The southern vowel shift in women from Mississippi

Abstract

Though previous research has documented the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) in Alabama and Tennessee, no research has focused on the SVS in Mississippi. The majority of SVS research has also focused on European-Americans and assumed that African-Americans do not participate in the shift. The SVS consists of three stages: /aɪ/ monophthongization; lowering and centralizing of /e/ toward /ɛ/ and raising and peripheralizing of /ɛ/ toward /e/; and lowering and centalizing of /i/ toward /ɪ/ and raising and peripheralizing of /ɪ/ toward /i/. In this study, data were collected from women from northern (N = 11) and central (N = 23) Mississippi, with central residents evenly recruited from urban and rural areas. Of these, 15 were European-American and 19 were African-American. Participants read a list of words including the target vowels in bt and bd frames, and then F1 and F2 were measured at five equidistant points. F1, F2, and trajectory length were analyzed to determine to what extent participants exhibited the SVS. There were effects of Region, Rurality, and Race such that central residents shifted more than northern residents, rural residents shifted more than urban residents, and African-American residents shifted more than European-American residents. These results suggest that African-Americans do participate in the SVS.