandie, more precisely in the canton of Vaud. Previous sociolinguistic studies have discovered that the francophone world was subject to a distribution along a spatial dimension of the center versus periphery type (e.g., Singy 1996). The prescriptive norm, also called the standard form, can be described as the variety that is spoken by the speakers of the linguistic center, the place where one finds the highest concentration of population, the highest standard of living, and the concentration of political, financial and economic power, as well as the best infrastructure for the spreading of innovations such as broadcasting and newspapers. In the case of French, the linguistic center clearly is Paris. Studies in the francophone world (e.g., Singy 1996: 34–37) have also shown that the speakers of a suburban variety of French are conscious of their different use of French, their ‘accent’, their own vocabulary, their regional way of speaking. If such a linguistic center exists, speakers of a regional variety will have linguistic insecurity relative to the variety spoken by the center. These same studies have shown that speakers of a regional variety, although tending to have linguistic insecurity, also tend to show a great amount of pride in their regiolect. If they tend to evaluate their speech rather severely along criteria that have to do with correctness, they also tend to evaluate it better than the one of the center when it comes to honesty, friendliness, reliability, or hospitality. This seems to reveal that they are seeking a

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legitimacy that only speakers of a linguistically subordinate variety would tend to show (Singy 1996: 37). Singy found in his study that the Vaudois, the residents of the largest francophone canton in Switzerland, where his research was carried out, are subject to two different forces, the first being the centripetal force of standard French, or in other words the sensitivity of the speakers to the notion of prestige. The other force is the pressure of the cultural autonomy of francophone Switzerland. In Switzerland, however, this latter force is weaker than in other peripheral regions because Romandie belongs to a different political country. There seems therefore to be a certain stability in the linguistic insecurity in the canton of Vaud. But Singy also found several indications that the Vaudois could be starting to seek the renewal of a cultural independence, from which one can perhaps predict that their linguistic insecurity will not last long (preface by Labov in Singy 1996).

2.

Methodology

In order to study the attitudes of the French speakers of francophone Switzerland, it was necessary to gather respondents who were representative of the population of Romandie. We therefore chose respondents from the main cities of three different cantons, Geneva, Neuchâtel, and Lausanne, as well as the more rural areas of the canton of Vaud. The reasons for our choices are the following. We chose: – – –

–

Geneva, because it is the largest city in francophone Switzerland, right by the French border and therefore the closest to what we thought might be perceived by our Swiss respondents to be a “Swiss linguistic center”. Neuchâtel, because, although rather small, it is a town where people have the reputation of believing that they speak the “best” French in Switzerland. Lausanne, because it is the second largest city in francophone Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Vaud, the largest francophone canton that has the reputation of having a very “strong and rural” accent, and is also considered to be the typical Romand accent. The canton of Vaud and its more rural areas, because we needed a peripheral area in order to be able to study how its residents behave towards their language compared with residents of a city of the same canton, i.e., Lausanne.

A questionnaire was handed out to ninety respondents and included the following five tasks, basically the same as those used by Preston in his research (e.g., 1989a): Maps – The respondents were given a map of francophone Switzerland including the canton boundaries and some of the main cities. They were then asked to delimit the areas where they thought ‘people had their own way of speaking French’ and to label those areas. People were encouraged to use whatever words or expressions they wished. Correctness – The respondents were given a list of the seven francophone cantons (Vaud, Geneva, Valais, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Jura and Berne) as well as two other francophone regions (Paris and France) and asked to rate each region on a 6-point scale as to how “correct” they thought people’s speech was in these areas.

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Figure 19.1. French-speaking Switzerland.

Pleasantness – The respondents were given the same list of francophone regions and asked to rate each area on a 6-point scale as to how ‘pleasant’ they thought people’s speech was in these areas. Degree of Difference – The respondents were given the same francophone regions once again and asked to rate them on a 4-point scale depending on how similar or different the people of these areas spoke from their own way of speaking. The scale went from ‘people there talk like me’ to ‘people there talk very differently from me’. Open Question – In this question, respondents were asked to write down whatever they felt like saying about French in Switzerland, whether they found the questions difficult to answer, or whatever came to their mind while answering the questionnaire. These tools are based on Preston’s main discovery that linguistically insecure speech communities tend to rate several other varieties higher for correctness but their home

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variety highest for pleasantness. Linguistically secure speech communities however tend to rate their home variety extremely high both for correctness and pleasantness, although they may rate several other varieties as equally pleasant. The former focus on regional solidarity — indicated by the notion of ‘pleasantness’ — with the use of local speech to express their identity; the latter focus on status — indicated by the notion of ‘correctness’ (Preston 1986c: 317). Therefore, based on standard claims within the sociolinguistic literature, results from Preston’s (e.g., 1989b), Hartley’s (1996), and Singy’s (1996) studies, as well as my own experience and intuition as a native of the canton of Vaud, the following hypotheses are tested in this study: Hypothesis 1 – Respondents will tend to associate a particular variety with a particular canton. This hypothesis is based on my intuition as a native of Romandie that accents and dialects in francophone Switzerland tend to be commonly associated with the canton in which they are spoken. Indeed, the cantons tend to be strongly stereotyped in so far as their residents and their behavior, including their speech, are concerned. Hypothesis 2a – Respondents will for the most part recognize if not Paris then at least France as the linguistic reference or center for the French language by rating France and Paris highest in terms of correctness. Hypothesis 2b – Respondents, as speakers of a non-standard variety, will show a certain degree of linguistic insecurity, more precisely linguistic inferiority as compared to Paris and France, revealed by their rating the non-standard varieties of Romand lower than the standard French of Paris and France in terms of correctness but higher in terms of pleasantness. The sociolinguistic tradition, as well as the study conducted by Singy, calls for the following hypotheses to be tested, all related to the social variables that characterise the different respondents, i.e., gender, age, level of education, and place of residence: Hypothesis 3a – Women will show greater linguistic insecurity and inferiority in comparison to the standard variety than men. This hypothesis is based on the general sociolinguistic knowledge that women are more subject to the pressure of the standard variety and the prestige this variety carries than men (Trudgill 1983: 84–102). Being more influenced by the standard norm, women speaking a non-standard variety will therefore show greater linguistic inferiority in relation to standard French, which will result in their greater depreciation of their own variety. Hypothesis 3b – Respondents over 50 will show less linguistic insecurity. This hypothesis is based on Singy’s observations (1996: 41) that older people tend to be less self-conscious about their use of a non-standard variety for two possible reasons: the first is sociohistorical and claims that older respondents might have been less in contact with the standard variety, and therefore less influenced by its pressure as a prestige norm. The second reason might be a certain wisdom that older people would have acquired over time and that would have them attach less importance to the social aspect of the notion of prestige. Hypothesis 3c – Respondents with a higher level of education will show a higher degree of linguistic inferiority. It has been shown in the field of sociolinguistics (Labov 1966)

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that, in general, the middle classes are more influenced by the notion of prestige than the other social classes. Indeed, in order to create or consolidate a social class of their own, they are driven to lose the habits that they share with the lower classes and adopt new ones borrowed from the upper classes. As francophone Switzerland is already linguistically subordinate to France and Paris, it can be claimed that the upper social classes there are, in effect, the linguistic middle class of the speakers of French. Therefore, it is these higher social classes of francophone Switzerland that should be showing the greatest degree of linguistic inferiority (Singy 1996: 41–42). In this study, the notion of social class is expressed by the notion of level of education. Hypothesis 3d – Residents of Lausanne will show a greater linguistic insecurity than residents of the rest of the canton of Vaud. Indeed, just as social status influences the regiolectal use of a language, it is suspected that suburban or peripheral residents are inclined to use more regiolectal characteristics in their speech than urban residents of the same non-standard speaking area. The latter, however, will tend to think that their speech is tainted with these rural regiolectal characteristics and, being more sensitive to the norm of standardness and prestige, because as city residents they feel their speech must be more standard-like, will be more inclined to feel a certain linguistic inferiority. Hypothesis 3e – Residents of Lausanne will show a greater degree of linguistic insecurity than residents of Neuchâtel. This hypothesis is based primarily on my own intuition but also on the belief common in francophone Switzerland, though mainly in Neuchâtel itself, that the variety spoken in Neuchâtel is the ‘best French spoken in Switzerland’, especially compared to the very ‘rural’ variety of the canton of Vaud or the very ‘strong’ accent of Jura. I have the feeling that the pride that residents of Neuchâtel feel towards their way of speaking might counterbalance, to a small degree, their potential linguistic insecurity as non-standard speakers. Hypothesis 3f – Residents of Geneva will show the highest degree of linguistic insecurity of all because of their proximity to France and their everyday contact with French speakers of a more standard variety. This situation could imply a greater self-consciousness about their own use of French and therefore produce a greater linguistic insecurity than for speakers of a non-standard variety in a city where the residents are more cut off from the speakers of the standard variety.

3.

Results

By comparing the mean scores given to all the cantons for each of the three rating tasks, i.e., correctness, pleasantness, and degree of difference, with the regions outlined and the labels given on the hand-drawn maps, as well as the statements found in the open question, it is possible for us to make some generalizations about the respondent group’s perception of the different dialect regions of Romandie. In Hypothesis 1 we forecast that the respondents would, as a general rule, associate a particular variety with a particular canton. Results from the different tasks seem to

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confirm this hypothesis. First of all, the hand-drawn maps show that about one-third of the respondents either simply wrote their labels within the different canton boundaries that were already given, or drew their own dialect boundaries along the boundaries of the cantons. This is especially true for the cantons that are most remote from the respondents’ home area because the further a canton is from one’s home area, the less one is familiar with it and its variety, and the less one is capable of distinguishing the sub-varieties that may exist within it. Moreover, the regions that were most often identified on the maps were those corresponding to a canton. Geneva, for instance, was identified as a distinct dialect region by 78% of the respondents who answered this question. It is followed by Valais with 62% of the respondents, Fribourg with 52%, Jura with 47%, and, finally, Vaud with 40%. In comparison, the subregion that was most often identified was Gros de Vaud, the largest rural area of the canton of Vaud, with 31% of the respondents. The first observation that can be made about these results concerns the high scores for the cantons of Geneva and Valais. This can be explained by the fact that both Geneva and Valais are, it seems, the two most highly stereotyped cantons of Romandie. Geneva is stereotypical because it is small and mainly consists of the largest city of Romandie and all the clichés that go with it, such as internationality, pretentiousness, and snobbishness. Valais is the canton surrounded by the Alps, awakening stereotypes about mountain people but also healthiness, good-humoredness, and liveliness. Valais residents are also considered by many Romands to speak a very typical and pleasant variety of Romand. And if the canton of Vaud does not carry such a high score, although it is also very stereotyped, it is mainly because it is the largest and best known canton and is also the one where most of our respondents are from. It will therefore be most easily divided and not considered as a single dialect region. The cases of Vaud and Neuchâtel are worth looking at more carefully. Vaud was identified as a single region by 56% of the Vaudois, 47% of the Neuchâtelois, and 50% of the Genevois, but only 17% of the Lausannois. This low score can be explained by the fact that the Lausannois, being city residents, are very careful to dissociate the different varieties of the canton of Vaud as they do not want to be associated with the more rural and stereotyped variety of the rest of the canton. Indeed, the Lausannois are considered in general to have a much slighter accent than the residents of the more rural areas of the canton, and they themselves believe they do not speak with a Vaudois accent. If the Vaudois who do not come from Lausanne are the most numerous in identifying Vaud as a single dialect region without dividing it up, it is probably because they do not feel that the differences among the Vaudois are important enough to be considered as separate dialect regions. The Lausannois on the other hand react in exactly the opposite way. The case of Neuchâtel is quite similar. Neuchâtel was singled out as one dialect region by 44% of the Vaudois and 30% of the Lausannois, but only 21% of the Neuchâtelois. Most Neuchâtelois indeed consider Neuchâtel lakeside (identified by 53% of Neuchâtelois) and La Chaux-de-Fonds (37%) to be two different dialect regions. This is not surprising, knowing that all respondents that were grouped together under the label ‘residents of Neuchâtel’ are from the town of Neuchâtel, whose residents consider La Chaux-de-Fonds residents to have a much stronger and stereotyped accent than themselves.

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Also, the residents of Neuchâtel want to preserve their reputation as the ‘best’ French speakers in Switzerland. It is therefore not so surprising that the Neuchâtelois wanted their own variety to be distinguished from the variety spoken in La Chaux-de-Fonds. It must be added, however, that the Neuchâtelois, being obviously closer to their own canton than the respondents from Vaud or Geneva, are simply more likely to distinguish any differences that exist in their home area because they are more familiar with it. The association of varieties with cantons can also be explained by the fact that eleven respondents (i.e., 15%) stated in the open question that they did not know the different varieties well enough to be able to answer the questionnaire thoroughly. We suspect this to be the case for most of the respondents of our research as well as for most residents of Romandie. This might also explain why it was easier for them to associate a variety with a canton, following stereotypes rather than their own knowledge. In addition, the correctness and pleasantness tasks seemed to be easy enough for our respondents to carry out, which shows that it was not difficult for most respondents to associate a variety with a canton. The only observation that goes against proving Hypothesis 1a would be the fact that very few labels written on the hand-drawn maps actually mentioned the names of cantons. Indeed out of the 285 labels, only eighteen referred to the cantons themselves, which corresponds to about 6% of the labels. The rest of the labels contained descriptions of the dialects or expressions. In Hypothesis 2b, we predicted that the Romands in general would show a certain degree of linguistic insecurity and in Hypothesis 2a, that they would consider indeed Paris or at least France as the linguistic reference towards which they will feel a certain linguistic inferiority. The following table shows the results from the three rating tasks from which our conclusions will be drawn. Table 19.1. Mean scores for correctness, pleasantness (six-point scales) and degree of difference (four-point scale) for all respondents. Correctness Regions

Mean scores

Pleasantness Regions

Mean scores

Degree of Difference Regions

Mean scores

France Paris Geneva Neuchâtel Vaud Valais Fribourg Jura Berne

5.00 4.84 4.79 4.69 4.34 4.03 4.00 3.91 3.57

France Vaud Neuchâtel Valais Paris Geneva Fribourg Jura Berne

4.81 4.58 4.46 4.37 4.32 4.05 3.87 3.86 3.45

Vaud Neuchâtel Geneva Fribourg Valais Jura France Berne Paris

3.46 3.15 2.96 2.88 2.79 2.67 2.61 2.47 2.38

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For correctness, the highest ratings were given to France (5.0), then Paris (4.84), followed closely by Geneva (4.79), and Neuchâtel (4.69). These results are extremely interesting because they not only tell us that the Romands consider France in general and Paris in particular to be the area where the most correct French is spoken (thus indicating that they believe Paris and France to be a sort of linguistic reference) but also say that Geneva and perhaps Neuchâtel in a lesser way could be considered as a sub-reference of where correct Swiss-French is spoken, Geneva because it is the largest city in Romandie, close to the French border, and Neuchâtel because of its reputation for speaking the ‘best’ French in Romandie. Singy found this to be the case in his research too (Singy 1996: 235). In the remaining correctness ratings, the four regions cited above are followed, after a small gap, by Vaud (4.34) and after another small gap by the other Swiss cantons, namely Valais (4.03), Fribourg (4.00), Jura (3.91), and, finally, Berne (3.57). Although the canton of Vaud has in general the reputation of having the most typical Romand and rural accent, it received a higher rating for correctness than the other cantons very probably because of its main city, Lausanne, the second largest city in Romandie, where people are believed to speak a more or less ‘correct’ French. The other cantons are smaller, less known, and have no large city where any political or economic power can compete with centers such as Geneva or Lausanne. They have therefore less influence and authority in Romandie than the larger cantons. Having less influence in the social, economic and political life of Romandie, these cantons are not considered to speak as correct a variety of French as the larger and more important cantons. It should be noted, however, the scores are never very low. Indeed a 3.91 for Jura is quite a lot higher than the median score, and this shows that, in general, the Romands believe that the varieties of French spoken in Switzerland are far from bad. I believe that these high scores display an increased awareness that all varieties should be considered equal. It indicates a desire to believe that there is not really a bad or a good way of speaking a language. This is also shown in the open question, where 24% of the respondents asserted either that Romand was quite ‘good’ or that there was no good or bad way of speaking a language. It is also shown in the fact that out of 90 respondents, fifteen (i.e., 17%) gave the same score, often a 5 or a 6, to all regions or even refused to answer, writing in the margin that they did not agree to completing this task. However, the fact that over 75% of the respondents did not seem to have any problem with giving correctness ratings also shows that in most people’s minds there is still a good and a bad way of speaking a language. Finally, the fact that the lowest score was given to Berne (3.57) can be easily explained. Berne is indeed a large and mostly German speaking canton. I believe that many Romands do not even know that it has a French-speaking area. It is therefore not surprising that they consider residents of the canton of Berne not to be able to speak a correct sort of French. But it may be more complicated than that, for the canton of Berne is also the seat of the national government. Berne is associated with the Swiss-German majority that governs the country, in which the Swiss-French are a minority. It is, in the mind of most Romands, associated with Swiss-German domination, and it is therefore not surprising that the Romands do not want Berne to be part of Romandie. Giving it a low

