The role of gender, ethnicity, and rurality in Mississippi back-vowel fronting

Abstract

While tense back-vowel fronting is primarily associated with young women throughout most of the United States, it has been documented in the speech of both men and women from a wide range of ages in the South (Fridland, 2001; Clopper, Pisoni, and de Jong, 2005). However, most of the work documenting back-vowel fronting has been limited to White speakers and has not explored social variation related to ethnicity with the exception of Fridland and Bartlett (2006) who found that both White and Black speakers in Memphis exhibited back-vowel fronting. The present study uses isolated productions of beat, boot, book, boat,and bought by 73 participants from Mississippito explore the role of gender, ethnicity, and rurality in back-vowel fronting. Gender and ethnicity—but not rurality—proved significant, and a significant gender by ethnicity interaction was found. These results indicate that White speakers from Mississippi front tense back vowels more than Black speakers and that White women are currently leading back-vowel fronting in this region. These results are consistent with previous findings that men participate in back-vowel fronting in the South, but they contradict Fridland and colleagues’ findings that men lead /u/-fronting and that Black speakers are participating back-vowel fronting.