migration and the appalachian diaspora

http://eng.sagepub.comJournal of English Linguistics

DOI: 10.1177/0075424208317127 2008; 36; 105 Journal of English Linguistics

Kirk Hazen and Sarah Hamilton A Dialect Turned Inside Out: Migration and the Appalachian Diaspora

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Authors’ Note: We would like to thank Burgetta Wheeler for her invaluable creative energy and excite-ment about this project. In addition, we would like to thank Ashley Wise for her careful readings andBarbara D. Hamilton for her assistance and support.

Journal of English LinguisticsVolume 36 Number 2

June 2008 105-128© 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/0075424208317127http://eng.sagepub.com

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A Dialect Turned Inside OutMigration and the Appalachian DiasporaKirk HazenWest Virginia UniversitySarah HamiltonYork University, Toronto, Ontario

Migration to economically more prosperous areas has been an attractive choice for manyAppalachians. This paper traces the effects of migration on language variation within oneAppalachian family. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of phonological, mor-phological, and lexical variables, we draw distinctions between family members whoremained in West Virginia and those who migrated to Ohio and Michigan. The data comefrom interviews with nine members of one southern West Virginia family. Aside frommigration status, education is the most influential factor in language variation patterns formigrant and non-migrant speakers. Our findings indicate that Appalachian migrantsnegotiate their sociolinguistic identities by drawing on the norms both of their familymembers and of their adopted homes. This phenomenon is not isolated to one family;economic conditions have fostered the introduction of external sociolinguistic norms intoAppalachian communities for at least seventy years.

Keywords: Appalachian English; family; migration; language variation; sociolinguistics

Introduction

For the last century, scholars and the general public have often viewed Appalachiaas a unified region in terms of its culture, history, and language (Lewis 1998:2).

This perception of homogeneity was so dominant, yet remained so factually unsup-ported, that some scholars refer to it as the “Myth of Appalachia” (Shapiro 1978).More recent scholarship in linguistics and history has revised these earlier viewswith a better account of the actual history of the region. As Montgomery (2006a:999)writes, “. . . Appalachia is not home to a single dialect. Research has shown that theancestry of Appalachian speech is quite mixed and that in many ways it represents amicrocosm of American English.” Even within small communities, diversity in lan-guage variation patterns has become a regular part of the twentieth-century Appalachiandialect profile.



106 Journal of English Linguistics

Appalachia has experienced economic difficulties that have caused many of itsresidents to migrate in search of employment. The economy of West Virginia, whichis within the Appalachian region, has changed over the last century and a half, but arecurrent theme has been domination by outside corporations. As Fones-Wolf andLewis (2002:x) write, “The ownership of land and mineral rights by outsidersdoomed the state’s economic development.” Because of the depressed economy,many West Virginians have had limited employment opportunities. Over the lastseventy-five years, their choices have often been limited to the mines, the military,and migration. This paper focuses on the linguistic consequences of this last option,migration. Migrants often did not sever family ties with their ancestral homes, butrather maintained them over decades, and they have often retired back to thosehomes (Anderson 2006). In this paper, we provide a case study of the language vari-ation patterns within one family and assess how migration affected those patterns.

Socio-Historical Context and Family Background

Scholars estimate that nearly seven million people left the Appalachian regionbetween 1940 and 1960. Migrants from West Virginia moved east and north to citiessuch as Columbus and Dayton in Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan (Evans 2004; Evans, Ito,Jones & Preston 2006). Once they arrived in these cities, they often remained for longperiods in closed communities within the urban areas (Kahn 1973:83). These commu-nities functioned as enclaves that preserved the culture of the Appalachian migrants.Smith Jones (1997) underscores the importance of these Appalachian enclaves for thepreservation of dialect variants (257), but she also discusses prescriptive social pres-sure from speakers of the standard variety of Northern English. Given the pressure toaccommodate to a more standard variety, which Appalachian dialect features were pre-served, and which were not? When migrants visit or retire to their West Virginiahomes, which altered norms might they transmit to their home communities?