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score is a way of excluding it from Romand identity. For pleasantness, the highest score is still given to France (4.81) and only slightly below are Vaud (4.58), Neuchâtel (4.46), and Valais (4.37). Only then comes Paris (4.32). The scores are very close, and it is therefore difficult to say whether the answers are significantly different. However, these results show that Neuchâtel and Vaud are considered among the most pleasant varieties, not forgetting that most respondents were Vaudois and Neuchâtelois. Here is the sign of a certain linguistic insecurity among the respondents, who have rated France and Paris as well as Geneva slightly higher in terms of correctness, but their own varieties higher than Paris and Geneva in terms of pleasantness. The high pleasantness rating given to France might appear to contradict Hypothesis 2b, but I do not think so. In the minds of the respondents, France has a very complex identity. It is on the one hand associated with a linguistic center, as seen above, but it is also associated with picturesque regions and accents such as one can find in Provence, which many Romands describe as charming, fresh, and colorful. In the correctness task, French was probably associated with the standardness of the variety spoken on French television or found in the newspapers. In the pleasantness task, the variety spoken in France was probably associated with more specific and picturesque accents such as those described above. It may very well be, however, that the standard and neutral French associated with France in general is simply considered to be correct and pleasant enough precisely because it is neutral and standard. If Valais (4.37) was rated quite high in relation to pleasantness, it is most certainly because it is considered to be quite charming, as already mentioned. Coming after Paris for pleasantness are Geneva (4.05), Fribourg (3.84), Jura (3.86), and Berne (3.45). The lower score given to Geneva is due to the fact that its variety is often considered to be vulgar and pretentious, as many labels given on the maps confirmed. Fribourg and Jura got lower scores probably because they are rural cantons, not very well known, but badly stereotyped. The low scores given to Fribourg and Jura both for correctness and pleasantness are probably also due to the fact that these cantons are mainly rural and thus have a rurally stereotyped accent. Indeed, the analysis of the labels has already shown the very negative stereotypes that the respondents have about Fribourg and, in a lesser way, Jura. Giving a bad rating to Fribourg and Jura may be a way for the respondents to put the blame on these more rural cantons for the poor reputation that the accent of Romandie has outside Switzerland, especially in France. The still lower score of Berne is probably for the same reason as mentioned above, i.e., its non-nativeness. But here again, no really low scores were given, meaning that most respondents believe that all varieties can be considered pleasant enough. However, compared to the correctness task, far fewer respondents refused to answer this question, which shows that it was easier and more acceptable for them to rate different varieties according to pleasantness than according to correctness. The analysis of the degree of difference task tells us on a first level which dialects our respondents feel closest to, which most resemble their own variety, and which they want to sound most like; on a second level it tells us which varieties they do not want to be associated with and which they want to keep most distinctly different. It is not surprising then that the highest scores were given to Vaud (3.46) and Neuchâtel (3.15), as

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our respondents come for the most part from these two cantons. The high scores first show that the respondents are aware that they speak the variety of the canton in which they live and grew up. It also shows that they do not mind admitting it. The lowest scores go to France (2.61), Berne (2.47), and finally Paris (2.38), which shows that our respondents feel that they do not speak the same variety as that in the regions where they think the standard variety is spoken, i.e., France and Paris. This confirms again the dislike the Romands have for Paris as well as Berne, with which they do not want to be associated. It also shows once again the complexity of the relationship that the Romands have with the varieties of Paris and France. On the one hand, they consider them to be the linguistic references of where correct French is spoken; on the other hand they are aware that they do not speak them, and they do not seem to want to be associated with them. The low scores for Paris and France may be an indication that the Romands want to speak a variety of French that is and remains distinctly their own. This is also shown in the open question where 20% of the respondents mentioned that it was important to preserve the differences of accents and dialects, that they were a sign of belonging to a cultural identity. The last observation that can be made about the degree of difference ratings is, however, that the mean scores are, like those for correctness and pleasantness, very close together and all above (or very near) the scale’s mid-point, the highest score being 3.46 and the lowest 2.38. This reveals that our respondents feel the differences between the varieties not to be very significant. They seem to believe that, in general, the varieties of French spoken in France and the ones spoken in Switzerland are quite close. This is confirmed by the fact that, in the open question, almost 20% mentioned that the French spoken in France and in Switzerland were not very different. There appear to be two different views that at first seem contradictory. However, this contradiction can be explained if one considers that some respondents mentioned that, on a grammatical level, the varieties were quite close and that the differences were merely due to the regional accents and vocabulary. Indeed, it is not difficult for speakers of a non-standard variety to admit that their accent and vocabulary are different and typically regional; they are even quite proud of it. However, it is more difficult to admit that their grammar is non-standard, for it is believed that it is mostly the ‘correctness’ of the grammar that testifies to the standardness of a variety. Hence speakers of non-standard varieties want to believe that their variety is not so different from the standard. At the same time, there remains a certain need to keep their own identity, thanks to their specific vocabulary and accent. Hypothesis 3a predicted that women would be more sensitive to the influence of the prestige of the standard variety than men and would therefore show a greater linguistic insecurity. In the results, this would show in a greater depreciation of the non-standard varieties of Romand and in a certain enhancing of the ratings given to the varieties of France and Paris. In the correctness data, women always gave higher ratings, even though the difference is statistically significant1 only for Vaud and Valais. We expected women to be harsher on the non-standard varieties than men, rating them lower in terms of correctness as well as pleasantness. This is, however, not the case, nor does there seem to be any sign of a greater linguistic insecurity here. Moreover, I do not find any explanation for the statistically higher ratings of Vaud and Valais by women.

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In the pleasantness data, again women gave higher ratings, in a statistically significant way for Geneva only, but also in a noticeable way for Paris, Vaud, and France. If there was to be any evidence of a greater depreciation of the local varieties in these results, there would have to have been a significant difference between the ratings of the standard varieties of France and Paris and the ratings of the non-standard varieties of the Romand cantons such as Vaud. Again this does not seem to be the case, for, although France and Paris were rated higher by women than by men, Vaud was rated much higher too. The only observation that can be made is that women rated Paris third after France and Vaud, while men put it in only fifth position after Neuchâtel and Valais. This may be an indication that women appreciate the variety spoken in Paris more than men do, thus showing a greater liking of the standard variety of the French metropolis and a greater attraction to its prestige, while men find it less pleasant and tend to show less desire to consider Paris as a linguistic reference. The ratings of pleasantness given to Geneva have to be analyzed more closely, for they are statistically significant. The higher rating given to Geneva by women shows again, as for Paris, a greater liking of a variety that is considered to be a local linguistic reference for Romandie. They rated it more pleasant than the men did, probably because they are more receptive to its prestige. However, here again, one cannot talk about a greater linguistic insecurity as such, for women do not show any greater depreciation of the non-standard varieties of the home area, i.e., Vaud and Neuchâtel. The data found in the degree of difference task confirm this suspicion. Indeed, women rated France and Paris significantly higher than men. These results show that women consider their way of speaking to be closer to the prestigious varieties of Paris and France than men do, and therefore show again a greater liking for and a higher attraction to the perceived standard varieties. These ratings also show their desire to be seen as speakers of a more standard form of French. Hypothesis 3b predicted that age would have a certain influence on the results in the sense that respondents over 50 would tend to show less linguistic insecurity than the younger respondents. The analysis of the correctness and the pleasantness data in relation to age reveals very interesting results. First of all, there is a statistically significant difference for the correctness ratings given to France and Paris according to age, with respondents over 50 giving noticeably higher ratings. This shows that older respondents consider the varieties of France and Paris to be even more correct than the younger respondents do. The older respondents therefore seem to accept them more readily as standard varieties and as linguistic references. Contrary to Hypothesis 3b, this could be an indication of a certain linguistic inferiority in respondents over 50. The analysis of the pleasantness data shows, as the correctness data did, statistically significant differences for the scores given to France and Paris. Here again, respondents over 50 rated these two areas considerably higher, giving Paris the second highest score after France, while the respondents under 50 rated Paris only fifth after Vaud, Neuchâtel and Valais. Contrary to what the correctness data might have predicted, this is clearly an indication of a less important if not nonexistent sense of linguistic insecurity. Indeed, if there were to be a feeling of linguistic insecurity expressed, the respondents over 50 would have rated the

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familiar non-standard varieties of their home areas higher for pleasantness than the standard varieties, but this was clearly not the case. Their rating the varieties of France and Paris as much more pleasant than the local varieties reveals a sort of admiration of the standard varieties for their affective characteristics as well as their prestige. Hypothesis 3c predicted that respondents with a higher degree of education would show greater linguistic insecurity than the other respondents. However, no significant difference was found for the correctness data. For the pleasantness data, Vaud was rated significantly lower by the respondents with a college degree than those without one, the former therefore being more severe when judging the pleasantness of the Vaudois variety. Considering both that Vaudois is a strongly rurally stereotyped variety of Romand and that more than half of our respondents come from the canton of Vaud, one could say that it is the non-standard variety which they are closest to that they depreciate most. However, most respondents with a college degree are city residents, and it is quite possible that what they see in Vaudois is not their own dialect but the typically stereotyped rural variety of Romandie. This is also shown in the degree of difference task where respondents with a college degree did not consider themselves to speak Vaudois as much as the respondents without a college degree. Furthermore, the ordering of the varieties according to pleasantness shows that respondents without a college degree put the varieties spoken in their home areas, namely Vaud and Neuchâtel, right after France, with Paris in fourth position. Respondents with a college degree gave a completely different ordering, again considering France as most pleasant, but following it directly by Valais, Neuchâtel, and Paris, then Jura and only then Vaud in sixth position. It is difficult to interpret these results clearly. Respondents with a college degree do not really seem to show a greater linguistic insecurity; they just seem to believe that they do not speak a non-standard variety. Indeed, the degree of difference task shows that the respondents with a college degree believe that they speak mostly Neuchâtelois, then Genevois, and then standard French on the same level as Vaudois. It has already been shown that both Neuchâtelois and Genevois are considered to be something like Swiss standards. It is therefore not surprising that college degree holders do not need to increase the standing of the non-standard dialects, as they believe they speak a more standard variety themselves. There were three different hypotheses to verify when looking at the influence of residence. Hypothesis 3d predicted that residents of Lausanne would show a greater linguistic insecurity than the residents of the rest of the canton of Vaud. Hypothesis 3e suggested that residents of Neuchâtel would show a lower degree of linguistic insecurity than residents of Lausanne, and 3f predicted that residents of Geneva would show the highest degree of linguistic insecurity. However, the results show no statistically significant differences according to residence except for the degree of difference task, and that for obvious reasons — each group of respondents felt that they speak a variety most similar to the variety spoken in their home area. Some observations can nevertheless be drawn from the results. Comparing the results given by the residents of Lausanne with the results given by the residents of the rest of the canton of Vaud, one finds that the latter give a greater correctness score to France and Paris than the Lausannois. For the pleasantness task, residents of Lausanne rated France lower than Vaud, while residents of Vaud

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rated France higher. The conclusions that can be drawn from these observations are that the Lausannois, being less keen on giving a good rating for correctness to France and Paris than the Vaudois, show a greater dislike of these two varieties. That the Lausannois rated Vaud higher than France in terms of pleasantness, while the Vaudois did the opposite, perhaps shows a slightly higher linguistic insecurity among the Lausannois. The ratings for degree of difference show that the Lausannois do not feel that they speak Vaudois but a variety of French closer to the Swiss standard varieties of Geneva and Neuchâtel and also the standard variety associated with France. On the contrary, the residents of the rest of the canton of Vaud feel that they speak the local variety of Vaudois more than anything else. This is not surprising, for city residents are known to be more influenced by the pressure of prestige, especially if the city is located in a nonstandard speaking area. Comparing the results given by the residents of Lausanne and Neuchâtel, one finds no noticeable differences as far as correctness is concerned, as both rated France, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and Paris as the four most correct varieties, not showing great differences in their ratings. For the pleasantness data, however, the Lausannois rated, as already mentioned, Vaud highest followed by France and rated Paris only in sixth position. The Neuchâtelois on the contrary rated France highest followed closely by Paris, rating their home variety only third. This could be an indication that the Neuchâtelois have a slightly lower degree of linguistic insecurity because they do not think it important to rate their home variety highest according to pleasantness, which typically insecure speech communities would do. The analysis of the labels confirms this, for it shows that the Neuchâtelois have a tendency to put the emphasis on the correctness of their variety, an indication of a high linguistic security. Finally, the differences of mean scores given by residents of Geneva and Lausanne show that the Genevois feel that they speak a variety closer to France and Paris than the rest of Romandie. Indeed, if one looks at the degree of difference task, it can be seen that the Genevois rated their own variety highest followed by France and Paris. However, although they find their home variety as correct as the one spoken in France, followed by Paris, they rate the variety spoken in Paris in eighth position according to pleasantness while rating the varieties of France, Neuchâtel, and Geneva highest. These results do not seem to show the greater linguistic insecurity which was predicted in Hypothesis 3f. On the contrary, the high rating of their home variety both for correctness and pleasantness on almost the same level as the more standard varieties of France and Paris, as well as the ratings of France and Paris next to Geneva for degree of difference, shows some degree of self-confidence and therefore rather more linguistic security. Only the low rating of Paris for pleasantness, revealing a dislike of this variety, could indicate a slight degree of linguistic insecurity towards the variety spoken in the French metropolis. 4.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was, on the one hand, to determine the different varieties of French that the Romands perceive to exist in the French part of Switzerland and, on the

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other, to uncover the attitudes that the Romands have towards these varieties as well as the varieties spoken in France and Paris. More precisely, I wanted to discover whether the Romands, as speakers of a non-standard variety of French, were subject to a certain linguistic insecurity. The Romands tend to associate a particular variety with a canton. However, the respondents tend to subdivide their home area more precisely, being more familiar with the varieties closer to where they live. Both France and Paris are considered to be sorts of linguistic centers of standard spoken French, for both France and Paris are rated highest in terms of correctness. However, Geneva and Neuchâtel are rated quite high as well, which indicates that they could be considered by the respondents as Swiss linguistic centers, and their varieties as ‘Swiss-standards’. The highest rating for pleasantness going to France seems to indicate a certain absence of linguistic insecurity. However, the high ratings for pleasantness of Vaud and Neuchâtel in second and third position and the rating of Paris and Geneva in only fifth and sixth position also reveal a certain preference for the local varieties. The respondents thus show the desire to enhance the value of their home varieties along the pleasantness dimension compared to the more standard varieties of Paris and Geneva, which indicates a certain linguistic insecurity. This study also shows that the respondents are subject to two opposite beliefs. The first is that there indeed exists one ‘correct’ way of speaking French, the perceived standard variety, which is compared to the non-standard dialects whose correctness is measured by their degree of deviation from the standard. The second belief is that there is no good or bad way of speaking French. Both beliefs coexist in the respondents’ minds and testify to both the consciousness that their way of speaking is different and nonstandard and to the desire to keep their variety for the sake of the preservation of their separate cultural identity. Looking at the influence of the social variables, it was found that women, being more subject to the pressure of the prestige of the standard varieties, showed a greater liking for the standard variety of Paris and the local standard variety of Geneva. However, this is too little to suggest that they show greater linguistic inferiority. As for the influence of age, the respondents over 50 showed a little less linguistic inferiority, for older respondents are usually less influenced by the notion of prestige. The level of education seemed to have some influence on the respondents’ answers in the sense that college degree holders believe that they speak a more standard variety than the other respondents do. Here again, however, there was no striking difference in linguistic insecurity. Finally, when looking at the influence of residence, I found that the Lausannois, being city residents in a nonstandard speaking area and thus more subject to the influence of prestige, had greater linguistic insecurity than the rest of the Vaudois. The Neuchâtelois and the Genevois did not show any great linguistic insecurity, because they both seem to believe that their way of speaking is fairly correct. The results drawn from this study thus correspond to the findings of previous research carried out in the field of language attitudes in general and perceptual dialectology in particular, especially in Romandie. This study also invites further investigation in Romandie to discover more about the reasons for the linguistic perceptions found there.



