2 To look at this another way, some people see the broadcast media as
immensely powerful and influential. So powerful, in fact, that the whole
country is simply compelled to follow their example. This subject is
pursued in greater depth in Chapter 8.
3 Please note the following notation conventions: slash brackets as in /r/
refer to phonemes; square brackets [r] to allophones; and parentheses (r)
to sociolinguistic variables. The distinction between phoneme and
allophone is a basic and a crucial one in phonetics and phonology, but
will not be stressed here. For our purposes, it is enough to remember
that (r) means the discussion focuses on sociolinguistic variation, while
/r/ and [r] are references to the actual sounds (or classes of sound).
4 In Motion: The African American Experience has a wealth of historical
documents, films, maps and essays about the Great Migration, here:
http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm.
5 Those who study accent as a phonetic and sociolinguistic phenomenon
have come to the conclusion that accent can only really be defined from
the perspective of the listener.
6 Some quotatives are also used as intensifiers, as for example in “My
mom is all mad at me.”
7 Consonant cluster reduction or simplification is common to many –
even most – varieties of U.S. English. In the Midwest, a nasal (/n/ or
/m/) followed by a stop (/b/ /p/ /t/ /d/) will usually reduce to a nasal
alone, as in the word hunter which is pronounced hunner. This feature is
so widespread that it is considered a vernacular universal: a feature that
occurs regularly across stigmatized or peripheralized language varieties
are proposed to be features of the human language faculty.
Suggested further reading
Aschman, R. (n.d.) http://www.aschmann.net/AmEng/.
Rick Aschman maintains an excellent and thorough website about the
regional varieties of American English, with links to hundreds of audio and
video clips to illustrate regionalisms. Aschman is not a linguist (thus his
terminology is somewhat idiosyncratic), but he is a close and careful
observer.
Elliott, N. (2000) A Study in the Rhoticity of American Film Actors. In R. Dal Vera (ed.) Standard
Speech and Other Contemporary Issues in Professional Voice and Speech Training. New York:
Applause, pp. 103–130.