presented at the 2016 vasta accent panelaudio].pdfplease use caution when teaching or modelling this...

PLEASE USE CAUTION WHEN TEACHING OR MODELLING THIS MATERIAL. UNDERSTANDING OF THE FACTS

OF AN ACCENT WITHOUT AWARENESS OF THE CULTURAL CONTEXT CAN BE HARMFUL TO PEOPLE

VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH – CHICAGO PRESENTED AT THE 2016 VASTA ACCENT PANEL

CULTURAL CONTEXT The cultural context of an accent is always important as it enriches our understanding of the world in which the accent is spoken and the ways in which the meanings of the accent have an impact on people. Language, after all, is culture, and as such, it can’t be seen outside of that human context. When it comes to this accent, such a discussion is even more essential because I have chosen to step forward and share information about this accent and my own cultural identity as a white man carries a burden of meaning into the discussion. You may well have wondered why I’m here giving this presentation, and what I’m up to. That is an entirely appropriate suspicion. Why? Because I’m not the first white dude to express authoritative opinions about the meaning of black culture, or about the values of varieties of speech. This path has been tread before and because I’m joining a conversation already in progress, it’s important to check what my intentions are*. More important, it’s vital for me to ask myself whether I’m helping or hurting every time I engage with the issues of race, gender, difference, and their intersection with language. My expertise does not elevate me above that discussion, and my past good intentions do not guarantee that I’m being more helpful than harmful this time. What I ask of you all is that you take on this “duty of care” with me. Having made this bow to the delicacy of this undertaking, I have to acknowledge that the pressure of time will force me into a pace of delivering information that could itself appear imperious, and less than careful.

The history of AAE can’t be removed from the fact of the forced enslavement and transport of

African people to this country.

There is some scholarly debate as to whether the observed features of AAE have their origins in the African languages of those enslaved people, or in varieties of English spoken by immigrants from England. I’m more convince of the latter1



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

The accent of AAE can be considered separately from the lexical and grammatical features. In fact, using the term AAE may not even be meaningful in this context.

While the origins of AAE are in the South, the Great Migration that took place during much of the 20th Century, brought many African Americans to Northern cities. Early sociolinguists tended to discuss AAE (or AAVE) as monolithic, but there is ample evidence that African Americans’ accents show a great deal of variation. These accents show some features of the Southern origins of AAE, but there are local varieties as well.

Certainly, economic and geographic isolation (consider ‘redlining’ as one example) have mitigated against complete adoption of the local accent, but each individual, drawing on the sources available to them, constructs a linguistic identity. This makes it very difficult to state absolutely what a Chicago African American accent is.

I propose that there are three factors influencing an individual African American’s accent: 1)

AAE which has Southern features 2) The local (white) accent – in this case Chicago. 3) An individual’s family background, peers, and personal tastes.

Finally, it should be noted that there is considerable variation within speakers. Shifting style

(or register) is a universal aspect of speech. You can see this in yourself or in the President of the United States. There is value in adjusting pronunciation in order to gain what sociolinguists call ‘overt’ or ‘covert’ prestige.

*BTW, in case I didn’t state my intentions, I want to turn our attention to an accent that is for the most part either given no attention at all, or is held up in caricature as a way of minimizing its beauty and value. I’d like participants in this presentation to follow up by reading through the information and listening carefully to the samples provided. I don’t intend to prepare you to perform this accent, and for many of you I would advise against it, but rather, my hope is that when you hear this and similar American accents, you have a bit of context for that listening that allows you to perceive and appreciate more. One last thing – Having done this investigation, I’m still at a loss to identify that particular suite of features that would definitively mark an accent as Chicago AAE. It’s not that I think there are no features (or suite of features) that a Chicagoan could use to identify our speaker(s) as being from Chicago. Rather, I think that there is a complex picture to be painted and it will take more work to clarify what makes the accent unique.



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

POSTURE There are certainly features of the posture that relate to southern roots, in particular, a more open jaw position that is generally the case for white Chicagoans. There seems also to be a difference in the position and shape of the back and root of the tongue. The sides of the tongue brace against the molars when rhoticity is required but the accent lacks the kind of persistent muscular bunching that characterizes the white Chicago accent or the tongue root retraction usual in rhotic southern accents. In fact, the tongue root is more likely advanced. The velum is often not raised fully, producing a nasalization on some vowels (particularly TRAP MOUTH and GOOSE). Listen to this short passage to see if you can feel the vocal tract posture that produces it:

PROSODY See separate document entitled “AAE CHICAGO-prosody”

PRONUNCIATIONS Any accent contains variation, and each speaker expresses their own individual variation within that accent group. Moreover, every word spoken by an individual is a fresh and variant expression of the target sounds. So while the pronunciation targets detailed here try to achieve accuracy and clarity, they can’t be absolutes. We’re best advised to use pronunciation targets as a way of understanding and embodying the postural, prosodic system that generates the accent.

In the following discussion, pronunciations may sometimes be described in relation to White Chicago accents or to the Southern roots of AAE. This is not meant to diminish the importance of this accent, but to give a sense of the influence of these accents and help the actor to get a firmer grasp on a sound in terms of its relationship to other possible realizations.