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Acknowledgments Many thanks go to both Professors Peter J. Trudgill and Dennis R. Preston for their interest, help and guidance during this research. Their encouragement and contribution were of great value.

Notes 1. Independent sample t-tests were run to find the influence of gender, age and education on the three rating tasks. A one-way Anova was run for the influence of place of residence. The level of significance was set at .05.

References Hartley, Laura C. 1996. Oregonian Perceptions of American Regional Speech. Unpublished MA Thesis. Department of Linguistics and Languages, Michigan State University. Labov, William. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics. Preston, Dennis R. 1986. “Where the worst English is spoken.” In Focus on the USA, Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), 297–360. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Preston, Dennis R. 1989a. Perceptual dialectology: Nonlinguists’ views of areal linguistics. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Preston, Dennis R. 1989b. “Standard English spoken here: The geographical loci of linguistic norms.” In Status and function of languages and language varieties, Ulrich Ammon (ed.), 324–54. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Singy, Pascal. 1996. L’Image du français en Suisse romande: une enquête sociolinguistique en Pays de Vaud [The perception of French in the Swiss Romande: A sociolinguistic enquiry in the Vaud]. Paris: L’Harmattan. Trudgill, Peter J. 1983. Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society. London: Penguin.



C 20 Influence of Vowel Devoicing on Dialect Judgments by Japanese Speakers Midori Yonezawa

1.

Introduction

This paper investigates the degree to which a linguistic feature (vowel devoicing) plays a role in native speaker dialect identification. Vowel devoicing is a common topic in Japanese phonology. In general the high vowels /i/ and /u/ are devoiced between voiceless consonants and between a voiceless consonant and a pause (Han 1962, Imai 1997, Jun and Beckman 1993, Kondo 1994, 1997, 1999; Lovins 1976, Maeda 1977, Peng 1993, Shibatani 1990, Sugito 1962, 1969, 1988; Tahara et al. 1998, Tsuchida 1997, Tsujimura 1996, Vance 1987, Yoshioka 1981). Such studies report on its regional distribution and physiological makeup, what factors interact with it, how it is distributed environmentally, and whether the vowel remains in some form or is completely deleted. It is generally believed that vowel devoicing is frequent in Tokyo but does not occur in the Kinki dialect (Peng 1993), which is spoken in the Kyoto-Osaka area. It does occur, however, in dialects there and in other regions outside Tokyo. Although there are some studies of vowel devoicing in non-Tokyo dialects (Sugito 1962, 1969, 1988), and a database of the Kinki dialect is available (Tahara et al. 1998), investigation has not yet been done as fully as on the Tokyo dialect. Nevertheless, Sugito (1988) shows that, for selected items in a word list, Tokyo respondents devoiced at a 55.6% rate while Osaka respondents devoiced at only 32.3%, but only one of the ten sample words she used was in an “optimal” environment for devoicing. In high-probability environments (two words only — tsukamaeta and ochiteru) in the Tahara et al. 1998 data, for example, I found the rate of devoicing for Kinki respondents to be 82.5%. All the studies mentioned above focus on vowel devoicing in production, but perception of it is another important and interesting issue. Interestingly, although global presentations of dialect for evaluation have a long history in the social psychology of language (e.g., Ryan and Giles 1982), very few of these studies involve dialect identification (but see Tucker and Lambert 1969 and Milroy and Mc Clenaghan 1977). Even fewer studies investigate the degree to which individual linguistic elements play a role in either

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evaluation or identification (but see Graff et al. 1977, Kerswill 1985, Warner, 1997, and the papers in Milroy and Preston 1999). In this study, I will seek to answer the following question: What role does the presence and type of vowel devoicing (and “undevoicing”1) play in the identification of a voice sample as “Tokyo” or “non-Tokyo”? How people perceive and judge vowel devoicing may be particularly worth investigating because it is not as obvious and conscious a feature as differences in pitch accent patterns, which have been shown to play a crucial role in Tokyo-Kinki dialect identification (Han 1962).

2.

Previous studies

2.1 Some differences between the Tokyo and Kinki dialects There are many dialects in Japan, and the hyoozyun-go (“the standard language”) is based on a dialect spoken in Tokyo (Sanada 1991). One of the other major dialects is the Kinki dialect (Kansai speech), which is spoken in the Kyoto-Osaka area (Hirayama, et al. 1982). The Tokyo and Kinki dialect are different at various linguistic levels. Examples of vocabulary and accent pattern differences are shown in (1) below. ‘H’ indicates high pitch and ‘L’ indicates low pitch. (1a) (1b)

‘chicken meat’ ‘scary; scared’

Tokyo: toriniku Kinki: kashiwa Tokyo: kowai (LHL) Kinki: kowai (HLL)

For this study, I eliminated all such features that were different in Tokyo and Kinki so that I could focus on the effects on the respondents’ judgments based on devoicing or undevoicing only. 2.2 Vowel devoicing in the Tokyo dialect Imai (1997) found that the preceding segment has a significant effect on vowel devoicing in her data. She determined the best promoter of devoicing in terms of articulation of the preceding segment for each of the five vowels: fricative for /i/ and stop for /u/, /o/, /e/, and /a/. She further states that “the vowel /i/ with a preceding fricative most strongly promotes devoicing”. She also points out that a shared feature between the preceding consonant and the vowel promotes devoicing — the feature palatal for /i/ and the feature labial for /u/.2 Although the studies listed in the first paragraph establish a number of other conditions for variability in vowel devoicing, in this study, I used the most general description of the devoicing environment: unaccented high vowels between voiceless consonants, their phonetic environment, position in the word, and pitch accent pattern. I excluded non-high vowels, accented vowels, and unaccented vowels in consecutive devoicing environments (e.g., kutsushita). Thus I could examine responses to devoicing variation without the influence of other factors such as accentuation, intonation, vowel height, and syllable structure.

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369

2.3 Vowel devoicing in the Kinki dialect Several studies (e.g., Sugito 1988) reviewed above show how frequently devoicing occurs in the pronunciation by Osaka people, and the results clearly deny the general belief that Osaka people undevoice vowels. Such studies make it obvious, however, that devoicing in the Kinki dialect is not fully investigated yet. In Tahara et al. (1998), the data is not sufficient in terms of variety of phonological environments. In Sugito (1988), the data lack gender variety (no female subjects) and a variety of phonological environments. In particular, the passage she used contains ten devoiceable vowels, but there is only one vowel that is in the general devoicing environment. Of the other nine devoiceable vowels, five are before a pause, and four are in two words containing two consecutive devoiceable vowels. In Sugito (1969), the selection of words may not be appropriate for comparison between the Tokyo and Kinki dialects. For example, if one compares /kusa/ in Tokyo and /kúsa/ in Osaka (both are ‘grass’), a lower rate of devoicing in Osaka may simply show a tendency to undevoice in accented syllables, just as in the Tokyo dialect, but since the two dialects have different pitch accent patterns, a strict comparison cannot be made on the basis of such items. In this study, therefore, I collected data from both male and female speakers, and I selected the words I used in the experiment by means of the following criteria, so that I could compare the words in the same phonological environment: (i) pronounced in the same pitch accent in Tokyo and Kinki, (ii) containing only one vowel in a general devoicing environment, and (iii) containing a devoiceable vowel that does not intereact with other factors. That is, I excluded words containing a devoiceable vowel in such positions as accented moras, consecutive devoiceable moras, and before pauses. I did, however, investigate both morpheme and non-morpheme boundary environments. 2.4 Perception of dialects and attitudes toward them Labov (1972) discusses the benefits of sociolinguistic investigation and states that “The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms; these norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behavior, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant in respect to particular levels of usage” (pp. 120–121) and “Once the social significance of a given linguistic variant has been determined, …, this variable may then serve as an index to measure other forms of social behavior” (p. 120). There are several studies of dialect perception in this framework (e.g., Kerswill 1985, Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh 1999, Niedzielski 1999, and Strand 1999). Although people can easily recognize differences in vocabulary and accent patterns, and to some extent differences in structures, it does not seem to be the case that many pronunciation features, vowel devoicing among them, are consciously activated or perceived in natural conversations, although it does surface in such cases as training for announcers. Han (1962) states that “the native speakers of Japanese are not usually aware of the fact that some of the Japanese vowels are not heard by foreigners.” This is quite

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reasonable because devoicing and undevoicing are differences within phonemes and are quite unconscious features. That is why the respondents in Kerswill (1985) and Strand (1999) did not describe what they heard exactly as they heard it, and those in Niedzielski (1999) did not recognize their own shifted performances. It seems quite reasonable then to ask if vowel devoicing is one of the shared norms among speakers of the Tokyo dialect and to investigate the degree to which it is salient in dialect identification. Dialect perception experiments using vowel devoicing have, to my knowledge, not been conducted. Some speakers of Japanese have conscious knowledge that devoicing occurs in the Tokyo dialect, particularly at the end of the sentence. However, they may well not know that it occurs in the Kinki dialect as well or that undevoicing occurs occasionally in the Tokyo dialect, and this gap may create a stereotype about dialects. The Kinki dialect and the Tokyo dialect are often contrasted in frequency of vowel devoicing, but speakers of other dialects are not contrasted on this basis as often. According to Sugito (1988), in fact, Tokyo is not the place where people devoice vowels most (Nagoya is), and Osaka is not the place where people devoice them least (Kochi is).

3.

Methods

To find out how devoicing and undevoicing would affect a Tokyo respondent’s identification of ‘foreignness’, I presented the subjects with a word list containing a variety of devoicing tokens (see Appendix I) pronounced by fourteen people (see Appendix II) and asked them to judge for each word whether or not the speaker was from Tokyo. 3.1 Preparing a test tape The word list was prepared so that vowel devoicing would be the only factor which sounded non-Tokyo to the subjects. I selected words that were used commonly in both Kinki and Tokyo, were pronounced with the same pitch accent, and had one devoiceable vowel. I eliminated other factors which would be used as clues, such as non-word-initial /g/, which is nasalized in some regions, and the long vowel of /e/, which is pronounced as [ei] rather than [e˜] in certain regions.3 This is important because very often those factors are conspicuous and allow people to tell where the speaker is from even by hearing only one word. Loanwords were excluded in this research to reduce other possible factors. The pitch accent patterns selected for this study are HLL and LHL at the beginning of the word. For example, atafuta ‘hurriedly’ and nadeshiko ‘a pink (flower)’ are pronounced HLLL and LHLL, respectively, both in Tokyo and Kinki. This made it possible to examine if the position of devoicing/undevoicing in these two shared accent patterns caused any difference in the respondents’ judgments about where the speakers were from. Words that begin with LHH were not included because words with LHH in the Tokyo dialect are pronounced with HLL, LHL, or HHH in Kinki. Examples are given in (5) below.

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

(5a) (5b) (5c)

(a place name) ‘rice planting’ ‘replacement’

Tokyo: kyoobashi (LHHH) Tokyo: taue (LHH) Tokyo: kawari (LHH)

371

Kinki: kyoobashi (HLLL) Kinki: taue (LHL) Kinki: kawari (HHH)

In such cases, the subjects may judge whether the speaker is or is not from Tokyo on the basis of differences in the pitch accent. These words were used as distracters, without devoiceable vowels, to compare their effects on the judgments with words that have devoicing variation. Devoiceable vowels in a high pitch position, as in the second mora of words pronounced with LHHL, were not included either, considering variation in the devoicing of accented vowels and contradictory descriptions and data of devoicing in high-pitched moras in previous studies. There are 110 possible environments of the high vowels between voiceless consonants. For /i/, there are five possible preceding consonants [k, w, tw, ç, p] and ten possible following ones [k, s, w, t, tw, ts, h, ç, φ, p]. For /u/, there are six possible preceding consonants [k, s, w, ts, φ, p] and the same ten possible following ones. [tw] preceding /u/ was not included here although it is considered to be a voiceless phoneme, because there seems to be no word which contains [twu] followed by another voiceless consonant or a pause except for a very few loanwords (Kondo 1999). Ideally, each environment of vowel devoicing should have had a sample word, but not all environments could be filled by actual words in order to examine which consonant and which position (preceding or following devoiceable vowels) promotes or demotes judgment. Among the total 110 possible environments, words were found for fifty-eight. The verb suru, ‘to do’, a particle such as de ‘at, by’, and mo ‘also’, or a suffix such as -san ‘Mr./Ms.’ was added to the word in some cases, to avoid word-final devoicing or to create a devoicing environment. For example, I could not find a word that has /witw/ in the second mora and the third mora’s onset, so I chose Toshi, which is a two-mora truncation of a man’s name, and added -chan, a suffix used to address a child. Adding this suffix creates the environment /witw/ and avoids a devoiceable word-final /i/. It is not ideal to combine morphemes or words, but I sometimes did simply because it was difficult to find sample words containing devoiceable vowels within a morpheme in different phonological environments. However, the effects of a boundary on the production and perception of devoicing are separate issues, and, by discriminating the boundaries, it is possible to investigate their effects on perception and judgment. The list of words and phrases containing /i/ in the possible environments of devoicing are shown in Table 20.1, and the ones containing /u/ are shown in Table 20.2. The position of a devoiceable vowel relative to the morpheme boundary could affect judgments about the speaker and may affect devoicing in production, but in this research the focus is on the effects of the boundary on the perception of devoicing. A devoiceable vowel in this research is either at a word boundary, at a morpheme boundary, or within a morpheme, and the effects will be compared among these three. Examples are given in (6) below.

