South Carolina 4

Listen to South Carolina 4, a 19-year-old woman from Florence, South Carolina, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/09/1986

PLACE OF BIRTH: Florence, South Carolina

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: college student

EDUCATION: some college studies

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject has never lived outside Florence, South Carolina.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her mother and stepfather were born and raised in Florence too. The subject’s biological father was born in New Jersey but raised in Florence.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Jennifer Fine

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/04/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My mom is a cosmetologist, and my dad, he was in the army, but he’s no longer in the army, and my relationship with him is not as close, as, you know, you know, my mom. My mom: She was like there ever since, but my dad, once he went to army, I think he came back from Somalia; it wasn’t like my mom’s ex-husband, that’s who I call my dad, because me and my dad we never had like a close relationship, and my mom’s ex-husband, he owns a body shop; and my mom was born in Florence; her ex-husband was born in Florence, and my biological father, he was born in Jersey, but he was raised in Florence. My hometown is small, so everybody goes to the mall to hang out. And I played softball, and that was the fun thing, and band; I mastered like five different instruments; I played French horn, double French horn, melophone, base clarinet and clarinet. I was a band geek, starting sixth grade, and was always at high school when I was at middle school, with the marching band, just practicing with them. And ah, when I got my braces, I quit the horn, but I was still able to play the clarinet, and then I went and got my tongue pierced and I don’t know why; it makes it kinda hard.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Erica Tobolski

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/04/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The most obvious differences between the subject’s dialect and General American speech are dropped medial and final consonants. This is especially apparent with the suffix “-ed,” as in “implied” and “required,” and in words where two consonants are adjacent, such as “first she” and “band geek.” Examples of dropped medial and final consonants in the reading include “working,” “stressed,” “bird,” “hold” and “required.” In the unscripted portion of the recording, the consonant “s” is dropped in the words “cosmetologist,” “and,” “everybody,” “sixth,” and “practicing.” Syllables are omitted or slurred in the words “veterinary,” “relationship,” “deserted,” and “medicine.” A characteristic of many African-American speakers is to substitute a “d” for “th,” evident in “there” and “the.” It is quite common in Southern speakers to pronounce the “l” in “palm” and to shorten “Misses” to “Miss.” Also common, in reading scripted material, is the pronunciation of the article “a” as a diphthong /eɪ/ rather than a schwa /ə/. The subject uses these pronunciations in the reading. You will hear the subject speak with several vowel shifts common to American Southern speakers. Among these, /aɪ/ becomes /ɑ/, as in “implied,” “surprising,” “private,” “side,” “my,” and “why;” /æ/ becomes /eɪ/ or /ɛ/, as in “practice,” “and,” “managed,” “band,” and “Dad.” The subject substitutes the short “i” /ɪ/ for the short “e” /ɛ/ in “vet,” “expensive,” and “then.” The diphthongs /ou/ as in “old” and /eɪ/ as in “bathe” and “braces,” and the vowel /ɚ/ as in “bird” and “Jersey” become slightly more open. The subject takes few vocalized pauses and in general speaks with little pitch inflection, save an occasional slight upward inflection signaling she has more to say. She habitually speaks in run-on sentences while elongating the word “and” and to allow the thought to continue unimpeded. Elongation of vowels is often used for emphasis, a characteristic of many Southern speakers. Dropped consonants are often accompanied by a glottal stop, a characteristic of the subject, not of Southern speakers in general. The subject was observed to speak with little openness in the jaw; the presence of braces and a tongue stud affects the pronunciation of the consonant “s.”

COMMENTARY BY: Jennifer Fine and Erica Tobolski

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/04/2005

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech. In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list). The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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