Labovian road trip

[Dennis R. Preston]

I think it'll take a great deal more than that. When I pick little
shifters out of my classes, record them on the spot, show the formant
positions to the entire class and map them onto a vowel space,
showing them how dramatically differnet the positions are from those
of "General American" (mine, of course), the other studnerts begin to
shift nervously and complain that the one I've picked is not typical,
maybe from Chicago (or some othe place where they don't talk as good
as they do here in Michigan). If you want to attack the linguistic
security of the Inland North, come prepared to meet resistences
involving disbelief, denial, and other face-preserving mechanisms.

dInIs (a good talker among strange ones)

>On 3/17/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>  http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.html
>[snip]
>"Nobody with the Chicago-Rochester dialect makes a fuss about it,"
>Professor Labov said. "They aren't as self-conscious or aware of it.
>Give a New Yorker or a Southerner a piece of paper with a word on it
>and ask them to say it, they'll start sweating."
>
>Those Inland North folk may start getting self-conscious if there are
>many more articles like this one:
>
>-----
>http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060316/NEWS01/603160373/1002/NEWS
>Vowels speak volumes among 'funny-talking' Raachesterians
>(March 16, 2006) - We may not know it, we may deny it and we might
>even be embarrassed about it, but a Pennsylvania linguist insists we
>talk funny in Raachester.
>William Labov, a linguistics professor at the University of
>Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, calls our dialect the "northern city
>shift," claiming we say our vowels a bit more oddly than other parts
>of the country.
>-----
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15-C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1036
Phone: (517) 353-4736
Fax: (517) 353-3755
preston at msu.edu

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org