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Table 20.1. Words containing environment of potentially devoiced /i/ Preceding consonant k

w

k

tanuki-kana “I wonder if it’s a racoon”

s

neoki-suru “stay overnight”

w

rikishi-wa soshi-shiyoo “as for a sumo wres- “let’s stop it” tler”

t

tenki-to kion hatashite “weather and tempera- “on earth” ture”

tw

hekichide “at a remote place”

Toshi-chan “little Toshi”

ts

sekitsui “spine”

jimushitsu-ni “at the office”

h

osekihan “red bean rice”

tw

ç

p

Hiroshi-kun inchikina “Hiroshi”, nadeshiko “fake” “a pink” (name of a flower)

torihiki-mo “also a deal”

henpi-kana “I wonder if it’s away from town”

Konishi-san “Ms/Mr. Konishi”

kaihi-suru “avoid”

Karupisu-wa “as for Karupisu”

mahi shi “paralyzed and”

gatapishi naru “squeak”

hoochisuru “leave it” ninchisuru “recognize”

Michi-tono sooguu toohi-to moohatsu-ni “Close Encounter of “for head skin and the Third Kind” hair”

muhitsu-de “no pen”

ç

michihi-de “by high and low tides”

φ

kochi fuite “the east wind blows and”

p

tekipaki-yaru “do efficiently”

(6a) (6b) (6c)

sanpitsu wa “three famous calligraphers”

pachipachi “flickering”

At a word boundary katsu#tsumetai At a morpheme boundary Toshi-chan michi-hi-de Within a morpheme atafuta

‘also cold’ ‘Toshi-(a suffix)’ ‘by high and low tides’ ‘hurriedly’

Another aspect of the position of a devoiceable vowel in this research is the fact that it occurs in either the second or third mora from the beginning. In either case, I chose the words with unaccented devoiceable vowels only. In my data, a devoiceable vowel is in the second mora of a word with the initial HLL pattern or in the third mora of a word with the initial HLL or LHL. For example, Toshi-chan ‘Toshi-(suffix to address a child or intimate)’ has a devoiceable vowel in the second mora in HLLL, and Hiroshi-kun

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

373

Table 20.2. Words containing environment of potentially devoiced /u/ Preceding consonant k

s

w

ts

φ

p

k

kazoku-kana nomisuke “I wonder if it’s a “drinker” family”

senshu-ka “player or”

asatsuki-o “green onion”

kyoofu-ka “fear or”

tanpuku-de “by single and plural”

s

nanakusa “7 wild flowers”

saishu-suru “collect”

kubetsu-suru “differentiate”

jifu-suru “self-conceit”

tenpu-suru “attach”

w

akushu-de “by shaking hands”

t

Kinki-to Kantoo risu-to kuma “Kinki and “squarrel and Kanto” bear”

tw

kirikuchi-ni “cut side”

ts

herikutsu-mo “quibble also”

h

dokuha “finish reading”

ç

kokuhi-de “by national fund”

φ

bakufu-wa “worrior government” shakufu-wa “liquer server”

p

pakupaku “munching”

Yasushi-dono “Mr. Yasushi”

Atsushi-dono “Mr. Atsushi” genshu-towa “sovereign means”

kajitsu-to kajuu “fruit and fruit juice”

shufu-to seekatsu ninpu-to akachan “housewife & “matanity woman life” and a baby” atafuta “hurriedly”

katsu tsumetai “also cold” Yasuha (woman’s name)

potsupotsu “bit by bit”

‘Hiroshi-(suffix to address a boy)’ in the third mora in HLLLL. It is also possible to compare this with such a word as nadeshiko ‘a pink (flower)’, which has a devoiceable vowel in the third mora in LHLL. The distracters, which do not contain any environment for vowel devoicing, are selected from two types: (i) words that are common in both Kinki and Tokyo areas but pronounced with different pitch accents, and (ii) words that are common and pronounced with the same pitch accent in both areas. In other words, one type of distracter is words that can be judged by pitch accent alone because there is no clue from devoicing variation, and the other is completely neutral words because there is no clue, either from accent or devoicing variation. Using distracters, it was possible to compare the extent of effects on

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the judgment between accent patterns and devoicing variants. It was also possible to compare the extent of effects between Tokyo and Kinki accent patterns. The distracters are listed in Table 20.3. Table 20.3. List of Distracters. Words

Gloss

Tokyo

Kinki

By accent

boyakeru Himeji Kamakura kawari kowai Kyoobashi-ni maekake masaka nanasai oyayubi taberu tabezakari taue

‘´to blur’ ‘Himeji (place name)’ ‘Kamakura (place name)’ ‘replacement’ ‘scary; scared’ ‘at Kyobashi’ ‘cooking apron’ ‘I don’t believe that’ ‘how old’ ‘thumb’ ‘to eat’ ‘age of eating a lot (healthily)’ ‘rice planting’

LHHL HLL LHHH LHH LHL LHHHH LHHH HLL HLLL LHLL LHL LHHLL LHH

HHHH HHH HHHH HHH HLL HLLLL LLHL LHL LHLL HHLL LLH LLHLL LHL

Neutral

ninensee odeko semotare tabun tamashii

‘´second year student’ ‘forehead’ ‘back of a chair’ ‘probably’ ‘soul’

The subjects who pronounced these words and phrases were seven male and seven female speakers of Japanese. Their native dialects were not controlled so that variation in devoicing could easily occur, because variation did not show up frequently in the data I collected from Tokyo people prior to this study. (An examination of the responses showed that home-town origin of the speakers did not influence judgments in this study.) The list of the subjects with their gender and hometown is shown in Appendix II. They were asked to read the list in a ‘natural’ way. Both versions of devoiced and undevoiced vowels of the same word were needed to see if the speakers were judged as Tokyo people when they devoice vowels and as non-Tokyo people when they do not. I examined whether or not the vowels of the recorded pronunciations were devoiced using the computer software Signalyze. It converts the sounds into wave forms, showing voiced sounds as periodic waves and voiceless sounds as very attenuated wave forms or flat lines. I obtained words showing variation in devoicing. As Kondo (1997) concluded, devoicing is not categorical, and I obtained waves that were gradient; that is, the more voiced the sounds were, the larger the waves were. I chose, for this tape, the most devoiced versions and the most undevoiced versions of the same word. In my data, forty-one identical words were pronounced with devoiced and undevoiced

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variants. In addition, twenty-three words were pronounced either with a devoiced vowel only or with an undevoiced vowel only, and there were thirteen distracters in the Tokyo pitch accent (with the same thirteen distracters in the Kinki pitch accent). Finally, five neutral distracters were added. Examples are given in (7) below. (7a) (7b) (7c) (7d)

Words pronounced with devoiced and undevoiced vowels atafuta ‘hurriedly’ Speaker J devoiced atafuta ‘hurriedly’ Speaker K undevoiced Words pronounced with either a devoiced or an undevoiced vowel only nadeshiko ‘a pink (flower)’ Speaker K devoiced michihide ‘by high and low tides’ Speaker M undevoiced Distracters by accent kawari ‘replacement’ Speaker H Tokyo (LHH) kawari ‘replacement’ Speaker G Kinki (HHH) Neutral distracters tabun ‘probably’ Speaker E no devoicing, HLL

The total 136 words and phrases were randomly arranged by devoicing, voices, and distracters, and a test tape was prepared. A list of the words in the order presented in the tape is shown in Appendix I. I coded speaker, speaker’s gender, pitch accent pattern, position of the devoiceable vowel in terms of boundary, position of the devoiceable vowel in terms of mora counting from the beginning, preceding consonant, devoiceable vowel identity, following consonant, and devoiced/undevoiced or type of distracters (Tokyo/Kinki accent), for each word. Examples are given in Table 20.4 below. In the ‘Type’ column, ‘y’ and ‘n’ mean words containing devoicing variations; ‘y’ means ‘yes, devoiced’ and ‘n’ means ‘no, undevoiced’. In the same column, ‘t’, ‘k’, and ‘x’ mean distactors. Distracters do not contain a devoiceable vowel, so they have ‘0’ in position and ‘x’ in preceding consonant, vowel identity, and following consonant. Distracters by accent are coded with ‘t’, which means ‘Tokyo pitch accent’, or ‘o’, which means ‘Kinki pitch accent’. Neutral distracters have ‘x’ in the devoicing category because they have no devoicing variation or accent difference. In the ‘Boundary’ column, ‘w’ means ‘at a word boundary’, ‘m’ means ‘at a morpheme boundary’, ‘i’ means ‘morpheme-internally’.

Table 20.4. Coding for Each Word. Word

Sp.

Gen.

Accent

Boun.

Pos.

Pre.

Vowel

Follow

Type

atafuta osekihan taberu kawari tamashii

J M A G K

F M F F M

HLLL LHLL LHL HHH HLLL

i m 0 0 0

3 3 0 0 0

f k x x x

u i x x x

t h x x x

y n t o x

Sp. = Speaker, Gen. = Gender, Boun. = Boundary, Pos. = Position, Pre. = Precede

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3.2 Response collection The test tape was presented to 117 subjects, male and female native speakers of Japanese. They listened to each of the 136 words twice and were asked to judge whether or not the speaker is from Tokyo. They listened while looking at a list of the words written in Japanese (Kanji and Hiragana). This written list helped the subjects concentrate on making judgments without taking time to recognize, in particular, unfamiliar words. They responded on a five point scale: 0 = The speaker is certainly from Tokyo, 1 = The speaker is probably from Tokyo, 2 = Don’t know, 3 = The speaker is probably not from Tokyo, and 4 = The speaker is certainly not from Tokyo. Demographic data, gender, age, and hometown of the subjects were collected. ‘Hometown’ was based on the place where the respondents spent their elementary and junior high school days, assuming that the dialect learned during those days is the native dialect for them. I chose ‘elementary and junior high school days’ because children seem to eventually learn the dialect of the region they live in, rather than their parents’ dialects, to communicate with their peers. Kitamura (1952) conducted research on about 500 children who moved from Tokyo to Shirakawa, Fukushima and reports that those who moved before the age of six learned the Shirakawa dialect while those who moved at a later age did not learn it completely. I eliminated the respondents who lived in more than two places during this crucial period. Besides demographic questions, it was asked whether or not they could personally identify any of the voices on the tape, and respondents who did so correctly were eliminated because they may have known the hometowns of those speakers, and that may have affected their judgments. 3.3 Analysis I obtained data for 136 words from 117 respondents, a total of 15,912 tokens. Then I extracted the tokens given by the forty-seven Tokyo respondents and eliminated invalid tokens, leaving 6,344 tokens for this study. With these data, first I flipped the ratings for words of undevoiced versions of devoiceable vowels and distracters of Kinki versions, changing 0 to 4, 1 to 3, 3 to 1 and 4 to 0. This reflects the decision to use as a “base” those judgements which indicated that a speaker who devoices devoiceable vowels or uses the Tokyo pitch accent pattern is a Tokyo speaker and that a speaker who undevoices them or uses the Kinki pitch accent pattern is a non-Tokyo speaker. In order to find out whether or not the data reflect whether or not respondents judge the speakers differently depending on the experimental conditions (devoicing, undevoicing, Tokyo accent, or Kinki accent), I needed to have a single scale so that ‘certainly from Tokyo’ for the tokens with devoicing and the Tokyo accent and ‘certainly not from Tokyo’ for the tokens with undevoicing and the Kinki accent would have the same value. For example, with two data sets given below, (8a) fits the expectations and (8b) does not.

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

(8a) (8b)

Word Word Word Word

A B C D

devoiced undevoiced devoiced undevoiced

score score score score

0 4 4 0

(certainly (certainly (certainly (certainly

from from from from

377

Tokyo) non-Tokyo) non-Tokyo) Tokyo)

With this coding, the experiment cannot be treated statistically because it does not have a single scale, which would require that the scores for word A and word B have the same value on one end and the scores for word C and word D the same value on the other end. If the scores are flipped as in (9), the results are shown on a single scale, and (9a) will show that our expectations are right while (9b) would show that they are wrong. After flipping these ratings, 0 and 1 means that the judgment confirms our expectations and 3 and 4 means that it contradicts them. Hereafter I use the words ‘correctly judged based on our expectations’ or simply ‘correct’ for the confirming responses, and ‘incorrectly judged based on our expectations’ or simply ‘incorrect’ for the contradictory responses. (9a) (9b)

Word Word Word Word

A B C D

devoiced undevoiced devoiced undevoiced

score score score score

0 0 4 4

(correctly judged as Tokyo) (correctly judged as non-Tokyo) (incorrectly judged as Tokyo) (incorrectly judged as non-Tokyo)

Next, I collapsed the ratings to a three point scale: 0 and 1 to 0, 2 to 1, and 3 and 4 to 2. Therefore, 0 means ‘correctly judged’, 2 means ‘incorrectly judged’, and 1 means ‘don’t know’. I then analyzed the ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ responses by examining the following factors; (i) relationships between types of distracters and devoicing/undevoicing, (ii) position of a devoiceable vowel relative to the morpheme boundary, (iii) position of a devoiceable vowel relative to the mora position, (iv) accent pattern, (v) preceding consonant, (vi) following consonant, (vii) speaker’s identity, (viii) gender of the speaker, and (ix) gender of the respondent. I obtained the frequency and percentage of the score (0, 1, or 2) for each item in the factors listed above and used Chi-square probabilities to determine their significance.

4.

Results

Recall that my major hypothesis is that a speaker is more likely to be judged as a Tokyo person if he or she devoices a vowel and as a non-Tokyo person if he or she undevoices it. In the tables, ‘correct’ means the responses confirm the hypothesis, and ‘incorrect’ means the responses contradict it. I obtained the following results. 4.1 Words that have devoiced vowels at the end Before tabulating the overall frequency and percentage, I examined whether or not the words that have devoiceable vowels at the end, which I did not eliminate completely, could be included. The two words pachipachi and pakupaku were pronounced sometimes

378

MIDORI YONEZAWA

with devoiced vowels at the end in addition to the vowels between voiceless consonants. The significance of differentiating those ‘double’ devoicing versions and single devoicing (between consonants only) versions was examined. The results are given in Table 20.5. The first number in each cell indicates frequency and the one in parentheses indicates percentage for the row. Table 20.5. Results by Devoicing and Undevoicing at the End of Words. Devoiced Undevoiced Total

Correct

Don’t Know

Incorrect

Total


68 (72.34)
41 (87.23) 109 (77.30)


9 (9.57)
3 (6.38) 12 (8.51)

17 (18.09)
3 (
6.38) 20 (14.18)


94 (100)
47 (100) 141 (100)

The Chi-square probability for this table is 0.117, not significant, so I did not discriminate double devoicing from single devoicing, nor did I exclude the rest of the words that have devoiceable vowels in the word final position. 4.2 The Overall Results by Devoicing/Accent The overall frequency and percentage of each score by five categories of devoicing variants and types of distracters is given in Table 20.6. The 2,725 tokens under ‘devoiced’ contain devoiced vowels, and the 2,162 tokens under ‘undevoiced’ contain undevoiced vowels in devoicing environments. The 611 tokens under ‘Tokyo’ are the distracters that are pronounced in the Tokyo accent but would be pronounced with a different accent in Kinki. The 611 tokens under ‘Kinki’ are the distracters that are pronounced in the Kinki accent but would be pronounced in a different accent in Tokyo. The 235 tokens under ‘neutral’ are the distracters that are pronounced in the same pitch accent in Tokyo and Kinki. The results with neutral distracters are included in this table (treating ‘Tokyo’ as the ‘correct’ judgment) simply because they are in Tokyo accent patterns, but I will discuss them separately in the following section. Table 20.6. Overall Results by Types of Variants. Devoiced Tokyo Undevoiced Kinki Neutral Total

Correct

Don’t Know

Incorrect

1712 (62.83)
377 (61.70) 1174 (54.30)
507 (82.98)
155 (65.96) 3925 (61.87)

283
50 202
23
25 583


730
184
786

81

55 1836

(10.39) (
8.18) (
9.34) (
3.76) (10.64) (
9.19)

(26.79) (30.11) (36.36) (13.26) (23.40) (28.94)

Total 2725 (100)
611 (100) 2162 (100)
611 (100)
235 (100) 6344 (100)

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

379

Devoiced and Tokyo accent versions tend to be rated as ‘Tokyo speaker’, whereas undevoiced and Kinki accent versions tend to be rated as ‘non-Tokyo speaker’, as I expected. The Kinki accent clearly has the strongest effect on subjects’ judgments. The Tokyo accent less strongly affects judgments than the Kinki accent does, but devoicing affects judgments more strongly than undevoicing does. Neutral distracters tend to be rated as ‘Tokyo speaker’ quite strongly. Table 20.7 shows the results eliminating the score 1 (‘Don’t know’). Table 20.7. Overall Results by Types of Variants and Correct/Incorrect Responses. Devoiced Tokyo Undevoiced Kinki Neutral Total

Correct

Incorrect

1712 (70.11)
377 (67.20) 1174 (59.90)
507 (86.22)
155 (73.81) 3925 (68.13)


730
184
786

81

55 1836

(29.89) (32.80) (40.10) (13.78) (26.19) (31.87)

Total 2442
561 1960
588
210 5761

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

The Chi-square probability for Table 20.7 is 0.000. The devoicing variants and accent patterns are obviously significant factors. 4.3 Tokyo/Kinki Accent and Devoicing/Undevoicing It appears to be easier to recognize the difference in the pitch accent pattern than to recognize devoicing or undevoicing. This is further shown in Table 20.8. The 1,149 tokens under ‘accent’ are all the distracters that are pronounced in different accents in Tokyo and Kinki, and the 4,402 tokens under ‘devoicing/undevoicing’ are all the tokens that contain devoiceable vowels. Table 20.8. Results by Tokyo/Kinki Accent and Devoicing/Undevoicing. Accent Devoicing/Undev. Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total


884 (76.94) 2886 (65.56) 3770 (67.92)


265 (23.06) 1516 (34.44) 1781 (32.08)

1149 (100) 4402 (100) 5551 (100)

Although both factors promote correct judgments (recall that the Chi-square probability of Table 20.7 is 0.000), pitch accent affects judgments more significantly than devoicing. 4.4 Position of Devoiceable Vowel Next, I examined the significance of phonological factors among devoiced and undevoiced tokens. The position of a devoiceable vowel, counting moras from the beginning, is either

380

MIDORI YONEZAWA

in the second mora or the third mora. The results are given in Table 20.9. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.9 is 0.021, showing that the position in the third mora contributes more to ‘correct’ judgment than position in the second mora does. The position of a devoiceable vowel in terms of boundaries is either morphemeinternal, at a morpheme boundary, or at a word boundary. The overall results are given in Table 20.10. Table 20.9. Results by Position of Devoiceable Vowel (Mora). Second mora Third mora Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

1275 (63.75) 1611 (67.07) 2886 (65.56)


725 (36.25)
791 (32.93) 1516 (34.44)

2000 (100) 2402 (100) 4402 (100)

Table 20.10. Results by Position of Devoiceable Vowel (Boundary). Correct Internal Morpheme Word Total


867 1925

94 2886

(70.15) (64.19) (56.29) (65.56)

Incorrect
369 1074

73 1516

(29.85) (35.81) (43.71) (34.44)

Total 1236 2999
167 4402

(100) (100) (100) (100)

The Chi-square probability of Table 20.10 is 0.000, showing that morpheme-internal devoicing or undevoicing contributes significantly more to ‘correct’ judgments than that at a morpheme boundary, which contributes more than that at a word boundary. The morpheme-internal and morpheme-boundary results are significant (p = 0.000), and the morpheme-boundary and word-boundary results are also significant (p = 0.039). 4.5 Pitch Accent Pattern The pitch accent patterns I chose for this study are HLL and LHL word-initially. The accent patterns of words which contain devoiceable vowels in the data are coded either as HLL, HLLL, HLLH, or LHLL. HLL is a three-mora word, and the others are the beginning 4 moras of words and phrases containing 4 or more moras. HLLH occurs when another word is added to a two-mora word, as in katsu#tsumetai ‘also cold’. First, I examined the significance in the different effects among HLL, HLLL, and HLLH. The results are given in Table 20.11. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.11 is 0.227, not significant. Then I collapsed these three accent patterns into one category, HLL, and examined the difference between them and LHL. These results are given in Table 20.12. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.12 is 0.239, also not significant.

