Introduction & Question

[Bob Knippen]

> The phenomenon in question is the devaluation of clear oral communication
> by elites in the Eastern and Southern U.S.  I mean by devaluation two
> things:  1)  speech patterns in which mumbling or other barriers to clear
> articulation mark an upper class speaker ("Princeton lockjaw," for
> instance;  a civil rights lawyer also once told me that in the old days
> elite Atlanta lawyers would mumble in court or in conference);

Seems like it's worth being careful here and spending some time thinking
about what particular speech behaviors can be interpreted as "barriers to
clear articulation."  Stigmatized speech varieties are often incorrectly
referred to as "sloppy" articulation.  It would be just as easy to make
the same mistake with highly valued speech varieties.

The notion "barrier to clear articulation" assumes some articulatory
target is not being reached.  I don't think that we'd want to say that
some group of speakers has a particular set of articulatory targets, but
the group values *not reaching them.*  Or would we?

Bob Knippen
Department of English
Texas A&M University