Introduction 11Chapter 17 reports on ongoing work on the vowel system of Memphis,
Tennessee in the United States and reactions to it. More than any other chap-
ter here, it suggests that attitudes and perceptions are not just the byproducts
of variation but also contributors. Fridland ¿ rst reports on production studies
that seek to determine the degree to which European American and African
American Memphians participate in the Southern Vowel Shift. For example,
all respondents show the reversal of tense-laxness and peripherality in the
/ܭ/-/e/ pair, but not for /Ԍ/-/i/; there was considerable back-vowel fronting,
no confusion in the low-back area, and extensive /ay/-monophthongization.
Fridland then resynthesized tokens of these vowels and others on both the F
and F2 dimensions and asked local respondents to rate the degree to which
each token was “Southern.” Her results showed a sensitivity that matched
relatively closely the degree of southernness with the active participation of
the vowels in the local shift. Respondents also rated these tokens for their
“pleasantness” and “education,” and degree of southernness was correlated
with both unpleasantness and lack of education, although the front vowel
reversals had a much stronger inÀ uence than back vowel fronting. In an
overt ranking task for correctness and pleasantness with no voice samples,
however, local respondents found local speech to be uneducated but pleas-
ant, suggesting that there is often a disconnect between overt and covert
responses to attitude surveys. In a ¿ nal perception study, these same South-
ern vowels were found to be more “rural,” another possible explanation for
their downgrading.
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