Walt Wolfram Research Articles

Interview with APPLE Lecture Speaker Dr. Walt Wolfram

On March 3, 2023, the Studies in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (SALT) journal interviewed Dr. Walt Wolfram, an invited speaker for the 2023 APPLE Lecture Series hosted by the Applied Linguistics and TESOL Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
 Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project. He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s and published 23 books and more than 300 articles. Over the last two decades, he and his students have conducted more than 3,500 sociolinguistic interviews with residents of North Carolina and beyond. In addition to his research interests, Professor Wolfram is particularly interested in the application of sociolinguistic information to the public, including the production of television documentaries, the construction of museum exhibits, and the development of innovative formal and informal materials related to language diversity for different institutions. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award (the highest award given to a citizen of North Carolina), Caldwell Humanities Laureate from the NC Humanities Council, the Holladay Medal at NC State, the Board of Governor’s Holshouser Award for Excellence in Public Service, and the Linguistics, Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Society of America. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and served as President of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. We thank Dr. Wolfram for his participation in this interview.

7. /aI/-Raising on the U.S. East Coast

Research Article| December 01 2021 7. /aI/-Raising on the U.S. East Coast: Resurgence, Retreat, and Resilience Natalie Schilling Natalie Schilling natalie schilling is professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. She specializes in language variation and change in American English, including ethnicity based and stylistic variation. She also conducts research, training, and case work in forensic linguistics. She is coauthor (with Walt Wolfram) of American English: Dialects and Variation (3rd ed., Blackwell, 2016); coeditor (with J. K. Chambers) of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (2nd ed., Blackwell, 2013), and author of Sociolinguistic Fieldwork (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013). She currently serves as editor of the Publications of the American Dialect Society (PADS) monograph series. Email: ns3@georgetown.edu. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Publication of the American Dialect Society (2021) 106 (1): 147–170. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-9551332 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Natalie Schilling; 7. /aI/-Raising on the U.S. East Coast: Resurgence, Retreat, and Resilience. Publication of the American Dialect Society 1 December 2021; 106 (1): 147–170. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-9551332 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Dialect SocietyThe Publication of the American Dialect Society Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2021 American Dialect Society2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Celebrating the belittled and understanding the beloved: A review of Talking Black in America - Walt Wolfram, Neal Hutchison & Danica Cullinan (producers), Talking Black in America: The Story of African American English. Raleigh: The Language and Life Project at NC State, 2017. DVD $20

Celebrating the belittled and understanding the beloved: A review of Talking Black in America - Walt Wolfram, Neal Hutchison & Danica Cullinan (producers), Talking Black in America: The Story of African American English. Raleigh: The Language and Life Project at NC State, 2017. DVD $20 - Volume 35 Issue 3

Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community ed. by Amy D. Clark and Nancy M. Hayward (review)

