Features of the California Vowel Shift (CVS; Eckert 2008) have been found throughout the American West (Fridland et al. 2016). One CVS feature, TRAP backing, is associated with California and Californian values (Villarreal 2016). It remains to be seen what regional identities or values TRAP backing indexes in communities undergoing the CVS outside of California. This study investigates the local construction of meaning for a supra-local sound change by examining how listeners in the Midwestern state of Kansas, which is undergoing front lax vowel retraction, perceive TRAP backing.
Fifty-one university students participated in a matched-guise task featuring stimuli read by young Kansan speakers. In each trial, listeners rated speakers on 14 Likert scales. Four critical stimuli belonged to one of two matched guises, which were acoustically manipulated such that only TRAP F2 differed between matched guises. Conservative guises contained fronted TRAP and shifted guises contained backed TRAP.
A principal components analysis of ratings revealed three principal components: PC1, measuring “general prestige,” PC2, measuring “Kansan-ness,” and PC3, measuring “innovativeness.” PC1 and PC3 significantly correlated with guise (###i
/i### < .05), with shifted guises rated higher on “general prestige” and “innovativeness.” Conversely, PC2 significantly correlated with listeners’ regional identifications (###i
/i### < .001), as stimuli rated high for “Kansan-ness” were most likely to be identified as being from Kansas and least likely to be identified as being from New York or California.
These results suggest that instead of associating TRAP backing with local identity, as in California, this sound change appears to index prestige and youth in Kansas, perhaps motivating the spread of this sound change in the region. These results provide clues to the rapid spread of the CVS, highlighting the local construction of meaning for a supra-local sound change.
References
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Where do ethnolects stop? International Journal of Bilingualism 12(1-2). 25-42.
Fridland, Valerie, Tyler Kendall, Betsy Evans and Alicia Wassink (eds). 2016. Speech in the Western states, vol. 1. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Villarreal, Dan. 2016. The construction of social meaning: A matched-guise investigation of the California Vowel Shift. Davis, CA: University of California, Davis. PhD dissertation.