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

Rhoticity The shape and activity of the tongue described under “Posture” is certainly a feature of this accent. When there is rhoticity, it is definite and strong, However, nonrhotic realizations are also possible. It’s difficult to pin down a rule for the deployment of rhoticity since there is variation amongst speakers of this accent and variation from phrase to phrase by a single speaker. A simple, if imperfect rule would be to use rhoticity less in unstressed syllables.

NURSE

NEAR

SQUARE

START

NORTH FORCE

CURE

lettER ˈlɛtә

THERE IS PARENTS FOR US

ðɛə ̆͡ ɹɪs pʰɛɚ̯nts

fɔ.̽ɐs

It’s usual in non-rhotic accents for intervocalic /r/ to be articulated as a linking consonant/r/. the variable rhoticity of this accent allows for different realizations of this sequence. In the following sample, you can hear: 1) A carefully articulated linking /r/ in “there is” 2) An assimilation into a single, rhotic syllable in “parents” 3) A separation of syllables with no rhoticity or linking /r/ on “for us” These seem to represent degrees of formality with the nonrhotic, non linking form being the least formal.



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

GOOSE u Many US accents realize GOOSE further front than the cardinal 8 position.AAE tends to use a fully back close vowel. In the sample below you can also hear some nasalization in the word “loom.” This realization gives useful information about the overall vocal tract posture.

GOOSE: loom, pools, huge, knew, duty, too, two, students, zoo

In unstressed syllables there is naturally some centralization of this vowel, but the target for the phoneme is notably back.

GOOSE (unstressed) through, do, you

FOOT ʉ ̞̜ The FOOT vowel is generally unrounded and centralized.

FOOT: woman, too, would, hood

Pay particular attention to the vowels in “woman” and “hood”. The latter is considerable more fronted than the former. This likely has to do with the word and its content – what’s being expressed – as much as it has to do with the consonant environment.

STRUT ɜ

stɹɜt

The STRUT vowel is often realized quite far back and with slight rounding. This is a key feature of the “Northern Cities Shift”2 Speakers of AAE generally don’t demonstrate these features.*

STRUT: cluster, blood, sudden, tongued, subtle, struggle, fluffy, cut, flooding, up, some

*except when they do!



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

WBEZ aired a series of stories3 on Chicago accents and collected recordings from listeners. Contributions from 2 African American listener seem to demonstrate some STRUT backing.

CLOTH THOUGHT

(ON)

ɔ

klɔ θ θɔ t

ɔ n

The LOT and CLOTH sets are merged, and use a slightly rounded, open, back vowel [ɔ ]. This distribution is the same as in many other US accents. There is an interesting feature of many African American accents that the word “on”, usually pronounced in the same way as words in the LOT category in other accents, joins the CLOTH set and is pronounced [ɔ n] or [ɔə̹n̯]

CLOTH: frosty, fog, strong, coffee, on

THOUGHT: claws, chalk, recall, all, small, paw, walk, all

LOT

ɑ

lɑt

LOT words are pronounced differently from CLOTH and THOUGHT words. The vowel in these words is realized as an unrounded open back vowel [ɑ]. A strongly fronted LOT vowel is a distinctive feature of White Chicago speakers. African American speakers from Chicago don’t seem to participate as fully in this tendency. Nevertheless, If your goal is to distinguish an African American speaker as being specifically from Chicago, this sound should probably be slightly fronted.

LOT: flocks, otters, foxes, fox, not, sorry, cotton

TRAP TRAM THAT

æ/æ ̝̃

tɹæp tɹæ ̝̃m

ðɛ t

As with many US accents, there is a split in the TRAP set. Words with an adjacent nasal consonant

TRAP: land, lambs, planted, cannot, mad

are realized in a more closed and nasalized manner than those without a nasal



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

TRAM: last, black, glassy, flashing, shadows, savage, jazz, Kathy, that, slashed, bathroom, bags, abbot)

Research by William Labov4 shows a range of pronunciations of TRAP that fall roughly into the pattern of this split. Though that research is clearly weighted toward describing White speakers, the samples we’ve studied show a similar pattern among African Americans. Some White Chicago speakers also exhibit a feature known as “Northern Breaking.” This describes the realization of TRAP vowels as a diphthong beginning in a more close position (closer to /e/ ) and opening as the vowel progresses. This pattern is opposite of “Southern Breaking” in which the TRAP vowel starts more open and closes with a gesture of the tongue body towards the palate. Our speakers didn’t really demonstrate either of these features. Another distinction that appeared in our speakers was a tendency to raise TRAP in very unstressed “function” words, so that words like “at” “that” “had” or “has” often approached a pronunciation of /ɛ/. All this means that there can be three variants of TRAP in play: the nasalized [æ ̝̃] of “understanding”, the raised [æ̝̃] of “that”, and the open [æ] of “aspect”.