Reviewed by: Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community ed. by Amy D. Clark and Nancy M. Hayward Donna Corriher Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community. Edited by Amy D. Clark, and Nancy M. Hayward. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013. Pp. 264.) One part qualitative research, another part fiction, Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community is an important contribution to ongoing conversations about the Appalachian region. The book is not exhaustive nor should in any way be considered the final assessment regarding Appalachian English(es), but this is not the editors’ intent; rather, they add fresh insight to and reiterate or refute some of the old arguments about teaching vernacular-speaking students. The book begins with personal anecdotes from the editors, Amy D. Clark and Nancy M. Hayward. The contributors of the essays and works that follow are noted scholars in their fields—poets, fiction writers, or any combination of all. Primarily residents or teachers in the Appalachian region, from George Ella Lyon of Harlan County, Kentucky to Michael Ellis, Professor of English at Missouri State, who has been looking at British influences on the dialects of the region since at least 1992, the authors share a common interest and passion for Appalachian English. This well-organized book begins with Michael Montgomery’s essay, “The Historical Background and Nature of the Englishes of Appalachia.” Part I explores dialects and dialect features, the power of speech in community and social connections, voice, African American speech inside and outside [End Page 92] the region, and education. Editor Amy D. Clark explains: “One of the problems with those of us who teach writing is that we tend to look at language prescriptively instead of descriptively. We mistakenly believe that we own the rights to how language may be used, an ideology that is passed down from teacher to student” (115). Although Clark acknowledges the resolution of the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 1974 that all dialects be embraced in the classroom, she finds instruction still lacking this recognition. Sample essays summarizing qualitative research include “The Appalachian Range: The Limits of Language Variation in West Virginia” by Kirk Hazen, Jaime Flesher, and Erin Simmons, which explains the results of a study of ten dialect features. “Think Locally: Language as Community Practice” by Nancy M. Hayward explores the development of the term Appalachian English, and, most specifically, the errors of the historical definitions. “African American Speech in Southern Appalachia” by Walt Wolfram details his research in five African American communities across North Carolina, two in Appalachia, and three in the coastal region. “Voices in the Appalachian Classroom,” by Editor Amy D. Clark is an exploration of her own experiences in the classroom, as both student and teacher. The sequence of the essays is logical; Clark and Hayward have arranged the articles to move from the earliest recognition and commentary upon Appalachian Englishes to usage of the language in literature. Michael Ellis’s closing essay for Part I, “The Treatment of Dialect in Appalachian Literature,” segues well into Part II, “Voices from Appalachia,” a collection of work by writers belonging to the region. The second part of the book includes excerpts from longer works, short fiction, and poetry. The work in this section, including excerpts by George Ella Lyon, Silas House, Lee Smith, Jane Hicks, Denise Giardina, Ron Rash, Rita Quillen, Crystal Wilkinson, and Anne Shelby, enhance the essays in Part I by providing evidence that an Appalachian voice is an eloquent voice. The book is already receiving favorable reviews. S. A. Dooley in Choice Review: Reviews for Academic Libraries describes Part I as “highly accessible” and Part II as “showcas[ing] some of the well-known writers who are included in Appalachian [S]tudies curricula” (80). Peter Brackney reviews the book on his blog, kaintuckeean, and, although sensitive to the goals of the book, his review is in large part a declaration of his own prejudices when it comes to dialects. He states that, “[a]s a society, our ears seek that same uniform voice from those around us”—an overgeneralization. He finds Part I “too deep for the casual reader” (www.kaintuckeean.com/2013/07/talking-appalachian.html). The book’s goal...

English as a contact language

1. Introduction: nothing but a contact language ... Marianne Hundt and Daniel Schreier 2. The role of contact in English syntactic change in the Old and Middle English periods Olga Fischer 3. Multilingualism and code-switching as mechanisms of contact-induced lexical change in late Middle English Herbert Schendl 4. The contact origins of Standard English Laura Wright 5. English as a contact language in the British Isles Juhani Klemola 6. English as a contact language in Ireland and Scotland Raymond Hickey 7. The contact dynamics of socioethnic varieties in North America Walt Wolfram 8. English as a contact language: the 'New Englishes' Edgar W. Schneider 9. English as a contact language: lesser-known varieties Daniel Schreier 10. The role of mundane mobility and contact in dialect death and dialect birth David Britain 11. The diversification of English: old, new and emerging epicenters Marianne Hundt 12. Driving forces in English contact linguistics Salikoko S. Mufwene 13. Substrate influence and universals in the emergence of contact Englishes: reevaluating the evidence Donald Winford 14. Transfer and contact in migrant and multiethnic communities: the conversational historical be + -ing present in South African Indian English Rajend Mesthrie 15. English as a contact language: the role of children and adolescents Paul Kerswill, Jenny Cheshire, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen 16. Innovation and contact: the role of adults (and children) Sarah G. Thomason 17. Accelerator or inhibitor? On the role of substrate influence in interlanguage development Terence Odlin 18. Speculating on the future of English as a contact language Christian Mair.

