Pacientes con Trasplantes:

To test the questions of media’s effect on language attitudes established in Chapter 1, the studies for this dissertation evaluate attitudes towards American Southern English (ASE) accents. Rather than framing my attitudinal object as linguistic variables, I will refer to the linguistic variety or accent.12 I am less interested in individual linguistic variables at this juncture and am instead reporting on attitudes towards a variety as a whole as it would likely be encountered “in the wild,” whether that is in the form of immediate language or mediated language.

For the purposes of this dissertation, accent (phonological features) not dialect

(phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical features) is used. The focus on phonology controls for potential confounding factors introduced by the use of morphological, syntactic, and/or lexical features. Using accents keeps all experimental stimuli, particularly the television scripts, as similar as possible. Future studies may (and should) incorporate other dialect features.

Thus, rather than reporting on one or more individual phonological variables, I approach the linguistic attitudinal object as a bundle of phonological features that combine to form ASE and index particular identities. ASE is still a broad categorization, however, with many sub-

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Influence here specifically refers to short-term effect with potential insight into long-term effects, to be discussed in Section 2.5

12 _{Kristiansen (2014) asserts that linguists should be clear in discussions of variables versus varieties. Though he is} speaking from a language change perspective, the distinction is pertinent here as well. Accents and dialects may remain stable (in that they continue to exist in the face of media standardization) while specific linguistic features shift. Individuals may use different types or degrees of variants and still be considered speakers of the same accent or dialect.

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dialects within it. The focus on general ASE phonology rather than a specific local accent is purposeful. Many ASE-accented characters, particularly those played by non-Southern actors, use a variety of features without actually honing in on one specific accent (Heaton 2012). This approach to dialect representation in media is not an uncommon practice. Native American characters in media often speak what Meek (2006) refers to as Hollywood Indian English, “a composite of grammatical ‘abnormalities’ that marks the way Indians speak and differentiates their speech from Standard American English” (95). Hollywood Indian English includes

grammatical and lexical features from multiple varieties of American Indian English. Children’s cartoons use combinations of different features from national accents to give characters

(typically villains) generic foreign accents (e.g. Slavic-accented gangsters in The Adventures of

Tin-Tin) (Dobrow & Gidney 1998). Thus, I focus on Southern phonological features in general

as these may better represent what a viewer will encounter on television, whether an actor is embodying a speaker from a specific area or not.

ASE was selected as the linguistic variety for several reasons. The variety is the most identified regional dialect of the United States (Preston 1999). Several specific stereotypes are associated with it (Reed 1986) as well as many social characteristics. Most notably for this particular set of experiments, Southern accents are rated high on solidarity (e.g. friendly,

trustworthy) and low on status (e.g. smart, successful) (Preston 1999, Heaton & Nygaard 2011). Southern stereotypes are prominent in the media. Older television shows such as The Beverly

Hillbillies and The Dukes of Hazzard rely on stereotypes of rebellion, the good ol’ boy, and a

general lack of intelligence to convey humor while more recent shows like The Closer and

Justified continue to promote the Southern rebel stereotype, albeit less conspicuously. Southern

accents in the media frequently appear with a connotation of unintelligence, over-politeness, friendliness, religiosity, and/or racism. Thus, as a salient dialect group with specific associations that media makers often utilize to characterize speakers, Southern accents serve as a good starting point for examining how media might affect treatment of accented speakers.

The phonology of ASE includes the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS), velar nasal (ING) fronting, and the PIN-PEN merger. In the SVS, seen in Figure 2.1 below, tense and lax front vowels reverse positions: /ɪ /, /Ɛ/, and /æ/ shift forward and up; /i/ and /e/ shift back and down (Labov, Ash, & Boberg 2006). Back vowels are fronted. This fronting occurs across many US

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dialects (Labov, Ash, & Boberg 2006), but is more advanced in the South in that fronting occurs in contexts that are otherwise dispreferred in other regional dialects (Fridland 2012).

Figure 2.1: The Southern Vowel Shift (adapted from Labov 1996).

A weakened /ai/ glide13 is a particularly salient feature of Southern varieties. Within the South, weakening can differ by phonological context. Many varieties will weaken the /ai/ glide when it occurs before voiced consonants (“bide”) or open syllables (“buy”), but not before voiceless consonants (“bite”). Some varieties weaken in both voiced and voiceless contexts.

Velar nasal (ING) fronting, while not a vocalic feature, is recognized as one of the most salient features of Southern speech. Southerners are said to front their velar nasals even in formal situations (Labov 2001), though this assertion has not been definitively demonstrated through production studies. Velar nasal fronting correlates with socioeconomic status (Labov 1966; Shuy, Wolfram, & Riley 1967; Labov 2001), but additionally is linked to gender (Labov 1966) and less formal registers across dialects. While no production studies over the past three decades have confirmed the assertion that Southern varieties front their velar nasals more than other regional dialects, listeners tend to label speakers with fronted velar nasals as Southern

(Campbell-Kibler 2008) and the association between the South and velar nasal fronting is strong (Houston 1985; Labov 2001).

13 _{I refer to weakening rather than monophthongization because Southern /ai/ can be weak but still have glide. In} other words, the /ai/ is not fully monophthongized, but is weak enough to be differentiated from the fully glided /ai/ of other dialects.

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