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

381

Table 20.11. Results by Accent Patterns HLL, HLLL, and HLLH. Correct HLL HLLL HLLH Total


150 2199
103 2452

(61.22) (65.68) (61.68) (65.21)

Incorrect

Total



95 (38.78) 1149 (34.32)

64 (38.32) 1308 (34.79)


245 3348
167 3760

(100) (100) (100) (100)

Table 20.12. Results by Accent Patterns HLL and LHL. HLL LHL Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

2452 (65.21)
434 (67.60) 2886 (65.56)

1308 (34.79)
208 (32.40) 1516 (34.44)

3760 (100)
642 (100) 4402 (100)

4.6 Preceding Consonant Imai (1997) examined preceding and following consonants to find the promoting and demoting factors for devoicing in speech production. In my data, it is possible to compare the same factors in perception and judgment. The results by preceding consonant are given in Table 20.13. Table 20.13. Results by Preceding Consonant. k s tw φ p ts ç w Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

1097
196
296
225
266
262
204
340 2886


491 (30.92)

90 (31.47)
140 (32.11)
112 (33.23)
150 (36.06)
157 (37.47)
134 (39.64)
242 (41.58) 1516 (34.44)

1588
286
436
337
416
419
338
582 4402

(69.08) (68.53) (67.89) (66.77) (63.94) (62.53) (60.36) (58.42) (65.56)

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

The Chi-square probability of Table 20.13 is 0.000. Correct judgments clearly vary by phonetic environment. Tables 20.14 and 20.15 show the results for consonants preceding devoiced and undevoiced vowels, respectively. The Chi-square probabilities of Tables 20.14 and 20.15 are both 0.000.

382

MIDORI YONEZAWA

Table 20.14. Results by Consonant Preceding Devoiced Vowels. tw ç s k φ p ts w Total

Correct

Incorrect


185 (84.09)
123 (73.65)
119 (73.01)
621 (72.55)
122 (72.19)
175 (70.00)
150 (60.00)
217 (59.13) 1712 (70.11)


35
44
44 235
47
75 100 150 730

(15.91) (26.35) (26.99) (27.45) (27.81) (30.00) (40.00) (40.87) (29.89)

Total
220
167
163
856
169
250
250
367 2442

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

Table 20.15. Results by Consonant Preceding Undevoiced Vowels. ts k s φ w p tw ç Total

Correct

Incorrect


112 (66.27)
476 (65.03)

77 (62.60)
103 (61.31)
123 (57.21)

91 (54.82)
111 (51.39)

81 (47.37) 1174 (59.90)


57 256
46
65
92
75 105
90 786

(33.73) (34.97) (37.40) (38.69) (42.79) (45.18) (48.61) (52.63) (40.10)

Total
169
732
123
168
215
166
216
171 1960

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

4.7 Following Consonant The results by following consonant are given in Table 20.16. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.16 is 0.000. Just as with the preceding consonant, it is necessary to look at the data in more specific environments to find out which features influence judgments. Tables 20.17 and 20.18 show the results for consonants following devoiced and undevoiced vowels, respectively. The Chi-square probabilities of Tables 20.17 and 20.18 are both 0.000. 4.8 Speaker Next I examined the significance of the subject factors: speaker’s identity, speaker’s gender, and respondent’s gender. The results by speaker are given in Table 20.19. Table 20.20 shows the results with devoiced or undevoiced variants only. The Chi-square probabilities of Tables 20.19 and 20.20 are both 0.000.

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS Table 20.16. Results by Following Consonant. t p w k s ts ç h tw φ Total

Correct

Incorrect


623 (75.15)
216 (72.73)
393 (67.18)
462 (65.16)
524 (64.22)
237 (61.88)

75 (60.98)
149 (59.13)

91 (55.49)
116 (47.54) 2886 (65.56)


206

81
192
247
292
146

48
103

73
128 1516

(24.85) (27.27) (32.82) (34.84) (35.78) (38.12) (39.02) (40.87) (44.51) (52.46) (34.44)

Total
829
297
585
709
816
383
123
252
164
244 4402

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

Table 20.17. Results by Consonant Following Devoiced Vowels. Correct ç s t φ h w p k tw ts Total



35
321
398

88

91
206
138
280

70

85 1712

(89.74) (82.95) (82.06) (73.95) (73.39) (70.07) (66.03) (57.26) (56.45) (49.42) (70.11)

Incorrect

4
66
87
31
33
88
71 209
54
87 730

(10.26) (17.05) (17.94) (26.05) (26.61) (29.93) (33.97) (42.74) (43.55) (50.58) (29.89)

Total

39 (100)
387 (100)
485 (100)
119 (100)
124 (100)
294 (100)
209 (100)
489 (100)
124 (100)
172 (100) 2242 (100)

Table 20.18. Results by Consonant Following Undevoiced Vowels. p k ts t w tw ç s h φ Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total



78 (88.64)
182 (82.73)
152 (72.04)
225 (65.41)
187 (64.26)

21 (52.50)

40 (47.62)
203 (47.32)

58 (45.31)

28 (22.40) 1174 (59.90)


10 (11.36)
38 (17.27)
59 (27.96) 119 (34.59) 104 (35.74)
19 (47.50)
44 (52.38) 226 (52.68)
70 (54.69)
97 (77.60) 786 (40.10)



88 (100)
220 (100)
211 (100)
344 (100)
291 (100)

40 (100)

84 (100)
429 (100)
128 (100)
125 (100) 1960 (100)

383

384

MIDORI YONEZAWA

Table 20.19. Results by Speaker. Correct (88.00) (87.38) (74.21) (73.23) (71.48) (71.01) (67.17) (65.63) (63.14) (62.61) (62.61) (61.41) (60.47) (45.01)

I N F E K G L B D A J H C M


396
270
187
290
396
240
358
317
507
206
139
226

26
212

Total

3770 (67.92)

Incorrect

54

39

65
106
158

98
175
166
296
123

83
142

17
259

(12.00) (12.62) (25.79) (26.77) (28.52) (28.99) (32.83) (34.37) (36.86) (37.39) (37.39) (38.59) (39.53) (54.99)

1781 (32.08)

Total
450
309
252
396
554
338
533
483
803
329
222
368

43
471

(100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)

5551 (100)

Table 20.20. Results by Speaker with Devoiced/Undevoiced Variants. Correct

Incorrect

Total

I N E F G K L D B C H A J M


260 (84.14)
179 (82.87)
273 (77.12)
154 (72.99)
118 (71.52)
396 (71.48)
324 (66.12)
411 (65.24)
274 (62.41)

26 (60.47)
159 (56.58)

98 (49.49)

57 (43.18)
157 (41.32)



49

37

81

57

47
158
166
219
165

17
122
100

75
223

(15.86) (17.13) (22.88) (27.01) (28.48) (28.52) (33.88) (34.76) (37.59) (39.53) (43.42) (50.51) (56.82) (58.68)


309 (100)
216 (100)
354 (100)
211 (100)
165 (100)
554 (100)
490 (100)
630 (100)
439 (100)

43 (100)
281 (100)
198 (100)
132 (100)
380 (100)

Total

2886 (65.56)

1516 (34.44)

4402 (100)

4.9 Gender of the Speaker There are 7 male speakers and 7 female speakers. The results by gender of the speaker are given in Table 20.21. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.21 is 0.012, showing that female speakers are judged significantly more correctly than male speakers are. The separate results for devoiced or undevoiced variants and for distracters by accent are given in Tables 20.22 and Table 20.23 respectively. The Chi-square probability for devoiced

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

385

Table 20.21. Results by Gender of the Speaker. Female Male Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

2095 (69.35) 1675 (66.21) 3770 (67.92)


926 (30.65)
855 (33.79) 1781 (32.08)

3021 (100) 2530 (100) 5551 (100)

variants is 0.050 and for distracters by accent is 0.297. This means that being female contributes to a respondent’s correct judgments when she devoices or undevoices vowels, but that gender does not contribute when a speaker pronounces a word in Kinki or Tokyo accent without devoiceable vowels. Table 20.22. Results by Gender of the Speaker for Devoiced Variants. Female Male Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

1491 (66.95) 1395 (64.14) 2886 (65.56)


736 (33.05)
780 (35.86) 1516 (34.44)

2227 (100) 2175 (100) 4402 (100)

Table 20.23. Results by Gender of the Speaker for Distracters by Accent. Female Male Total

Correct

Incorrect

Total

604 (76.07) 280 (78.87) 884 (76.94)

190 (23.93)
75 (21.13) 265 (23.06)


794 (100)
355 (100) 1149 (100)

Table 20.24. Results by Gender of the Respondent. Female Male Total

4.10

Correct

Incorrect

Total

2268 (68.81) 1502 (65.25) 3770 (67.92)


981 (30.19)
800 (34.75) 1781 (32.08)

3249 (100) 2302 (100) 5551 (100)

Gender of Respondents

The results by gender of the respondents (twenty-eight female and nineteen male) are given in Table 20.24. The Chi-square probability of Table 20.24 is 0.000. The separate results for devoiced or undevoiced variants and for distracters by accent are given in Tables 20.25 and Table 20.26 respectively. The Chi-square probability in the results for devoiced variants is 0.001 and for

386

MIDORI YONEZAWA

Table 20.25. Results by Gender of the Respondent for Devoiced Variants. Correct

Incorrect

Total

Female Male

1737 (67.48) 1149 (62.86)


837 (32.52)
679 (37.14)

2574 (100) 1828 (100)

Total

2886 (65.56)

1516 (34.44)

4402 (100)

Table 20.26. Results by Gender of the Respondent for Distracters by Accent. Correct

Incorrect

Total

Female Male

531 (78.67) 353 (74.47)

144 (21.33) 121 (25.53)


675 (100)
474 (100)

Total

884 (76.94)

265 (23.06)

1149 (100)

distracters by accent is 0.097, showing that female respondents judged significantly more correctly upon hearing words pronounced in the Tokyo or Kinki accent, although gender does not contribute when a speaker pronounced a word in the Kinki or Tokyo accent without a devoiceable vowel. These are the same results as the ones by gender of speaker.

5.

Discussion

5.1 Comparison of saliency between devoicing factors and pitch accent pattern Two facts were confirmed quantitatively in the comparison of devoicing factors and Tokyo/Kinki pitch accent patterns. First, Tokyo or Kinki pitch accent patterns affect judgments more significantly than devoicing variants do (76.94% and 65.56%, respectively, in Table 20.8). Furthermore, as shown in Table 20.6, the percentages of ‘Don’t know’ responses are higher among both devoiced and undevoiced cases than among Tokyo and Kinki accent tokens. These results show that Tokyo or Kinki accent strongly promotes correct judgments while devoicing or undevoicing also promotes correct judgments but not as strongly. The second point is also shown in Table 20.6, where devoiced and undevoiced, and Tokyo and Kinki tokens are separately tabulated. The Kinki accent affects correct judgments more strongly than the Tokyo accent does, and devoicing affects correct judgments more than undevoicing does. The results by accent were expected, but the results by devoicing variants were not. Even if we assume devoicing is recognized unconsciously, the results were still unexpected because undevoicing should be recognized more easily than devoicing since it should be easier to identify something which is different from what one does than to identify something which is the same as what one does. There may be two major reasons why the Kinki accent affects correct judgments more strongly than the Tokyo accent does. First, the Kinki accent obviously sounds non-

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS

387

Tokyo to hearers, so they judge the speaker confidently as ‘non-Tokyo’ without considering that there may be factors suggesting ‘Tokyo’ or that the speaker may be imitating a non-Tokyo accent. On the other hand, when they hear the Tokyo accent, they may have withheld judgment, paid attention to other features, and recognized some features that do not sound ‘Tokyo’ other than accent and devoicing. It seems reasonable to interpret the results as showing that the accent pattern is the most salient screening criterion in making a judgment, and, if the speaker does not pass the first screening, he or she is judged as ‘non-Tokyo’, but, if he or she does, other criteria are applied. The second reason may be that the accent patterns are changing and that the pattern did not induce the judgment ‘Tokyo’ when I expected it to. It is pointed out that younger generations pronounce words eliminating accents (Inoue 1998). For example, densha ‘train’ used to be pronounced as densha (HLL, the first mora is accented) but now it is pronounced densha (LHH, accentless), and sekaishi ‘world history’ is pronounced as sekaishi (LHLL) but younger people have started to pronounce it sekaishi (LHHH) these days (pp. 177–178). In my data, for example, I used oyayubi as LHLL, based on Tokyo respondents’ reports, but some people pronounced it as LHHH when recording. It is another example of a word in the process of accent change. It is quite possible for some respondents to have judged LHLL as ‘not Tokyo’, but LHHH, in spite of my expectations, as ‘Tokyo’. These two circumstances may have lowered the effect of the Tokyo accent on correct judgments. As for the result that devoicing affects correct judgments more than undevoicing does, a possible reason is again that hearers rely primarily on accent patterns to judge whether or not the speaker is from Tokyo. They probably judge ‘Tokyo’ by Tokyo accent regardless of devoicing or undevoicing. Then when the word happens to contain a devoiced vowel, the judgment is simply reinforced, but when it happens to contain an undevoiced vowel, they are confused. 5.2 Neutral distracters Neutral distracters tend to be judged as Tokyo (65.96%), as shown in Table 20.6. Since all the respondents in this study are from Tokyo, it was expected that the judgments for the Tokyo and neutral distracters would be the same, i.e., ‘Tokyo’, due to the Tokyo pitch accent and lack of clues for ‘non-Tokyo’. However, the hearers could have chosen ‘Don’t know’ due to a lack of clues indicating ‘non-Tokyo’ or ‘non-Tokyo’ for some other reason. In the results, the choice of ‘Tokyo’ for neutral distracters is higher than that for the Tokyo distracters (61.70%), and the rate of ‘Don’t know’ (10.64%) is higher than the rate of ‘Don’t know’ in any of the devoicing, undevoicing, Tokyo, and Kinki versions (3.76~10.39%). It would be interesting to compare the judgments for neutral distracters by Kinki respondents because, for them, neutral distracters may sound like their own words, and they may judge them as ‘non-Tokyo’, or they may choose ‘Don’t know’ due to lack of clues from devoicing or different accent patterns, or ‘Tokyo’ due to the lack of clues from undevoicing (or some other reason).