A-prefixing in Civil War letters from Northwestern South Carolina: Constraints, individual and community grammars

The present study deals with the process of a-prefixation in the mid-nineteenth-century dialect(s) of a selected part of South Carolina. This phenomenon is said to have been brought to America with immigrants from the southern parts of Great Britain. For the purpose of the study, a corpus of Civil War letters has been compiled in such a way as to assure at least relative geographical and social homogeneity. Specifically, letters written by soldiers of the rank of private hailing from three counties located in South Carolina, i.e. Greenville, Pickens, and York, found their way to the corpus. Since these privates wrote as they spoke, elements of the spoken idiom are presumed to transpire in their correspondence. On the basis of this corpus both quantitative and qualitative studies of the grammatical phenomenon known as a-prefixation have been carried out. Their purpose is to verify whether the constraints proposed by Walt Wolfram for the twentieth century context also hold in the case of a century earlier. Finally, this investigation looks at the process of prefixation from the perspectives of idiolects and community grammars.

C. T. Adger, Walt Wolfram, and D. Christian, Dialects in schools and communities. 2nd edition.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Pp ix, 226. Pb. $39.95 Hb. $79.95.

C. T. Adger, Walt Wolfram, and D. Christian, Dialects in schools and communities. 2nd edition.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. Pp ix, 226. Pb. $39.95 Hb. $79.95.

Interview with Walt Wolfram

Interview with Walt Wolfram

Review Essays

Review Essays: Defining Dialect David Johnson American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast Ed. Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward Do You Speak American? Robert MacNeil and William Cran A Teachers’ Introduction to African American English: What a Writing Teacher Should Know Teresa M. Redd and Karen Schuster Webb.

American English: Dialects and Variation, by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling‐Estes

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WALT WOLFRAM &amp; NATALIE SCHILLING-ESTES, American English: Dialects and variation

Walt Wolfram & Natalie Schilling-Estes, American English: Dialects and variation. (Language in Society, 25). 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Pp. xv, 452. Pb $36.95.American English, an introductory textbook about dialect variation, is a revised version of the textbook that first appeared in 1998 and represents another addition to the array of educational materials about American dialects that the first author has been producing for over three decades. It is a versatile textbook with an intended audience of any student who takes a “course on dialects” (p. x). Its lack of linguistic formalism and statistics makes it accessible to students with no linguistics background, and its continued emphasis on the relevance of dialect awareness to American society will help non-linguists apply the material effectively. Owing to its wide scope, it cannot delve too deeply into any of the theoretical issues; however, its succinct overviews of the debates, annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter, and copious examples from a range of dialects make it a useful reference for experienced linguists.

Social Dialectology: In Honour of Peter Trudgill (review)

Reviewed by: Social dialectology: In honour of Peter Trudgill ed. by David Britain and Jenny Cheshire Matthew J. Gordon Social dialectology: In honour of Peter Trudgill. Ed. by David Britain and Jenny Cheshire. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. ix, 343. ISBN 1588114031. $144 (Hb). This volume pays tribute to one of the most influential figures in sociolinguistics. Peter Trudgill’s influence stems from his decades of innovative research into a broad range of linguistic topics. Fittingly, this collection honors his contributions to the field with a diverse set of papers from leading scholars. While the breadth of research contained here is remarkable, the volume is more cohesive than many festschriften due to the editorial decision to limit the scope to work in social dialectology. The book comprises twenty specially commissioned papers as well as an introductory essay from the editors and a list of Trudgill’s publications. Dialect contact has been central to Trudgill’s scholarly interests for much of his career, and several of the papers in this collection examine this line of research. Dennis R. Preston investigates contact between northern and southern phonologies in Michigan by detailing accommodation (and lack thereof) among African Americans and the descendants of Appalachian immigrants. Arabic dialects in contact are the focus of Enam Al-Wer’s paper, which examines the development of a pronominal suffix in Amman, Jordan. This work considers the mechanisms involved in new-dialect formation as do two other papers, Margaret Maclagan and Elizabeth [End Page 673] Gordon’s analysis of phonological variation among the first generation of anglophone New Zealanders, and Daniel Schreier’s discussion of the development of Tristan da Cunha English (focused on verbal inflection). Dialect contact in Trudgill’s native England is also examined. Using data from his studies of the Fens, David Britain considers two individuals whose speech distinguishes them from their communities. Paul Kerswill adopts a wider geographical focus in his paper, which explicates the process of dialect leveling and considers its role in the spread of several features across England. The geographical diffusion of linguistic forms is also addressed by William Labov who examines the ‘cascade model’ of change using data on phonological and lexical variables in American English. Similar concerns are taken up by Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy in his study of the growing influence of Castilian forms on Murcian Spanish. A diffusion scenario is considered but rejected by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes in their comparative study of copula variation in several communities along the American Atlantic coast. Language attitudes are examined by Sharon Millar in an intriguing study of normativity among Danish schoolchildren. Henry Widdowson and Barbara Seidlhofer treat normative attitudes of a different sort as they review various conceptions of ‘The virtue of the vernacular’. Miklós Kontra explores how a sense of place affects language usage by considering patterns of toponymic variation in Hungarian. Papers such as J. K. Chambers’s comparative exploration of the sociolinguistics of immigration, Jan Terje Faarlund’s detailing of the relationship between the Nynorsk standard language and regional dialects of Norwegian, and Maria Sifianou’s review of linguistic variation in Greece all offer a macro-level focus on language in society. By contrast, social dynamics on a more local scale are investigated in contributions from Richard J. Watts and Ernst Håkon Jahr, who discuss possible cases of ‘anti-languages’ within a Swiss German youth movement and the Norwegian town of Mandal, respectively. Though they present empirical data, almost all of the papers succeed in drawing connections to larger theoretical issues. Lesley Milroy, for example, uses data from several different sociolinguistic settings to delineate the role of ideology in phonological change. Jim Milroy also considers the nature of sound change focusing on the fundamental question of when and how a change begins. Theoretical as well as methodological issues are examined by Jenny Cheshire as she considers the sociolinguistic functioning of...

