[EDLING:650] Re: /r/ vocalization

[Lynn Goldstein]

The subjects were not just African American but  from different races,
occupations (within the stores), ages, genders..... He  asked for where
something was located that happened to be on the fourth floor( to get the
final r and the r within the word) and he pretended not to hear so they
had to repeat fourth floor .

edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu on Sunday, February 13, 2005 at 8:37 PM +0000
wrote:
>I'm not sure about Philly in particular, but one of the quintessential
>studies
>is Bill Labov's study in NYC 1972, where he went to 3 department stores
>(Saks -
>super expensive, Macy's - Average, and Klein's (? I think?) - like
>K-Mart) and
>asked clerks where to find certain items, all of which were located on the
>fourth floor. The idea was to see how often they dropped the R to make it
>"foath
>floah" in each location, in attempt to correlate pronunciation with social
>class. I believe all the subjects were African American (someone correct
>me if
>I'm wrong.) It's neither recent nor in Philadelphia, but a good starting
>point.
>Here's the reference:
>
>Labov, W. (1972). Sociolingusitic patterns. Philadelphia, University of
>Pennsylvania Press.
>
>Good luck,
>Laura
>
>Quoting ellism2 at sas.upenn.edu:
>
>> I am doing some research on African American /r/ vocalization patterns
>in
>> Philadelphia.  Can anyone recommend a source for the /r/ vocalization
>> phenomenon? In Philadelphia or anywhere else?
>>
>> Thank you
>>
>
>
>--
>