388

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5.3 Position of the devoiceable vowel Devoicing or undevoicing in the third mora from the beginning is more important for judgment than that in the second mora, as shown in Table 20.9. The reason is not clear, but this may suggest that the third mora gets more attention. Two facts could be relevant. One is that the pitch accent of the first mora and the second mora are always different, either LH or HL, and the other is that once pitch falls the remainder of the word is L (Tsujimura 1996, Shibatani 1990, McCawley 1968). The pitch patterns may have attracted the respondents’ attention for the first two moras, and, once the pitch falls, they did not have to pay attention to the pitch change until the end of the word but paid attention to other features like devoicing variants. Another possibility for a positional factor which affects judgment is counting moras from the right. It could be a factor because there are cases in which moras are counted from the end in Japanese, for example, in loanwords (McCawley 1968). McCawley states that accentuation of loanwords falls on the antipenultimate mora unless it falls on the first mora or does not fall on any mora (accentless). The position of the devoiceable vowel in terms of the boundary is a significant factor, as shown in Table 20.10. Devoicing or undevoicing morpheme internally contributes to ‘correct’ judgments significantly more than at a morpheme boundary, which, in turn, contributes significantly more than at a word boundary. It seems that this order is the same as the order of possibility of interaction between devoicing and a pause. In natural speech, a word boundary will more likely have a pause after it than a morpheme boundary, and a morpheme boundary will more likely have one than a morpheme-internal position. In other words, it seems that the less devoicing or undevoicing interacts with a pause, the more it contributes to ‘correct’ judgments, and it seems that the respondents have difficulties or are confused when they consider both devoicing and a factor that prevents devoicing. 5.4 Accent pattern Shared accent pattern is not a salient factor, as shown in Tables 20.11 and 20.12. It is confirmed that the two patterns common both in Tokyo and Kinki, HLL and LHL wordinitially in this study, do not yield significantly different effects on correct judgment. 5.5 Preceding consonant Preceding consonant is a significant factor, as shown in Table 20.13. The devoiced versions are more ‘correctly’ judged than the undevoiced versions, as shown in Tables 20.14 and 20.15. There are three consonants that indicate remarkable differences in the effects depending on whether the consonants precede devoiced or undevoiced vowels. [tw] and [ç] are the top two in the order of contribution to correct judgments when preceding devoiced vowels but the bottom two when preceding undevoiced vowels. This coincides with what Imai (1997) found as the best promoters of devoicing in production. According

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to her study, the vowel /i/ with a preceding fricative, and a shared feature between the preceding consonant and the vowel, that is, palatal for /i/ and labial for /u/, promote devoicing. [tw] and [ç] are two of the palatal consonants preceding /i/, not /u/, in this study, where I excluded [twu] followed by a voiceless consonant. The results in my data mean that when the respondents heard the most ‘correct’ combination of a consonant and a vowel for devoicing they judged the speaker as ‘Tokyo’, regardless of whether the vowel was devoiced or undevoiced. It seems that the respondents ‘know’ which combination is the best for devoicing vowels so they do not pay attention to devoicing or undevoicing, simply assuming that the vowels are devoiced. On the other hand, [ts] is at the top in contributing to correct judgments when preceding undevoiced vowels but second from the bottom when preceding devoiced vowels. The other 5 consonants [s], [k], [φ], [p], and [w] are arranged in a similar order. Another tendency is for the versions with undevoiced /i/ to be judged wrongly as ‘Tokyo’. Just as [tw] and [ç] promote the judgment ‘Tokyo’ regardless of devoicing or undevoicing, /i/, which is more frequently devoiced than /u/, according to Imai (1997), promotes the judgment ‘Tokyo’. It seems, again, that respondents’ ‘knowledge’ of the production restrictions heavily influences perception. 5.6 Following consonant The following consonant is also a significant factor, as shown in Table 20.16. The devoiced versions are more ‘correctly’ judged than undevoiced versions, as in the case of the preceding consonants, as shown in Tables 20.17 and 20.18. Among the ten consonants, there is a tendency for fricatives to contribute ‘correct’ judgments with following devoiced vowels and contribute ‘incorrect’ judgments with following undevoiced vowels. The percentage of ‘correct’ judgments with following undevoiced vowels is less than 50% for four out of five fricatives. In other words, fricatives tend to promote the judgment ‘Tokyo’ regardless of devoicing or undevoicing of the preceding vowels. Stops and affricates, on the other hand, contribute to ‘correct’ judgments when following undevoiced vowels. The exception is /t/, which contributes to judgments quite strongly in both cases. 5.7 Speaker Speaker identity is very salient. After the experiment, respondents frequently mentioned some speakers who sounded conspicuous and were judged as ‘non-Tokyo’. This comment seems quite natural based on a stereotypical assumption that a non-Tokyo person is conspicuous when he or she does not change the pitch accent patterns upon visiting Tokyo (Inoue 1995, Ryoichi Sakamoto and Keiichi Hayase in Kawauchi 1993). However, it is very interesting that Table 20.19 (overall results) and Table 20.20 (results with the data on devoiced/undevoiced variants only) are very similar in terms of the order of percentage of ‘correct’ judgments. The order of speaker C is the most different (13th and 10th), but the number of his tokens is not large, and thus the order change is likely when compared to the other speakers. The similar order indicates that pitch accent is not the only factor that could create stereotypes and promote correct judgments about a speaker, but devoicing

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variants have a similar effect on the same person. In particular, speaker K was mentioned by respondents as the most confidently judged non-Tokyo person, but he was judged quite ‘correctly’ as ‘Tokyo’ when he devoiced vowels. Speaker M, on the other hand, was judged least correctly, even lower than 50% in both overall results and results with devoicing variants. He is the only speaker from the Tokyo metropolitan area, and he was judged quite ‘incorrectly’ as ‘Tokyo’ when he pronounced some words in the Kinki accent or with undevoicing. The reason is not clear. His results indicate, at least, that respondents from Tokyo can tell he is from Tokyo, regardless of his Kinki accent or undevoicing, and that there may be some stronger factor which denies the possibility of a non-Tokyo judgment. Laver and Trudgill (1979) discuss the possibility that voice qualities of extralinguistic, paralinguistic, and phonetic features are social markers, which signal such membership as regional affiliation, social class, and age. They give a number of examples from previous studies, including vowel quality in /r/ in English varieties in and outside of the United States, /h/ dropping in British English, glottalized /t/ in butter, -ing and -in’ in Norwich, and so forth. They also point out that the variation depends on phonological environment, whose importance varies in different social groups, and that the variation is not a conscious process. Some such possible factors in my data are (i) length of a vowel, (ii) pitch contour in a single vowel, and (iii) other quality of sounds. First, Horii (1982) suggests that vowels in a one-mora word (with a suffix) and in word-final position tend to be longer in the Kinki dialect. Second, it is widely known that the Kinki pronunciation has a rising or falling pitch contour within a single vowel while the Tokyo one does not commonly have such a contour (Tahara et al. 1998, Warner 1997, Makimura 1984, Kokugo Gakkai 1980). For example, the vowel in hi ‘fire’ has a rising contour in Kinki, while it has a level high pitch in Tokyo (Warner 1997). Finally, Maeda (1977) and Horii (1982) state that consonants are pronounced less deliberately in Kinki than in Tokyo. Horii gives such examples as deletion of [w] and weakening of [w] to [h]. I noticed that /s/ is sometimes not perceived by non-native speakers when a Kinki person devoices sentence-final /u/ as in /desu/. When I prepared the test tape, I selected words which were pronounced most ‘Tokyo-like’ to my ears to eliminate other non-Tokyo features. I may not have done a perfect job, however, because of phonetic differences that I could not detect or could detect but not avoid due to my limited sample. Those differences can be a possible topic to investigate in the future. 5.8 Gender Female speakers were more correctly judged than male speakers, and female respondents made correct judgments more than male respondents. These results are significant overall and among distracters by accent but not among devoicing variants (Tables 20.21–20.26). These results mean that differences in the Kinki and Tokyo accent patterns are easy to tell, regardless of gender, but suggest that women are more receptive to the sorts of cues given in the speech samples used here.

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6.

391

Conclusion

In this study I examined phonological environments and both the speakers and the respondents to determine which factors are significant in promoting the judgment of whether or not a speaker is from Tokyo. The study tests the hypothesis that a speaker who devoices vowels or uses the Tokyo pitch accent is more likely to be judged as a Tokyo person while a speaker who undevoices vowels or uses the non-Tokyo pitch accent is more likely to be judged as a non-Tokyo person. My major findings are as follows. First, devoicing or undevoicing vowels contributes to ‘correct’ judgments (65.56%), as well as the Tokyo or Kinki accent pattern (76.94%), although the former is surely an unconscious feature. The Kinki accent pattern contributes more strongly than the Tokyo accent pattern does, and devoicing contributes to ‘correct’ judgments more strongly than undevoicing does. These results indicate that the accent patterns are more salient criteria than devoicing or undevoicing, and the non-Tokyo accent immediately causes a ‘correct’ judgment while a non-Tokyo clue (undevoicing) together with the Tokyo accent confuses judgment. Neutral words, which are pronounced in the same accent in both Tokyo and Kinki and do not contain a devoiceable vowel, tend to be judged as ‘Tokyo’. It would be interesting to compare these results with results from non-Tokyo respondents. The significant factors for ‘correct’ judgments are: (i) devoiceable vowels in the third mora from the beginning rather than ones in the second mora, (ii) devoiceable vowels in morpheme-internal position (compared to those at a morpheme boundary and at a word boundary), (iii) preceding consonants, (iv) following consonants, (v) speaker’s identity, (vi) female speakers, and (vii) female respondents. The boundary results show that devoicing or undevoicing contributes best to ‘correct’ judgments where there is no interaction with other factors. For the preceding consonants, I found that two palatal consonants with the feature fricative, namely [ç] and [tw], contribute most to the judgment ‘Tokyo’, regardless of devoicing or undevoicing. This coincides with what promotes vowel devoicing in production, and it suggests that the respondents ‘know’ the best combination of a consonant and a vowel for devoicing unconsciously and use the knowledge to make judgments, assuming (in some cases incorrectly) the vowel is devoiced. Similarly, the tokens with undevoiced /i/, which promotes devoicing more than /u/ does in production, tend to be judged as ‘Tokyo’ regardless of devoicing or undevoicing. These results are very interesting because people are unlikely to know consciously which combinations or which vowel promote devoicing, but it seems that they use such knowledge to make judgments about the speaker upon hearing his or her pronunciation. For the results of following consonants, I found that fricatives contribute to the judgment ‘Tokyo’ most, regardless of devoicing or undevoicing, and this also parallels production facts. The speaker’s identity was salient, too. The respondents frequently stated that it was easy to judge one of the speakers as ‘non-Tokyo’ because of the accent pattern, but when he devoiced vowels, they judged him as ‘Tokyo’ quite strongly. This also means the respondents use devoicing as a criterion. On the other hand, one speaker, from Tokyo,

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tended to be judged as ‘Tokyo’ regardless of his undevoicing or Kinki accent. This may be attributed to other features that do not sound non-Tokyo at all, such as no pitch contour within a mora. Finding out what features make the respondents determine the speaker as ‘Tokyo’ can be another interesting topic to pursue in the future. Finally, female speakers and female respondents contribute to ‘correct’ judgments. Female respondents did better than male subjects with devoicing and undevoicing variants, but gender was not a significant factor with the Kinki or Tokyo version of distracters. It seems that accent differences are easy to tell for both men and women, but female subjects’ production helped others make ‘correct’ judgments, and females made more ‘correct’ judgments. This study shows that the speakers of the Tokyo dialect perceive devoicing and undevoicing, and, further, that they use their knowledge of the best combination or best vowel for devoicing in production to make judgments about whether the speaker is from Tokyo or not. The next question to be asked might be how others, in particular Kinki people, who are said to tend to undevoice vowels, perceive devoicing and undevoicing in making the same kinds of judgments and to investigate attitudes toward these pronunciation facts.

Acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to Dennis Preston, David Dwyer, Mutsuko Endo Hudson, and Yen-Hwei Lin for their insightful comments and suggestions. Special thanks go to Dennis Preston for his encouragement of and confidence in me. I also want to thank all the participants in my experiment for their interest and encouragement. Any errors are my responsibility.

Notes 1. In this paper, I will use the term ‘undevoicing’ for ‘not devoicing vowels in devoicing environments’. 2. /u/ in Japanese is considered to be phonetically unrounded [Y] (Tsujimura 1996, Shibatani 1990), but Vance (1987) observes that Tokyo people show ‘lip compression’ in careful speech. Treatment of /u/ as a labial needs more explanation. 3. It has been reported that tendencies in pronouncing /g/ are changing (Vance 1987, Inoue 1998).

Appendix I: The list of the words D = Devoiced UD = Undevoiced Distracters: K = Kinki accent T = Tokyo accent N = Neutral 001 002 003 004 005

atafuta (D) hekichide (D) jifusuru (D) nadeshiko (D) neokisuru (UD)

006 007 008 009 010

soshishiyoo (UD) rikishiwa (UD) pakupaku (D) katsutsumetai (D) kaihisuru (D)

INFLUENCE OF VOWEL DEVOICING ON DIALECT JUDGMENTS 011 taue (K) 012 herikutsumo (D) 013 sekitsui (D) 014 nomisuke (D) 015 asatsukio (D) 016 yasushidono (D) 017 hoochisuru (UD) 018 jimushitsuni (D) 019 toohitomoohatsuni (D) 020 kazokukana (D) 021 tekipakiyaru (UD) 022 risutokuma (UD) 023 kyoobashini (T) 024 konishisan (D) 025 taberu (T) 026 yasuha (UD) 027 tanpukude (D) 028 atsushidono (UD) 029 kajitsutokajuu (D) 030 nanakusa (UD) 031 tabezakari (T) 032 boyakeru (T) 033 inchikina (D) 034 toshichan (D) 035 himeji (K) 036 shakufuwa (D) 037 neokisuru (D) 038 maekake (K) 039 muhitsude (UD) 040 tekipakiyaru (D) 041 tenkitokion (D) 042 pakupaku (UD) 043 mahishi (UD) 044 kyoobashini (K) 045 kochifuite (UD) 046 kyoofuka (D) 047 akusude (D) 048 kinkitokantoo (D) 049 kawari (T) 050 masaka (K) 051 shufutoseekatsu (D) 052 kamakura (K) 053 hiroshikun (UD) 054 kaihisuru (UD) 055 michitonosooguu (D) 056 kubetsusuru (UD) 057 boyakeru (K) 058 nansai (T) 059 sanpitsuwa (UD) 060 jifusuru (UD) 061 ninputoakachan (D)

062 mahishi (D) 063 odeko (N) 064 osekihan (UD) 065 semotare (N) 066 dokuha (UD) 067 hatashite (D) 068 potsupotsu (D) 069 tanukikana (D) 070 karupisuwa (D) 071 ninchisuru (UD) 072 genshutowa (D) 073 torihikimo (D) 074 kowai (K) 075 maekake (T) 076 asatsukio (UD) 077 gatapishinaru (D) 078 tabezakari (K) 079 rikishiwa (D) 080 masaka (T) 081 hoochisuru (UD) 082 ninputoakachan (UD) 083 bakufuwa (UD) 084 tamashii (N) 085 kokuhide (UD) 086 katsutsumetai (UD) 087 sekitsui (UD) 088 karupisuwa (UD) 089 kawari (K) 090 ninchisuru (D) 091 michitonosooguu (UD) 092 himeji (T) 093 akushude (UD) 094 kubetsusru (D) 095 tabun (N) 096 soshishiyoo (D) 097 osekihan (D) 098 hekichide (UD) 099 pakupaku (D) 100 michihide (UD) 101 shufutoseekatsu (UD) 102 nanakusa (D) 103 tenkitokion (UD)104 bakufuwa (D) 105 taue (T) 106 genshutowa (UD) 107 kamakura (T) 108 saishusuru (UD) 109 kirikuchini (D) 110 kinkitokantoo (UD) 111 oyayubi (K) 112 atafuta (UD) 113 kokuhide (D)

