PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION AT THE INTERSECTION OF

321 Pages·2013·4.35 MB·English

by  Anastasia Nylund

PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION AT THE INTERSECTION OF ETHNORACIAL
IDENTITY, PLACE, AND STYLE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

A Dissertation
submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
of Georgetown University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the
degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Linguistics

By
Anastasia Nylund, M.S.

Washington, D.C.
July 7, 2013
Copyright 2013 by Anastasia Nylund
All Rights Reserved

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PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION AT THE INTERSECTION OF ETHNORACIAL
IDENTITY, PLACE, AND STYLE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Anastasia Nylund, M.S.

Dissertation Advisor: Natalie Schilling, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines phonological variation in Washington, DC, which has remained
under-explored in urban sociolinguistics. The paucity of research on language in DC relates to
its dialectal marginality, its unique African American (AA) and European American (EA)
settlement histories, and its current public image as a cosmopolitan, transient city. Three
phonological features in 21 sociolinguistic interviews with lifelong AA and EA Washingtonians
are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively: /l/ vocalization (coo’ for cool), -in (runnin’ for
running) and Coronal Stop Deletion (eas’ en’ for east end). I analyze the features’ community-
level patterning, as well as inter- and intragroup distributions and stylistic (intraspeaker) uses
of the features towards interactional enactments of speakers’ Washingtonian identities.
At the community level, Coronal Stop Deletion is not significantly affected by
ethnoracial affiliation, sex, age, or educational attainment; -in and /l/ vocalization are more
extensively used among AAs than EAs. The overall absence of /l/ vocalization among EAs
supports previous analyses of /l/ vocalization in West Virginia and /ay/ monophthongization
in Maryland, which attribute loss of these Southern features to increased alignment with DC,
the region’s economic hub. While the community-level links between the features and AA
identity are expected, significant intragroup diversity is present and demands closer attention.
Not all AAs use the three features similarly, and speakers with similar life experiences are
linguistically diverse. I call the constellations of features within groups and individuals stylistic
repertoires, following the notions of ethnolinguistic repertoire (Benor 2010) and styling (Coupland

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2001, 2007), foregrounding the use of ethnoracially-linked features toward a variety of goals in
interactions, including ethnoracial solidarity but also the construction of different types of local
identities.
Motivations for variation within a community are inaccessible without attention to the
stylistic use of variable phenomena in discourse about locally salient themes, and this is
particularly important for studying diverse and contested communities like Washington, DC.
This dissertation contributes to sociolinguistic inquiry through an integrated, qualitative and
quantitative analysis of variation in a community that defies easy description, and foregrounds
intragroup diversity as a key aspect of contemporary urban sociolinguistics.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation is a piece of scholarship, but it is also the product of a long, non-linear,
messy, and elating process. It has been part of me during an important time; it’s allowed me
room to breathe and think, to challenge myself and to become open to the world. All along the
way, I have been part of an intellectual community whose influence on the professional vision
that permeates all areas of my life cannot be overstated.
Thank you to my dissertation committee for setting the bar high and showing me how
to clear it. To my dissertation advisor, Dr. Natalie Schilling, I owe perhaps the greatest thanks.
Natalie, thank you for being there to offer challenges, support, and a new perspective, and for
teaching me the most important lesson for me as a linguist who just cannot stay away from the
messy data we both love: Trust yourself, remember your positionality, and Get. It. Done.
I owe my commitment to the individual as social actor to Dr. Rob Podesva. Rob, thank
you for never taking “I don’t know!” for an answer, and for pushing me to pull something
cogent out of the stream of consciousness that often starts my research process. Thanks for the
laughs, the coffees, and your kind but firm insistence that I lay off the doubt and get to work.
The backbone of my professional vision as a linguist is this: Every speaker is an
authentic speaker. Dr. Heidi Hamilton helped me see this in her Cross-Disciplinary Discourse
Analysis seminar. Heidi, thank you for your patience and guidance on this journey: If not for
your advice, my vision of linguists’ place in the world would be vastly different.
To my friends and colleagues at Georgetown and beyond – Patrick Callier, Amelia
Tseng, Anna Marie Trester, Sakiko Kajino, Jessi Grieser, Marissa Fond, Sinae Lee, Jinsok Lee,
Jermay Reynolds, Mackenzie Price, Kerstin Sondermann, Corinne Seals, Cala Zubair, Jennifer
Nycz, Mark Sicoli, and everyone else (there’s just too many!): Thank you all for the good times,

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the “does this make sense?” sessions, for the shared hotel rooms and car pools, for sharing
conundrums, and triumphs, and, of course, for the pep talks and Epi happy hours.
There are three scholars whose early influence during my time at Cardiff University
and Georgetown University has shaped my thinking about language as a semiotic system
whose users bring it to life. To Dr. Deborah Schiffrin, Dr. Deborah Tannen, and Dr. Lise
Fontaine: Thank you for your inspiration in the early years and for your continued support.
To all the Washingtonians whose lives have touched mine through this work: Thank
you for sharing your stories, for teaching us, for making DC what it is. To my family, who live
the most authentic lives I know: Thank you for understanding this path. Thank you for making
me who I am.
Finally, to Helen, who has seen me through this: I am my best self with you. Thank you.