WALT WOLFRAM &amp; ERIK R. THOMAS, The development of African American English

Walt Wolfram &amp; Erik R. Thomas, The development of African American English. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Pp. ix, 237. Pb $40.95.Wolfram and Thomas (W&amp;T) have produced a meticulous study of African American English and its development, based on extensive fieldwork and ensuing linguistic analyses in Hyde County, North Carolina. W&amp;T worked in collaboration with Elaine W. Green, Becky Childes, Dan Beckett, and Benjamin Torbert. Any student of African American English, or of sociolinguistics in general, will find a wealth of knowledge in this volume that reflects advanced studies of African American English that connect synchronic studies with their diachronic relevance.

Review of Wolfram, Dannenberg, Knick &amp; Oxendine (2002): Fine in the World: Lumbee Language in Time and Place

Review of Wolfram, Dannenberg, Knick &amp; Oxendine (2002): Fine in the World: Lumbee Language in Time and Place

Copula variability in Gullah

Many researchers have investigated the copula for possible links between African American Vernacular English (aave) and Atlantic Creoles, a connection that has served as the foundation of the Creolist Hypothesis in the on-going debate over the origins of aave. One variety that has been of particular interest in this debate is Gullah, which has been hypothetically linked to aave since some of the earliest statements of the Creolist Hypothesis. To date, however, very little research has been done on copula variability in Gullah itself. This study, therefore, provides an analysis of copula variability in present affirmative contexts in Gullah. Variation is found among full, contracted, and zero forms in 1st person singular, plural/2nd person singular, and 3rd person singular environments. The analysis also reveals some parallels between Gullah and aave that offer support for the theory of an aave/creole connection.I would like to acknowledge the Department of Linguistics and the Center for African Studies at Ohio State University for covering the cost of some of the fieldwork for this study. I would also like to acknowledge the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina for providing several hours of recordings used for the study. My sincerest thanks to research assistants Jason Sellers and Cherlon Ussery for help with transcriptions and data tabulation and to the following friends and colleagues for their help and support during various stages of this project: Emily Bender, Eugenia Deas, Vennie Deas-Moore, Brian Joseph, Michele Nichols, Terence Odlin, John Paolillo, Donald Winford, and Walt Wolfram. And, finally, my thanks to James Walker and an anonymous LVC reviewer for their helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. I accept full responsibility for any remaining errors.