393

394

MIDORI YONEZAWA 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

114 pachipachi (D) 115 nisensee (N) 116 senshuka (D) 117 herikutsumo (UD) 118 kowai (T) 119 kyoofuka (UD) 120 konishisan (UD) 121 yasuha (D) 122 henpikana (D) 123 kochifuite (D) 124 kazokukana (UD) 125 taberu (K)

gatapishinaru (UD) risutokuma (D) yasushidono (UD) shakufuwa (UD) oyayubi (T) torihikimo (UD) nansai (K) atsushidono (D) tenpusuru (D) hiroshikun (D) dokuha (D)

Appendix II: List of the subjects for recording Speaker ID

Gender

Prefectures

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N

F F M F F M F M F F M M M M

Hyogo Yamaguchi Tochigi Hyogo Kyoto Ibaragi Miyagi Okayama Osaka Osaka Hyogo Aichi Chiba Wakayama

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About the Contributors

G A has her PhD from Michigan State University where she recently completed a sociolinguistic survey of phonological change in Cuban Spanish for her dissertation. In addition, she has been interested in attitudinal and perceptual studies of Cuban Spanish (and other varieties) and has worked in the area of conversational overlap as it interacts with information packaging and syntactic structures in Cuban Spanish discourse. She currently teaches ESL and Spanish in South Florida. R  B is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics and Dialectology at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. Her main interests lie in the cross-cultural decoding of paralinguistic information (emotion) and extralinguistic information (personality and gender) in speech. More recently, she has been involved in the evaluation and intelligibility of Dutch language varieties. Presently she is working on the socio-dialectological properties of /r/ in Dutch and Frisian, both from a production and perception point of view. R R. B is Professor of English and Cultural Anthropology and Chair of the Linguistics Program at Duke University, where he has taught since 1967. He is immediate past president of the American Dialect Society, former editor of the ADS journal American Speech, and current Chief Editor of American Dialect Society publications (and he continues to edit the ADS monograph series, Publications of the American Dialect Society). He has been a member of the Advisory Board, United States Dictionaries Program, Oxford University Press, since 1997. His research focuses on varieties of American English, especially the morphology and the lexicon; he considers himself a sociolinguist with especial interest in language and law. C C is director of the linguistics program at Paul Valéry University — Montpellier III and is co-founder of the research group LACIS (Languages in contact and subjective data). She is an Africanist who specializes in anthropological linguistics, particularly in Mali, and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines (Paris, EHESS) under the direction of Jean-Loup Amselle. She is editing a special issue of the journal on the question of languages in contact entitled

398

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

“Language boundaries.” J D-OC is Assistant Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Alberta. Although her primary emphasis is on German, she has also done work on both Canadian and U. S. English, including a study of Canadian raising in the U. S., the discourse marker ‘like’ in American English, and language attitudes in Canada, of which the study in this volume is a part. Her work in progress includes a study of the language use of migrants from western to eastern Germany, a study of the conversational usage of code-switching among advanced learners of German, and a study of the negotiation of terms of reference for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. M D is Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Illinois State University, Normal, IL. She is interested in sociolinguistics and and secondlanguage acquisition from the point of view of Universal Grammar. She has presented findings from her research at a number of national and international conferences and has published her studies in such journals as Language Awareness, The Journal of Pragmatics, Second Language Research, and also in Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Vol. I. W D manages the largest cultural agency in the German state of SchleswigHolstein. Among other things, the agency supports the further development of Low German literature and culture and sponsors language courses. The agency lobbies for the maintenance of Low German as a regional language and issues publications in this area as well as theoretical works and collections of regional literature. At the University of Kiel, he has carried out research on attitudes toward Low German as it is currently spoken and on contemporary language usage (divided by gender, age, profession, networks). At the University of Hamburg he initiated investigation of Middle Low German as the language of business used by Low German merchants and their partners in the Hanseatic League in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. He has puyblished extensively in the areas of structural homologies between Low German and the Scandanavian languages, transference, and semicommunication. B E is a research associate in the Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University. Her chapters in this volume are the result of her research on attitudes towards varieties of French and an acoustic study of variety imitations. More recently, in completing her work fo the PhD in Linguistics from Michigan State University, she has explored minority ethnic group acquisition of features of the vowel change in the United States known as the “Northern Cities Shift.” C L-E-S was a student of English Language at Literature at the University of Lausanne where she studied with Peter Trudgill and became attracted to the study of dialectology. She discovered that little or no attitudinal-perceptual work had been done on the French of Switzerland, and she cam to the US to study with Dennis Preston and returned to complete her work in Lausanne on perceptions of French in the west of Switzerland. Her chapter in this volume is a summary of that larger work. C F is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Pitzer College. She is the

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

399

author of a book on Chicano English, entitled “Chicano English in Context” coming soon from Palgrave. She is interested primarily in issues of language, ethnicity, and identity, but also in bilingualism, language and gender, language acquisition, and sound change. She is currently working on a study of how the language of different ethnic groups is represented in the media. T G is a member of the Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. His main focus of interest is on the morphology and phonology of Dutch dialects in a variationist setting. He is currently working with others on a morphological dialect atlas of the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium (3 volumes planned. 320 maps), the first volume of which will contain pluralization and diminutivization. Other interests include subjective dialectology, presumed vowel shifts in Dutch dialects, verbal inflections on subordinating conjunctions — so called comp-agreement — and the ethnology of ‘Haags,’ the urban dialect of The Hague, the seat of the Dutch administration. P K is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Reading. He has worked on variationist sociolinguistic projects in Bergen, Norway, as well as (in England) Durham, Hull, Milton Keynes, Cambridge and Reading — on all of which he has published. He is particularly interested in dialect contact following from migration, particularly the role of children in formation of new dialects. M K is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Szeged and Head of the Department of Sociolinguistics in the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. His primary interests lie in variation in Hungarian; the contact varieties of Hungarian in Slovakia, Ukraine, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Austria; Hungarian-American bilingualism; educational linguistics and Linguistic Human Rights. He has published Fejezetek a South Bend-i magyar nyelvhasználatból [The Hungarian Language as Spoken in South Bend, Indiana] (1990), Túl a Kecegárdán [Beyond Castle Garden: An American Hungarian Dictionary of the Calumet Region, co-authored with Andrew Vázsonyi] (1995), coedited Hungarian Sociolinguistics [=IJSL # 111, 1995], Language: A Right and a Resource. Approaching Linguistic Human Rights (1999), and edited Language Contact in East-Central Europe [=Multilingua, Volume 19–1/2, 2000]. J L L has been Maitre de conferences in Linguistics (Phonology and Applied Linguistics) at the Sorbonne (University Paris III) since 1996. He studied FinnoUgric linguistics in the Inalco School in Paris (1981–86) and taught French as a foreign language for some years in Finland and Italy. In 1990–91 he lived in the Baltic countries and Czechoslovakia, and finished his Ph. D. on “Dialectal variation and anthropological context: the island of Noirmoutier” in 1991. Since 1998 he has dedicated most of his time to Basque, Finno-Ugric and Mayan linguistics and sociolinguistics. In 1999 he started developing projects for developing tools for Mayan literacy for autonomous Mayan schools in Mexico and Guatemala through literacy workshops with indigenous school masters. He is committed to a “participative (socio)linguistics” and a struggle against segregative and jacobine ideologies. Work on perceptual dialectology has for long been

400

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

one of his interests in the study of linguistic variation, as a tool for developing new paths in anthropological linguistics. D L is Associate Professor of Japanese Linguistics at Tokyo Metropolitan University. In 1995, he received his PhD from Osaka University for a dissertation on attitudes toward variation in Japanese. He is the coeditor of a bilingual text entitled Japanese Sociolinguistics Illustrated (1997) and is a contributing author to several Japanese dialectology and linguistics books. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of English Linguistics, The Japanese Journal of Language in Society, and Kokugogaku. In addition to his work on language attitudes and perceptions, he is conducting fieldwork on the language contact situation of the Bonin Islands. M P. L. MK is a doctoral candidate in German Applied Linguistics at the University of Alberta. She has a BA in Modern Languages (French and German) and Linguistics from McMaster University and an MA in German Applied Linguistics from the University of Alberta. She has taught introductory and intermediate German language courses in Canada as well as sociolinguistics, bilingualism and language attitudes courses at the Universität Bonn in Germany. Her interests lie primarily in language shift among post-WWII immigrants in Edmonton, Canada, but she is also interested in first language attrition, language maintenance, language attitudes, sociolinguistics and translation studies. J M is a Sociologist. She holds an MA in Literature from Michigan State University. She is also a doctoral candidate in linguistics at the University of Alcala (Spain) and is interested in the sociology of language and second language teaching and acquisition. More recently, her interests have included language evaluations, and programs in Spanish for Specific Purposes. F M-F is a dialectologist, sociolinguist and Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Alcala (Spain). His primary interests lie in the areas of Hispanic dialectology, sociolinguistics, and second-language acquisition. Within the area of linguistic geography, he has developed a program for automatic mapping (in col. with E. Moreno and A. Garcia). His publications include reference books for postgraduate studies in Hispanic linguistics and methodology: Metodología sociolingüística (1990), Sociolinguistics and Stylistic Variation (1992), Trabajos de sociolingüística hispánica (1997), Principios de sociolingüística y sociología del lenguaje (1998). He is codirector of Atlas Lingüístico de Castilla-La Mancha. N N is an assistant professor of Linguistics at Rice University, teaching classes in sociolinguistics, phonetics, language and gender, and speech perception. She received her Ph. D. from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997, with a dissertation entitled “The Influence of Social Factors on the Phonetic Perception of Sociolinguistic Variables.” She has worked as a speech scientist for Panasonic Technologies and currently consults for them (and for the Houston office of the FBI). She is on the editorial board of American Speech, and is co-author of the book Folk Linguistics, with Dennis Preston.



ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

401

D R. P is a sociolinguist and Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. His primary interests lie in the areas of language change and variation and variation theory, U. S. dialectology, folk linguistics, discourse, and second language acquisition. Within folk linguistics, he has developed a number of approaches in perceptual dialectology — techniques for acquiring and generalizing (1) mental maps of respondents’ notions of dialect distribution, (2) respondents’ evaluations (along affective lines) of regional varieties, (3) respondents’ understandings of the degree of difference between the speech of their home areas and others, and (4) respondents’ recognition and differentiation strategies in identifying language varieties, both from acoustic perceptual and discoursal points of view. He edited the Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology (Benjamins 1999), is President of the American Dialect Society (2001–03), and will direct the LSA 2003 Institute. M T R is Professor of Linguistic Geography at University of Lecce. Her academic interests include Italian Dialectology, Urban Sociolinguistics, and immigrants’ acquisition of Italian as a second language. She has published several studies in the area of Perceptual Dialectology, particularly with reference to Southern Italy A W is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College and Kings College, University of London, where she is currently working on home/school literacy practices in British primary schools. Her research interests include language and education and accents and dialects of modern British English. She has carried out funded research on dialects and children’s writing, the role of children in language change, the emergence of new town dialects, and home and school literacy practices in inner city contexts. She is co-author (with Eve Gregory) of ‘City Literacies’ (Routledge 2000). Y-C Y is a professor in the Japanese Language and Literature Department at Chungang University in Seoul where he has been since 1992. He received his PhD in 1990 from Osaka University for a dissertation entitled The Language Life of Koreans, and Koreans in Japan and America. He has authored or edited numerous linguistics books in Japanese and Korean. Recently he has been conducting empirical research on communication gaps between Japanese and Koreans, identifying the mechanisms behind misunderstandings on both sides, and the factors behind these. M Y has a BA in English and international relations from Kyoto Sangyo University and an MA in linguistics from the University of Michigan and is finishing a PhD in Linguistics at Michigan State University. She has taught Japanese as a second and/or foreign language in the Republic of China, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Shiga, Osaka, and at Michigan State University, has been involved in training teachers of Japanese, and has published Japanese language teaching materials. In addition to the teaching of Japanese, she is interested in Japanese linguistics in general and Japanese sociolinguistics in particular. She now teaches Japanese language and culture at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.



Name Index

A Alfaraz, Gabriela
xx, xxiii Allan, Keith
124 Allières, Jaques
238 Alvar, M.
296 Ander-Egg, E.
301 Ash, Sharon
98 Avis, Walter S.
277 B Balogh, Lajos
208–209 Barney, Harold
97, 325 Bartha, Csilla
208 Bastardas, A.
319 Baugh, John
369 Beckman, Mary E.
367 Bergeron, Gaston
73, 85 Berns, Jan B.
136 Bex, Anthony
xvi Blanco de Margo, M. I.
296 Bloomfield, Leonard
xv Boberg, Charles
98 Bock, Karl Nielson
65 Boets, H.
15 Boix, E.
319 Boosch, Alwin
54 Bourhis, Richard
13, 14, 15, 72–73 Bruck, M.
75 Butters, Ronald
xix, xx

C Canobbio, Sabina
xx Canut, Cécile
xvi, xxi, 33, 35 Carton, Fernand
223 Carver, Craig
47, 113, 133 Castellanos, I. M.
5, 6 Chambers, J. K.
163, 277 Chauveau, Jean-Paul
223 Cheshire, Jenny
203 Chiorboli, Jean
220 Chomsky, Noam
205, 220 Collaris, J. W. M.
18 Coupland, Nikolas
168, 174, 277, 296 Cruttenden, Alan
187 D Daan, Jo
136 Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer
xxiii, 5, 8, 255, 266, 277 d’Anglejan, Alison
74–75, 79 Davies, A.
13, 14, 15 Davis, J. C.
145 Demirci, Mahide
xxi, 5, 50, 277 De Schutter, G.
15 De Simonis, P.
347 Diercks, Willy
xix, xxi Dittmar, Norbert
53, 62, 68, 347 Doeleman, R.
29 Dulong, Gaston
73, 85

404

NAME INDEX

E Éder, Zoltán
215–216 Edwards, Viv
203 Etxebarria, M.
295 Evans, Betsy
xxi F Fenyvesi, Anna
216 Ferguson, Charles
2 Fernàndez, M.
295, 319 Fillenbaum, S.
xvi, 73, 169, 176 Fishman, Joshua
2 Fodor, Katalin
207 Foerste, William
65 Fossat, Jean-Louis
239 Fought, Carmen
xxii Fromkin, Victoria
321 G Galtier, Gérard
32 García, Mouton
296 García, O.
3 Gardner, R. C.
xvi, 73 Garrett, Peter
168, 174 Gauthier, Pierre
220 Gergen, K.
326 Giles, Howard
xvi, 9, 13, 14, 87, 296, 367 Goavert-Gauthier, Suzanne
75 Goebel, Hans
xix, 220, 345 Goeman, Ton
xxii, 136, 137, 141, 143, 145, 345 Goossens, Jan
138–139 Gósy, Maria
215 Gould, Peter
52, 255, 263 Gõz, Józef
207 Graff, David
368 Granda, G. de
296 Grassi, C.
346 Greverus, Ina-Maria
52 Grootaers, Willem
xvi Gullestad, Marianne
154 Gyáni, Gabor
207 H Han, Mieko Shimizu
367, 368, 369 Hartley, Laura
xvi, xxii, 278, 354 Hartley, Sue
187 Haugen, Einer
238

