JULIA THOMAS (Linguistics, University of Chicago)

Monday, November 29 @ 3:30pm, Karen Landahl Center

“Styleshifting in African American English: Theoretical implications from a phonetic analysis of /aɪ/”

Abstract:

This work explores /aɪ/ monophthongization in the speech of 20 Chicago-area AAE speakers.  A prior analysis by Craig & Grogger (forthcoming) found evidence of styleshifting within this data set on the basis of morphosyntactic features.  The current study serves to follow-up on this finding for the phonetic dimension.  The variation in /aɪ/ monophthongization is examined in terms of the linguistic context (phonetic environment) and the non-linguistic context of its use (subject, gender, conversational formality, and educational status).  Monophthongal /aɪ/, an AAE dialectal feature that contrasts with Northern Cities White English, is predicted to occur more often in less formal conversational contexts. The findings of a mixed-effects linear regression analysis suggest that phonetic environment is the best predictor for the degree of monophthongization, while gender and conversational topic also play a role in speakers’ use of the monophthongal or diphthongal variant.  Though a statistically significant main effect of conversational topic suggests some styleshifting is occurring, a closer examination of speakers’ instantiations of /aɪ/ across topics shows considerable intra-speaker variation in the effect of conversational topic on monophthongization.  I show that expected trends for monophthongization as a function of conversational topic are highly variable and not entirely borne out when examined at the individual level.