Making the Connection: Language and Academic Achievement Among African American Students (review)

Reviewed by: Making the connection: Language and academic achievement among African American students ed. by Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian, Orlando Taylor Iman Makeba Laversuch Making the connection: Language and academic achievement among African American students. Ed. by Carolyn Temple Adger, Donna Christian, and Orlando Taylor. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1999. Pp. 180. Despite many significant advances in African American scholastic achievement, this group still consistently ranks among the lowest on standardized tests nationwide. To address this problem, the Coalition on Language Diversity in Education convened in January 1998. An outgrowth of that conference, this book seeks to tackle this ongoing problem from a number of different and yet still complementary angles. The multidimensional approach taken here is quite necessary, for as the contributors themselves point out, African American scholastic achievement is far more complicated than it is sometimes conceived, encompassing a number of different, interrelated factors. According to John Rickford, all across America, poor academic performance among African American students can be seen as a function of diminished school funding and reduced teacher involvement. However, as Terry Meier explains, even among the most exceptionally dedicated educators who have ample resources at their disposal, unchallenged ignorance and prejudice have continued to poison the academic environment. Courtney Cazden rightly stresses that if the circle of underachievement is to [End Page 849] be broken, the relationship between students and teachers must be better understood. Towards that end, Kelli Harris-Wright and Asa G. Hilliard present many of the lessons learned from the ongoing Ebonics debate along with recent linguistic and pedagogical research on bidialectal programs. This information is then effectively placed by Walt Wolfram within the larger context of language acquisition involving exchanges between speakers of nonstandard and standard varieties of English. Geneva Smitherman follows this up by stressing the importance of using this to establish a national policy for success. However, as John Baugh reminds us, before this goal can be achieved, there is still much to be done. In many cases, we still have yet to come to a consensus on a set of terms with which to discuss this topic. What exactly is meant by the terms dialect or variety, standard or nonstandard, vernacular or slang? The result of this lack of agreement is unmistakable. All too often, what begins as an academic discussion degenerates into a series of polemical tirades with little or no hope for mutual understanding or progress. On the negative side, this newest reference on African American achievement tends to suffer somewhat from redundancy, needlessly repeating not only points which have already been made in previous chapters but also in other works written on the topic. In addition, there is a slight tendency among some writers to overgeneralize research findings. As Orlando Taylor reminds us, such overgeneralization can be exceedingly counterproductive. No two African Americans are alike, and consequently we must stop hoping to find the one magical cure for healing the wounds suffered by this community. Having said this, on the positive side, this reference achieves much by simply stressing the need to finally use our collective common sense. No student, irrespective of his/her racial classification, can perform his/her very best without adequate support. Thus, as the authors reiterate themselves, the issue of academic achievement is not simply a question of education, it is a question of human rights. Iman Makeba Laversuch Frieburg University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Walt Wolfram, Carolyn Temple Adger, &amp; Donna Christian, Dialects in schools and communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999. Pp. xi, 239. Hb $49.95, pb $24.95.

This book is something we've needed for a long time. It lays out what everyone – the public as well as professionals in all fields – should understand about dialects and dialect differences in our increasingly diverse encounters. It is written with technical sophistication, wise judgment, and a clear style, with rich examples that make it accessible to students and clinicians (and maybe even marketable as a trade book). LiS readers may learn little new to them, but they can assign this book with confidence to any class, and they can read it profitably as a model of how to talk about this controversial topic to non-linguists. Given this kind of book – non-controversial to linguists themselves – it seems most useful for a review to indicate the scope of the eight chapters and Appendix.

LANGUAGE AND YOUTH CULTURE

American Speech american speech 75.3 (2000) At the same time, we must also keep things in perspective. Changes in primitive belief systems, such as those governing religion, morality, and language, do not take place rapidly. Major changes in ideology can take generations to be realized, and even then there is continued, residual resistance. It has taken generations for the teaching of scientific theories of human development to be implemented in our schools, and there are still pockets of opposition. We cannot realistically expect a different time line for the scientific and humanistic understanding of sociolinguistic diversity. Perhaps the most we can expect is incremental progress as more people gain an understanding of the inevitable, orderly naturalness of language diversity. While it might be easy to get discouraged about what has not yet changed with respect to the national consciousness about language varia- tion, there are signs that a small movement towards equitable sociolinguistic policies and practice has begun. I personally am thankful that I have had an opportunity to be present at the initial stage of this movement. walt wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, where he directs the North Carolina Language and Life Project. He is past president of the American Dialect Society and president-elect of the Linguistic Society of America. GLOBALIZATION LANGUAGE AND Y OUTH CULTURE mary bucholtz, Texas A&M University One of the richest influences on American speech in the new millennium will certainly be youth culture, the diverse and rapidly changing stylistic practices that many teenagers and young adults draw on in the construc- tion and display of their identities. As an important component of these cultural styles, language constitutes a flexible and omnipresent set of resources. Although styles and situations constantly change, the symbolic use of language to perform identity will endure as long as language itself. Published by Duke University Press