Hayata, Teruhiro
254 Hinskens, Frans
203 Hinton, Leanne
113 Hirayama, Teruo
368 Hodgsen, R. C.
xvi, 73, 169, 176 Hoenigswald, Henry
xv Hofstätter, Peter
54 Holderness, T.
183 Horii, Reichi
390–391 Hotzenköcherle, Rudolf
62 Hout, Roeland van
136 Hufschmidt, Jochen
54 Hughes, Arthur
202 Huszár, Ágnes
207 I Iannàcaro, Gabriele
xx Idsardi, William
369 Imai, Terumi
367, 368, 389 Imre, Samu
205–206, 208, 216 Inoue, Fumio
71, 387, 393 Inoue, Shoichi
390 J Jun, Sun-Ah
367 K Kallmeyer, Werner
53, 68 Kalman, Béla
208 Kamp, Klaus
68 Katz, David
53 Katz, Rosa
53 Kawauchi, Atsuro
390 Kerswill, Paul
xxii, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 161, 162, 163, 169, 175, 176, 178, 180, 186, 188, 189, 192, 195, 196, 198, 199, 203, 368, 369, 370 Kim, Chin-W.
254, 255, 256 Kim, Wan-jin
254, 255 King, R.
255 Kitamura, Hajime
376 Klein, Eva
54 Klein, G.
347 Kleiner, Brian
xxi, 5, 50, 277 Kleivan, Jo
154 Knott, Judith
140 Kolde, Gottfried
53, 54, 55, 68 Kolsrud, Sigurd
153

NAME INDEX Kondo, Mariko
367, 371, 374 Konrád, György
207, 216 Kontra, Miklós
xxii, xxiii, 206, 208, 215 Kremer, Ludger
136 Kretzschmar, William, Jr.
xvi Kropman, J. A.
18 Kuiper, Lawrence
266, 267 Kurath, Hans
100 L Labov, William
41, 95, 98, 101, 151–152, 184, 322, 352, 354–355, 369 La Chaussée, François de
220 Lambert, Wallace
xvi, 55, 73–74, 103, 169, 176, 296, 367 Langman, Juliette
207 Lantai, András
207 Larsen, Amund B.
153 Laver, John
24, 390 Lappin, Kerry
75 Lastra, Y.
296 Lavois, Thomas
73, 80–83, 84 Leclerc, Thérèse
75 Lehn, W.
277 Lenneberg, Erik
157 Léonard, Jean Léo
xxiii, 31, 221, 227 LePage, Robert
108, 162, 175 Lepelly, René
222 Lepicq, Dominique
72, 73 L’Eplattenier-Saugy, Caroline
xx, xxiv Lewis, A.
14, 15 Lindow, Wolfgang
68 Lippi-Green, Rosina
133 Llamas, Carmen
187–188 Llanes, J.
3 Local, John
187 Long, Daniel
71, 249, 250, 263, 266, 267, 277 López Morales, H.
296, 318 Lovins, Julie Beth
367 Luthin, Herbert
113 Lynch, Kevin
68 M McDavid, Raven I.
101 McCawley, James D.
388 McClenaghan, Paul
367 McKinnie, Meghan
xxiii

405

MacLaury, Robert
124 Maddalon, M.
203 Maeda, Isamu
367, 390 Maiden, M.
331, 340 Makimura, Shiyou
390 Martin, Henri
223 Martín Zorraquino, M. A.
296 Mattheier, Klaus
53, 54 Mear-Crine, Annie
75 Meertens, P. J.
62 Mickartz, Heinrich
54 Middleton, Lucy
188 Miglietta, A.
346 Milroy, James
177, 187 Milroy, Lesley
xxi, 41, 177, 187, 367, 368 Molina, I.
296 Moreno Fernandez, Francisco
xxiii, 296, 315, 318, 319 Moreno Fernandez, Juliana
xxiii, 318 Mounier, Emmanuel
219 Münstermann, H.
136 N Nakamura, Tamotsu
254 Nesse, Agnete
153 Niedzielski, Nancy
xix, xxiii-xiv, 322, 324, 369, 370 Noseworthy, Ronald
277 O Ogura, Shimpei
252–253 Orleans, Peter
52 Osgood, Charles
54 Otero, J.
319 Otheguy, R.
3 P Parry, M.
331, 340 Partin, Allyn
113 Payne, Arvila
96, 163 Peng, Fei
367 Peterson, Gordon E.
97, 325 Pignon, Jacques
220 Pléh, Csaba
207 Preston, Dennis R.
xvi, xix, xxi, xxii, 2, 5, 41, 42, 71, 72, 76, 77–78, 82, 87, 90, 95, 96–97, 113, 119, 121, 124, 125–126, 133, 173, 174, 176, 192, 205, 237, 238,

406

NAME INDEX

241, 245, 249, 268, 273, 277, 278–279, 300, 318, 321–322, 345, 351, 352–354, 368 Purnell, Thomas
369

Stoltz, Gerhart
153 Strand, Elizabeth A.
369, 370 Sugito, Miyoko
367, 369, 370 Svenson, Lars O.
221, 227

Q Quastoff, U.
345 Quilis, A.
296

T Tabouret-Keller, Andrée
108 Tahara, Hiroshi
367, 369, 390 Tamás, Gáspár Miklós
207 Terestyéni, Tamás
206–207 Thelander, Mats
203 Thiers, Jacques
220 Thibaud, Aimé
232–234 Tremblay, Louise
75–76, 89 Trudgill, Peter
13, 14, 15, 41, 167, 173, 177, 202, 354, 390 Trumper, John
203 Tsuchida, Ayako
367 Tsujimura, Natsuko
367, 388, 393 Tucker, G. Richard
74–75, 79, 367

R Ramírez, A.
296 Ravier, Xavier
240 Reenen, P. Th. van
141, 143, 145 Rémillard, L.
75 Rensink, W. B.
xv, 300 Rickford, John
133 Rim, S.-H.
255 Rodman, Robert
321 Rodríguez, M.
295, 319 Rohlfs, G.
342, 347 Romanello, Maria Teresa
xiv Rosenmayr, Leopold
57 Ross, F.
183 Ruffino, G.
346 Rundhovde, Gunnvor
153 Ryan, Ellen B.
xvi, 9, 87, 367 S Salvador, G.
319 Sanada, Shinji
257, 368 Sándor, Klára
207 Sandøy, Helge
203 Scargill, M. H.
277 Schäfers, Bernhard
68 Schilling-Estes, Natalie
96, 108 Schlieben-Lange, B.
347 Sebastian, R. J.
9, 87 Séguy, Jean
220, 238 Shibatani, Masayoshi
367, 388, 393 Sibata, Takesi
82 Siguán, M.
296, 319 Singy, Pascal
351–352, 354–355, 358 Smakman, D.
21 Sobrero, A. A.
340, 347 Solano Rojas, Y.
296 Solmecke, Gert
54 Stead, R.
183 Stellmacher, Dieter
52, 68

U Umaña, Aguiar, J.
296 Umeda, Hiroyuki
252–253, 254 V Vallverdú, F.
295 Van Bezooijen, Renée
xx-xxi, 14, 15, 21, 30 Vance, Timothy
367, 393 Van Westerlaak, J. M.
18 Váradi, Tamás
206 Verreault, Claude
73, 80–83, 84 Vesch, Werner
53, 54, 68 Viereck, Wolfgang
220 W Warkentyne, Henry
277 Warner, Natasha
368, 390 Watts, Richard
xxii Weijnen, Antonius
54, 55, 56, 66, 136 Weinreich, Uriel
215 Wells, John C.
183 Werlen, Erika
68 White, Rodney
52, 255, 263 Whittle, Pam
203 Williams, Ann
xxii, 168, 169, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180, 186, 188, 189, 192, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201



NAME INDEX Winkler, J.
136 Wolfram, Walt
326 Y Yi, Sang-Ok
254

407

Yim, Young-Cheol
xxiii, 257, 258, 264, 272 Yonezawa, Midori
xxiv Yoshioka, Hirohide
367 Z Zappa, Frank
113 Zumthor, P.
344



Subject Index

A acquisition (of dialect)
163 adverbs
156 African American English
95 age
18, 27, 48–49, 57–58, 176, 177, 180, 183, 188–189, 195, 201, 300, 307–310, 315, 316, 354, 361–362, 364 American English
24–29 apparent time
201 Argentina
5, 8 attribution theory
168–169, 170 attitudes
xx-xxi, 13, 53–54, 72, 73–76, 174, 257–258, 277, 293, 294, 345, 369–370 attrition (of dialects)
53 availability
176, 241 awareness (of language)
173, 220, 238–240 B beautiful (dialect, language)
17–26, 29, 205–217 Bedum (The Netherlands)
16, 18 Bergen (Norway)
151–172, 175 bidialectalism
37, 157 bilingualism
1, 303, 313 Boston
115 boundary (language)
xxvi British English
24–29, 323 Bursa (Turkey)
42 C California
xxii, 113–134 Canada
xxiii, 73

Canadian English
116, 277–294 Catalan
298 center/periphery
31 change (dialect)
191, 198 China (Korean language usage)
252–253, 255 cluster analysis
83–89, 105–106 Cockney
192 code-switching
58 Colombia
5, 8 comprehension
55 consonants
156, 252–253, 381–383, 389–390 contact
2, 299–300 context driven judgments
14, 21, 27–29 continuum (of dialects)
169–170 correct (see “standard”)
xx, xxii-xxiii, 2–5, 76, 83–86, 124–126, 206, 270, 278, 282–284, 322, 352, 357–363, 364 correspondence analysis
302–303 corrupt language
46 Costa Rica
5 critical age
157, 170 cross-linguistic ratings
23–24, 28 Cuba
xx, 1–11 D degree of difference (see “distinctiveness”) dialect/language
31–50 dialect distance
51–52, 66–67, 77, 88–89, 134–138, 153 dialect image
71 dialectology
73, 136, 138–140, 220–231, 252–253, 298, 329

410

SUBJECT INDEX

dialectometry
220 diaphone
32 diasystem
32 diffuse
xxii, 175, 177 discourse (evidence)
35–36, 106–108, 237–238, 242–246, 334–335, 353 distance (geographic)
177 distinctiveness (of dialect)
xxii, xxiii, 115–123, 138–145, 202, 228–231, 278–279, 284–287, 289, 290, 301, 353, 357–363 Dominican Republic
5, 6 Dutch
xxii, 13–30, 54, 135–149 E Eastern (US) English
129 economic development
6 education
311–314, 316, 354, 362 Euskera (Basque)
298 F factor analysis
23 familiarity
15, 179, 189, 200, 231, 240 Florida
121–122 focusing
xxii, 162, 175, 177, 183–185, 192–195, 201–202 folk linguistics
xix, 173 foreign influences
47, 49 France
xxiv French
24, 28–29, 71–93, 219–248, 292, 351–365 French (Canadian vs. continental)
74 G Galician
298 Geneva
352 gender
41–50, 264 gender (grammatical)
155 German
24, 28–29, 51–70 Germany
xxi, 8, 265, 272 good (dialect, language) (see “correct”) H hand-drawn map
41–43, 114–118, 249–250, 290, 352, 356 harsh (language)
46 historical varieties
21–22, 37

home (dialect)
52, 131–132, 135–136, 141, 145, 152–153, 160–161, 179, 181–182, 199, 212, 214, 262, 265, 267–269, 301, 317, 340, 364 Hull (England)
177–189 Hungarian dialects
xxii-xxiii, 205–217 hypercorrection
140 I identification (of dialect)
51–52, 64–67, 104–107, 167, 173–202, 240, 367–396 ignorance (of dialect)
116 identity
38 imitation (dialect)
xxi, 53, 95–112, 227 imposed norm
13 Indiana
5 inherent value
13 insecurity (linguistic)
258, 265, 351, 354, 355, 357, 363 intelligibility judgments
15, 20–21, 28, 46–47, 257–258, 339 isogloss
47 Italian
24, 28–29, 329–349 Italy
xxiv J Japan
249–251, 265–271 Japanese
xvi, 367–396 K K-means (cluster analysis)
7–8, 280 Korean
xvi, 249–275 L labels (identifiers) (of dialect)
251, 290–292, 296, 357 language planning
295 Lausanne (Switzerland)
352 leveling
xxviii, 176, 195, 198–199 Liessel (The Netherlands)
17–18, 20 linguistic insecurity
72 Liverpool
187 locative descriptor
251 London
192 M Mali
31–50 Mandingo
xxi, 31–50 maps, hand-drawn
77–83, 174

SUBJECT INDEX matched-guise
5, 54–55, 57, 73–74, 103, 169, 176, 296 mental maps
52, 65, 67, 337, 343–344 Miami (Florida)
1–3 Midwestern (US) English
117, 119–120, 123, 129–130, 321 Michigan
xxiii-xiv, 322–327 Milton Keynes (England)
153, 177–183, 192–199 mixing (of dialects)
158, 163–167 mobility
200 Montreal
xxi, 71–93 mora
380 morpholexical features
159–160, 168, 170, 174, 222, 342 morphology
371 morphophonemes
156 morphosyntactic (features of dialects)
152, 168, 221–222, 241 multidimensional scaling
85–89, 302–303 N nasality
246 national surface
263 Netherlands
xxi network (social)
177, 183, 188, 198, 200 Neuchâtel (Switzerland)
352 Newcastle
187 news accounts (of dialect)
207–208 New York City
115, 129 Noirmoutier (France)
219–248 norm-driven judgments
14, 28–29 Northern Cities Vowel Shift
97, 100, 323, 326 North Korea
254–255 Norway
xxii O occupation
60–62, 235–236, 288 Okracoke (North Carolina)
96 P periphery
141, 351 phonetic features (of dialects)
65, 67, 152, 167, 174, 179, 183, 186, 187–189, 198, 206, 222–228, 232, 233, 241, 324–325, 341–342, 367–396 pitch
168

411

pitch accent (Japanese)
370–371, 374, 381, 387, 389 pleasant (language)
xx, xxii-xiii, 2–5, 13–14, 76, 86–89, 249, 259–265, 278, 279–282, 288–289, 353, 357–363 Plotnik
97 plural forms
155 political system
8–10, 254–255, 265, 266, 295 prepositions
156 prestige
xv proper (dialect, language), see “correct” professions
18 Puerto Rico
5, 6 Q Québec
71–93 R /r/
73, 195 race
5–7 Randstad (The Netherlands)
17, 20 rate (of speech)
168, 230, 340 Reading (England)
153, 177–195 regression analysis
143 regional accents
14 rural (see “urban/rural”) Russian
24, 28–29 S salience (of linguistic features)
173, 175, 386–387 security (linguistic)
258, 278, 293, 322, 355 semantic differential (scales)
15, 54–56 sex
57, 62–63, 288, 300, 305–307, 315, 316, 318, 360, 364, 383–386, 391 similarity-driven judgments
15, 28 slang,
113, 131–132 Social Constructivist Theory
326–327 sound-driven judgments
14, 28 Southern American English
115, 120–123, 127–128 Southern Vowel Shift
97–99, 101 South Midland (American English)
96, 103 Southwest (US) English
116, 117, 120 Spain
xxiii Spanish (American)
117, 131, 296

412

SUBJECT INDEX

Spanish (Cuban)
1–11, 296 Spanish (European)
2–4, 8, 24, 28–29, 295–320 speech community
151–152 standard (language) (see “correct”)
13–14, 16, 18–19, 22, 27, 134, 136, 251, 256–257, 259, 265, 266–267, 298–299, 321, 323, 363 standardized score maps
263–274 status (social)
20, 48–49, 52, 54, 55, 57, 152, 177, 180, 183, 185, 188–189, 198, 300, 355 stereotypes (social)
14, 321, 326, 332, 356 stereotypes (dialect)
53, 67, 113, 131, 154, 169, 228, 246, 321, 332, 339 stigmatized (language)
278 strength (of dialect)
153 stril (Norwegian)
154 style
168 subjective boundaries
54, 145 suprasegmentals
156, 162–162, 168 Switzerland
xxiv, 351–365 Signalyze
97 T t-deletion (Dutch)
140–144 Texas
115, 121–122

The Hague
16, 18–19, 21 tonemes (Norwegian)
156, 162 Tielt (Belgium)
17–19 Turkey
xxi, 5, 41–50 U ugly (language)
17–26, 29 urban accents
14, 329–349 urban/rural
35, 63, 151–172, 266, 352, 356 V variety descritor
251 Vaud (Switzerland)
352 verb forms
155 voice quality
24–25, 168, 179, 201, 230, 390 vowel devoicing
xxiv, 367–396 vowel length
140–144, 156, 253–254 vowel (system)
33, 253–254 W Waspik (The Netherlands)
17–18, 20 Welsh English
174 West Virginia
95–112 Weert (The Netherlands)
17–18, 20 word list
96 written language
206