Sound change and social structure in a rural community

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2893580
AutoresTimothy C Frazer (Western Illinois University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1983
Volumen12
Número3
Páginas313-328
Fecha de publicación1983-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404500009969
OpenAlexW2019108841
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas16

Most studies of sound change in the United States have focused on the social strata of urban societies. In the American cornbelt, however, the most important social distinctions are horizontal rather than vertical. A fundamental ethnic division dating back to original settlement of the area opposes town and countryside dwellers. A study of fifty-one speakers in a rural area of Illinois shows fronting and raising of (aw) to be considerably more advanced among countryside dwellers than among town residents. Furthermore, the countryside population underwent a profound social and economic change during the past half century as large numbers of subsistence farmers abandoned the land and rural life altogether, leaving behind a smaller number of farmers whose larger operations meant that the economic and social status of the average farmer considerably improved. An examination of town and countryside age groups from the data base shows that an increase in the fronting and raising of (aw) took place primarily in a single generation most affected by the change in the farm population. At least temporarily, fronted and raised (aw), despite an overt nonstandard status documented in more than a century of speech and language textbooks, suddenly acquired a new prestige - spreading even to town populations - along with a reassertion of rural values and rural life. (Sound change, social structure, rural society, American English, sociolinguistics, dialectology

Agriculture · Archaeology · Dialectology · Economic growth · Geography · Linguistics · Political science · Population · Prestige · Rural area · Rural settlement · Settlement (finance) · Social change · Social science · Social status · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Sound (geography) · Subsistence agriculture · Demography · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Music History and Culture · Phonetics and Phonology Research