Native Appalachian speakers certainly notice some dialect shift among migrants.In an interview, one speaker, Lizzie, comments, “Well, when they first moved out [toMichigan and Columbus, Ohio] and started coming back and started talking differ-ent, it was sort of funny, but now I’ve got used to it.” Given this metalinguistic aware-ness, the West Virginia Dialect Project was fortunate to have the opportunity tointerview migrants and non-migrants from the same Appalachian family in CabellCounty, West Virginia. In the traditional view of the speech community, socio-linguists have maintained that the local vernacular is best represented among thosespeakers who have not had extensive contacts outside the region (Patrick 2002;Wolfram, Hazen & Schilling-Estes 1999). The intent here is to demonstrate howmigration and the formation of diasporic communities have affected the languagevariation patterns within this family and, potentially, of the larger community. Fromour sociolinguistic analysis of these speakers’ language variation patterns, we illus-trate the sociolinguistic changes that may be underway as a result of migration.



A native of the community and fellow family member recorded the nine partici-pants in 2002, yielding over four hours of speech. The interviewer had a bachelor’sdegree and worked in Raleigh, North Carolina for a large newspaper; she was sisterto one of the speakers (John), daughter to another (Bradley), and either niece orcousin to the rest of the speakers. The interviewer recorded all of the speakers on thefamily’s ancestral land in Cabell County, West Virginia. She conducted half of theinterviews using a conversational triangle with the interviewer and two participants(cf. Wolfram et al. 1999:6) and interviewed the rest in one-on-one conversationsbetween the interviewer and the participants. However, she conducted nearly all ofthe interviews before a “silent audience” of other family members, who would com-ment on the dialogue between the interviewer and each participant.

The interviews took place at a family reunion, when the speakers’ thoughts wereturned toward their shared past, and the interviewer framed the activity as a way ofpreserving family history. The family has had a presence in Cabell County, West

Hazen, Hamilton / Migration and the Appalachian Diaspora 107

Figure 1Cabell County, West Virginia



Virginia since the eighteenth century, and participants frequently comment on theclose ties between family members and their neighbors when they were growing up.Prior to migration, this family had a dense and multiplex network consistent with lifein a rural area. Family members sometimes continued to live together after marriage,and the data include many stories about playing games and working together. Theydo not discuss the effect of migration on the ties between family members and thesurrounding community at any length.1 In addition to conversation and stories, fourparticipants completed reading passages and word-pair lists.

All of the participants are from Cabell County, West Virginia, which is firmlywithin the boundaries of Appalachia (see Figure 1). The county is located in thesouthwest corner of the state; Huntington, West Virginia, and Ashland, Kentucky, arethe nearest economically influential cities. According to 2005 figures, Cabell Countyhas a population of 94,031. The median value of owner-occupied housing units isUS$76,200 and per capita income is $17,638.2 Although the population density ofCabell County is considerably higher than the rest of West Virginia, housing valuesand per capita income are comparable with state averages. For the participants in thisstudy, generation and socioeconomic class interact: The older speakers grew up inpoverty, concentrating their efforts on the daily needs of survival, while the youngerspeakers grew up under much better conditions. Despite these differences, thehomogenous background of the speakers allows for sociolinguistic investigation ofthe effects of the diaspora on language variation patterns.


Table 1Cabell County Speakers

Sex Age Relationship Education Current location

Bella F 67 Married to Eugene Some high school Moved in 1963 to ColumbusLizzie F 72 Sister to Mortimer, High school Cabell County

Eugene, Jenny, BradleyJenny F 78 Sister to Eugene, Mortimer, High school Moved in 1940s to Detroit,

Bradley, Lizzie, wife of Silas back to WV in 1997John M 34 Son of Bradley Four years college Cabell County Bradley M 59 Father of John, brother to Lizzie, High school Cabell County

Jenny, Eugene, MortimerMortimer M 66 Brother to Lizzie, Jenny, 11th grade Moved to Detroit in 1940s

Eugene, BradleyEugene M 69 Brother to Lizzie, Mortimer, Some high school Moved to Columbus in 1963

Jenny, husband of BellaCharley M 74 First cousin to Jenny, Mortimer, 4th grade Has lived in Cabell County

Eugene, Bradley, Lizzie since 1944Silas M 80 Married to Jenny Some high school? Moved to Detroit in

1940s, back to WV in 1997

Note: Migrant speakers’ names are bolded.



