A Reader in Sociophonetics

400 Valerie Fridland

the token was ranked on education and pleasantness (Table 17.3). Whether
shifts were shared across regions or exclusive to the South also had an affect,
as front vowels shifted toward Southern norms were rated much lower in
both education and pleasantness than back vowels shifted front, as found in
Southern speech and elsewhere. Taken together, the production study and

Vowel Cl a s s Me a n*

/ey/ .84

/iy/ .67

/Ƞw/ .62

/uw/ .54

/ݜ/. 51

/͑/ .49

/Ԍ/ .39

Note: *A higher mean score indicates a higher accuracy rate for

selecting the most shifted vowel as the most southern-sounding.

Table 17.2 Degree of Memphians’ Involvement in Shifts Found in Southern Speech

Front vowels:

Class Degree Social aspects Shift exclusive to South?

iy Marginal Older males only Yes

Ԍ Marginal Older males only Yes

ey extensive All groups Yes

͑ some More in Middle/older groups Yes

Back vowels:

Class Degree Social aspects Shift exclusive to South?

uw extensive all groups No

ࡱ extensive all groups No

ow some younger group only Somewhat

Table 17.1 “Southernness” Test Mean Accuracy Scores: Mean Score Rating the
More Southern Word Accurately by Individual Vowel Class and by Vowel
Subgroup