Subject-Verb Concord in a Postinsular Dialect

Most natives of Ocracoke, North Carolina, will attribute their roots to the Eng lish who began coming to the island at the start of the eighteenth century. Some Ocracokers will also admit to Scots or Scots-Irish ancestry, and some, especially those bearing Scottish names, are quite proud of it. Almost 300 years removed from the time of the first Anglo-American settlement on Ocracoke, the distinctions between English and Scots origins would seemingly be erased in all but name. To a great extent this is true, but the island of Ocracoke has only been in a postinsular stage of development for 40 years, previously cut off from the mainland except by small boat (Wolfram, Hazen, and Schilling-Estes 1999). This isolation has allowed one aspect of their grammatical system, their subject-verb concord system, to maintain almost the same patterns that existed in Scots English more than 600 years ago. In this quantitative study of the Ocracoke English subject-verb concord system, I present data and statistics from sociolinguistic interviews conducted with ancestral islanders to support the hypothesis that the subject-verb concord pattern of Scots English, although not the predominant pattern, has structurally persisted with only minor adjustments for more than 600 years. The subject-verb concord pattern was transferred from Scotland to Ulster, Ireland, and remained there for more than a century before it was transferred to the United States. The Scots-Irish who came to the United States carried with them the same pattern as their Scots ancestors but at reduced rates (Montgomery and Robinson 1996). The rates of the Ocracoke pattern are lower, but the pattern persists. I also hypothesize that the Ocracoke subject-verb concord system is the result of dialect mixing. The two contributing dialects are the eighteenth-century British system (the superstrate) and the eighteenth-century Scots-Irish system (the sub AUTHOR’S NOTE:I would like to thank Walt Wolfram for his patience with this article and the formative criticism he gave through his many readings. The research for this article was supported by an NSF grant (SBR-93-19577) directed by Walt Wolfram. I would also like to thank Michael Montgomery and the two JEngL reviewers for a number of insightful comments and criticisms on the current version of this article.

PHONOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF ETHNIC IDENTITY: EVIDENCE OF DIVERGENCE?

Like clothing, hairstyles, and other culturally variable phenomena, language offers a wealth of resources on which people may draw to meet their sociosymbolic needs. As a result, linguistic features of all sorts may come to serve as markers of whatever social distinctions are seen as important to a society’s members. Among the distinctions marked in this way are those drawn in terms of broad categories such as gender, social class, and age, as well as others based on categories that may be relevant only in a given community. The research reported here examines the linguistic marking of distinctions constructed by ethnicity. The importance of ethnicity as a social factor shaping variation in American English is hard to deny. The sociolinguistic ramifications of ethnic divisions have been explored in numerous studies and have often been found to involve considerable linguistic differences. This is certainly the case with the best-known—and best-studied—ethnically defined variety in the United States: African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which has been shown to incorporate several linguistic features that distinguish it from vernacular varieties used by European Americans (see, e.g., Bailey and Thomas 1998). Of course, in many American communities, ethnic categorization goes well beyond black and white, and so too may the linguistic marking of these categories. There is value in considering the relationships among a range of ethnically defined varieties, as has been shown in studies conducted by Walt Wolfram and his research team in a North Carolina county populated by roughly equal numbers of speakers of European, African, and Native American descent (see, e.g., Wolfram 1996; Dannenberg and Wolfram 1998). A comparable ethnic complexity exists in the community discussed here, and the present study seeks to examine some of that complexity by sampling speakers representing different ethnic groups. The linguistic correlates of these ethnic categories are examined through a study of phonological variables. A variety of pronunciation