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For Elfrida

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction and background 1
1.1 Initial questions 1
1.1.1 Basics of the study 1
1.1.2 Key concepts: Style, styling, and social associations 7
1.1.3 Motivations for studying language in DC 11
1.2 Geography: North and South 22
1.3 Demography 24
1.4 DC, history and authenticity 29
1.5. Ethnoracial affiliation and income 33
1.6 Discourse(s) of demographic change and gentrification 39
1.7 Metalinguistic commentary 42
1.7.1 Why look at metalinguistic commentary? 42
1.7.2 Metalinguistic commentary about DC 45
1.8 Diversity’s centrality to discourses and understandings of DC 57
1.9 Previous studies of language in Washington, DC 60
1.10 Organization of the dissertation 64

Chapter 2. Methods and data collection 68
2.1 Introduction 68
2.2 Choice of demographic category labels 68
2.3 Language and Communication in the Washington, DC,
Metropolitan Area (LCDC) 72
2.3.1 The LCDC interviews 73
2.3.2 LCDC studies to date 75
2.4 Interviews 77
2.5 Speakers 79
2.6 Variables and variants under study 81
2.6.1 Characteristics and coding methods for /l/-vocalization 83
2.6.2 Characteristics and coding methods for Coronal Stop Deletion 92
2.6.3 Characteristics and coding methods for –in 96
2.6.4 Coding for discourse context 99
2.7 Quantitative analysis 102
2.8 Summary 107

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Chapter 3. /L/ vocalization in Washington, DC 109
3.1 Introduction 109
3.2 Studies of /l/ vocalization in English 112
3.3 Results 116
3.3.1 Preceding phonological environment 120
3.3.2 Following phonological environment 122
3.3.3 Ethnoracial affiliation and speaker sex 124
3.4 /L/ vocalization and place identity in DC 128
3.4.1 The North, the South, and the transitional cities 129
3.4.2 DC’s influence: Sound change and loss of Southern norms 134
3.5 Summary 139

Chapter 4. Coronal Stop Deletion and –in in Washington, DC 140
4.1 Introduction 140
4.2 CSD, -in, and their social correlates 141
4.2.1 Ethnoracial affiliation 143
4.2.2 Socioeconomic class 146
4.2.3 Region 150
4.2.4 Situational formality 154
4.3 Interactional meanings of CSD and –in 158
4.4. Perception of CSD and –in 164
4.5 Quantitative patterns of CSD and –in in Washington, DC 171
4.5.1 Linguistic and social conditioning of CSD 171
4.5.2 Social diversity and CSD in Washington, DC 175
4.5.3 Linguistic and social conditioning of -in 180
4.5.4 Social diversity and -in in Washington, DC 183
4.6 Summary 185

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Chapter 5. Stylistic repertoires and styling a Washingtonian identity 189
5.1 Introduction 189
5.1.1 Definitions of key terms: Code, ethnolect, styling, and stylization 192
5.2 The community, the individual, and the repertoire 195
5.2.1 Early studies of intra-group variation 195
5.2.2 Ethnoracial affiliation and linguistic repertoires 202
5.2.3 Intra-group variability and ideology 207
5.2.4 Why repertoires in Washington, DC? 209
5.3 Self-expression and the stylistic repertoire 211
5.3.1 The stylistic repertoire 213
5.4 Stylistic repertoires: Social similarity, linguistic diversity 216
5.4.1 Stylistic repertoires among Washingtonians 216
5.4.2 Stylistic ranges and ethnoracial affiliation 218
5.4.3 Stylistic ranges and correlations between the features 220
5.4.4 Ethnoracial groups and the stylistic repertoire 225
5.4.5 Stylistic repertoires among DC African Americans 226
5.4.6 Stylistic repertoires among DC European Americans 232
5.5 Styling Washingtonianness in the sociolinguistic interview 236
5.5.1 Zara 236
5.5.2 Mona 246
5.5.3 Mick 257
5.6 Summary 265

Chapter 6. Conclusion 271
6.1 Chapter summary 272
6.2 Contributions 277
6.3 Limitations and future directions 279
6.3.1 Socioeconomic class in Washington, DC 280
6.3.2 The necessity of discourse-oriented perspectives on variation 282
6.3.3 A vernacular baseline for DC? Future work on language change 288

Appendix 1. Transcription conventions
(adapted from Bucholtz 2011 and Tannen, Kendall and Gordon 2007) 290

Appendix 2. Sample LCDC interview modules 291

References 293

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