380 Betsy E. Evans
speakers who gained good control of a standard language, and still retained
control of the nonstandard vernacular. Dialect differences depend upon low-
level rules which appear as minor adjustments and extensions of contex-
tual conditions, etc. It appears that such conditions inevitably interact, and
although the speaker may indeed appear to be speaking the vernacular, close
examination of his speech shows that his grammar has been heavily inÀ u-
enced by the standard. He may succeed in convincing his listeners that he is
speaking the vernacular, but this impression seems to depend upon a number
of unsystematic and heavily marked signals.Very little research has been conducted that explores bidialectalism (see
Hazen 2001), and it seems that for many the conclusion about imitation is
still the same: “Ash... did a test survey of individuals who were asked to
disguise their voices over the telephone. The subjects modi¿ ed tempo, voice
quality, and intonation, but none modi¿ ed the segmental features speci¿ c to
their geographical dialect” (Labov 1994: 111). In a study of European Ameri-
can imitation of African American Vernacular English and African Ameri-
can imitation of European American speech, Preston (1993) found that “both
performances, with the exception of white uses of pronunciation and voice
characteristics, may be said to make limited use of low-level linguistic fea-
tures” (1993: 337).
Nevertheless, there is documentation to the contrary. In Schilling-Estes’
(1998) study of Okracoke “brogue” (the traditional speech of Okracoke Island,
North Carolina) found regular patterning in the “performance” and “normal”
speech of an informant named Rex. She examined the ¿ rst and second for-
mants of the diphthong /ay/ in his “performance” and “regular” speech. In
both styles she found regular patterning with regard to phonological environ-
ments in relation to both the height and backness of /ay/. Her ¿ ndings “suggest
that the patterns of linguistic variation observed in self-conscious speech are
not necessarily different from, or less regular than, those observed in non-
self-conscious speech” (1998: 64).
In summary, the prioritization of vernacular speech and assumption that
dialect differences depend upon inaccessible low-level rules have led to a lack
of research on imitation, especially that of an acoustic nature, in sociolin-
guistics. What is the truth of this matter? This unanswered question about
whether imitations are the employment of only a few stereotypical linguistic
features, or, if at a phonological level, simply inaccurate (at least at the level of
acoustic realization and/or detailed contextual speci¿ cation) reÀ ects a gap in
sociolinguistic research. In addition, all of these factors contribute to prevent-
ing a combined body of comparable research to emerge within the ¿ eld.