This study is a sociolinguistic analysis of the variant pronunciation of /aI/, a selected phonological variable, by white informants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Through a purposive sampling procedure, 56 informants were interviewed to determine their pronunciation of /aI/. Informants were ranked according to education, income, and occupation to…

RECENT LINGUISTIC RESEARCH SHOWS THAT THE SPEECH PATTERNS OF SOUTHERN NEGROES CONSTITUTE A LEGITIMATE DIALECT OF ENGLISH WITH PHONOLOGICAL AND GRAMMATICAL RULES SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT FROM GENERAL AMERICAN ENGLISH (GAE). AN EXPERIMENT WAS DESIGNED TO DETERMINE WHETHER THOSE ASPECTS OF THE NEGRO DIALECT WHICH SET IT APART FROM OTHER ENGLISH DIALECTS…

This study examines the lexical and phonological features in the speech of 27 native informants of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama which show distinctive regional or social distribution. The questionnaire used in the study is based on the short work sheets of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, and the methodology is similar to that…

In a sociolinguistic study of the verb phrase in Southern White English, a pattern of change in progress was observed. The 14 variables studied showed that certain variants were increasing, others decreasing, and yet others stable across time within the community, and that each variable's change was progressing in a wave sensitive to age, social…