PEN ɪ pɪn

The DRESS vowel can be raised to [ɪ] when followed by a nasal consonant. This feature can be heard in many accents in the US. It is more a feature of African American than White Chicago speech. Raising of the DRESS vowel also happens in the word “get” following a pattern very similar to TRAP. That is, the realization of “pen” as [pɪn] is conditioned by the consonant environment, but the realization of “get” as [ɡɪt] has more to do with the commonness of the word inviting a shortcut of articulation.

flocks of trembling sparrow identify where they’re from how you identify someone



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

It’s lived in but then then I would getting some of that I listen to my friends speak work that is authentic has something genuine Even if it’s ten percent

happY ɪ The unstressed ‘y’ ending is realized more centrally than in many otherAmerican accents in the following words: Happy: frosty glassy slowly inky coffee Kathy sorry carry fluffy hurry

MOUTH ã̝ʊ ̞̜ maʊ ̞̜θ

This is most noticeable in the words Kathy, sorry, and fluffy.

The MOUTH diphthong can be ‘smoothed’, that is, the second element can be reduced (in length and in rounding) or it can disappear entirely. The first element is usually raised in the direction of [æ], and if there is a nasal consonant in the vicinity, that vowel is likely to be nasalized.

MOUTH: how, mountains, about, brown, now, around

PRICE pɹaɪ ̯ s This diphthong also has a tendency towards smoothing, but this seems to vary based on the amount of stress. The less prominent the syllable, the more likely it is to be realized as [a] or [aɪ ̯ ]

PRICE: decided, like, white, fighting, nightmare, ice, why, lie, pride, liked



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

Postvocalic /l/ It is a common feature of English pronunciation that the phoneme /l/ is pronounced differently depending on whether it occurs before a vowel (prevocalic) or after (postvocalic). African American speakers tend to increase this distinction by pronouncing postvocalic /l/ with no contact of the tongue tip to the alveolar ridge, relying instead on the bunching of the back of the tongue to produce the /l/ quality. This has been called “L vocalization” because the consonant is produced in a manner that makes it identical to a vowel.

FEEL PHIL FAIL FELL

fɪ ̝̃ɫ ͉fɪɫ ͉fɛ̝̃ɫ ͉fɛɫ ͉

In the case of close front vowels, the presence of postvocalic /l/ leads to a near merger of production of FLEECE and KIT, and FACE and DRESS.

I feel the flashing claws

I think, Phil

My courage fails

Father is mad as hell

POOL PULL

puɫ ͉pʊɫ

͉

AAE has been described as also merging FOOT and GOOSE words in this context, making “pool” and “pull” homophones. Although it’s possible to hear some merging in our samples, our accent donor doesn’t fully merge these sounds.

You pull from it Glassy pools reflect

ð fortition d̪ AAE and White Chicago share this characteristic of realizing /ð/ as [d̪]. Like other features, this can vary based on prominence.

I think that I think there Then I would

θ fronting f As in Cockney, this realization of /θ/ occurs variably and is much more likely to occur in final positions. The male speaker in these samples doesn’t use this realization (although he comes close in the phrase “South side”). He does



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

report, however that he often does use it, and surprisingly, he is less likely to do so when the word begins with an alveolar articulation. The words south, soothe, death, teeth would end with /θ/ but mouth and both could end with/f/. He writes that his tongue tip is “…like the guy who'd rather not show up to a movie at all if he's missed the opening 5 minutes.”

He also reports that in the word “mouthing” the intervocalic consonant is voiced, making the word [maʊv̯ɪŋ]

Cluster Reduction

It’s fairly common, in AAE and in many other accents of English, to simplify clusters of consonants at the ends of words, particularly by removing stops. This sort of simplification is a strategy available to all accents of English. Our accent donor, is most often including a high level of linguistic detail. It’s only when simplifications stand out as particularly salient that they’re of use to us in creating an authentic accent performance.

That is to say, there’s no need to note the simplifications that we are likely to do anyway, but there do seem to be some characteristic strategies

Devoicing At the morpheme boundary –

Badly, sadly

But is that just a vowel length question?

Shibboleth ?

Reduction of final /o/ in “Chicago”

Glottal substitution/reinforcement on /d/ /t/



VASTA

ACCENT

PANEL 16

1 Mufwene, Salikoko “The English origins of African American Vernacular English: What Edgar

Schneider has taught us.” In The evolution of Englishes: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on world

Englishes, ed. by Sarah Buschfeld, Magnus Huber, Thomas Hoffmann, & Alexander Kautzsch.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 350-365

McWhorter, John H. 2000. “Strange Bedfellows[:] Recovering the Origins of Black English.”

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shift

3 http://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/accents/#

4 http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html The Atlas of North American English is designed to

be a regional, not a sociolinguistic study. Although the study contained 44 samples from individuals

identified as African Americans, there were only three AA respondents from Chicago. Until further studies

are done, designed to elicit more information about sociolinguistic context, and including more

respondents, we can consider this and other studies of regional accents to be records of White accents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cities_Vowel_Shifthttp://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/accents/http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html

presented at the 2016 vasta accent panelaudio].pdfplease use caution when teaching or modelling this...

Documents