The speakers range from thirty-four to eighty years of age (see Table 1, where weprovide pseudonyms). Six have lived outside of West Virginia for at least four con-secutive years, and some of the migrants have not yet returned permanently to thearea. Both genders are represented: there are three women and six men. Most speak-ers are over sixty years of age, and all are European American. The education of theparticipants varies with age: the younger the speaker, the more likely he or she is tohave finished high school. The youngest speaker in the sample is also the only par-ticipant with some college education. As the older speakers put it, “getting smart”and quitting school was common in Cabell County in the 1940s and 1950s. Leavinghigh school early, like migration, was an economic necessity. One speaker, Eugene,comments, “My sisters all went to work young, and I got smart and quit school andwent to work in a factory when I was 16.”

We explore the possible influence of these economic conditions, and associatedmigration, on dialect patterns and sociolinguistic norms. In the next section of thispaper, we survey phonological and morphological features of the vernacular dialectto develop a qualitative analysis. Following this assessment, we employ quantitativeanalysis of selected variables to offer a finer-grained analysis.

Qualitative Assessment of Phonologicaland Morphological Features

Previous studies of English in Appalachia, including Wolfram and Christian (1976)and Montgomery (2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b), have discussed the sociolinguisticvariables in this study. We have also included some of the variables described for theregion by Childs (2005); Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006); Mallinson (2006:195);Childs and Mallinson (2004); Mallinson and Childs (2004); and Mallinson andWolfram (2002). Some of these dialect features have been investigated recently—forexample, the high-front merger and low-back merger (Hazen 2005; Majors 2005)—while others have received little sociolinguistic attention. Although few of these soci-olinguistic variables are unique identifiers of the entire Appalachian region, severalspecify an area of the Midland that stretches into Appalachia and the northern/south-ern divide of the region (Carver 1987:176; Hazen 2006).3

Table 2 provides a qualitative assessment of the distribution of Appalachianphonological variables for the nine speakers in this study, determined through audi-tory analysis of their sociolinguistic interviews.4 The first six columns representspeakers who have spent at least four years outside the region; most spent decadesaway. The last three columns represent speakers who did not migrate from theregion. Some features are present in the speech of all the participants. All nine speak-ers consistently shorten the offglide of the /ay/ vowel (e.g., ride “rahd”). The“/ay/ ungliding” variable,5 in which the offglide is shorter (in milliseconds) beforemore sonorant sounds and longer before less sonorant sounds, is usually conditionedby the succeeding phonetic environment (Bernstein 1993:212; Thomas 2001:34;




110

Tabl

e 2

Pho

nolo

gica

l Fea

ture

Dis

trib

utio

n B

ella

Jenn

yJo

hnSi

las

Mor

timer

Eug

ene

Cha

rley

Bra

dley

Liz

zie

/ay/

ung

lidin

g be

fore

voi

ced

cons

onan

ts,

e.g.

,/kr

ayd/

[k

ra!d

]X

X(X

)*X

XX

XX

X/a

y/ u

nglid

ing

befo

re v

oice

less

obs

true

nts,

e.g.

,/pr

ays/

[p

ra!s

]—

——

—X

XX

XX

Post

voca

lic /l

/ voc

aliz

atio

n,e.

g.,/

hold

/ [h

owd]

XX

XX

XX

XX

XPr

econ

sona

ntal

con

sona

nt c

lust

er r

educ

tion,

e.g.

,/b"

st b

"k/

[b

#s b

$k]

XX

XX

XX

XX

XPr

evoc

alic

con

sona

nt c

lust

er r

educ

tion,

e.g.

,/w

%st %

nd/

[w#s

!nd

]X

XX

XX

XX

XX

Del

etio

n of

initi

al /!

/,e.

g.,/

!#m

/ [#

m]

—X

XX

XX

XX

XPr

e-na

sal f

rica

tive

stop

ping

,e.

g.,/

w%z

nt /

[w%d

nt]

XX

—X

XX

XX

XG

lidin

g of

mon

opht

hong

s,e.

g.,/

bæd/

[b

æy d]

XX

X—

XX

XX

XSc

hwa

rais

ing

to /i

/,e.

g.,/

sod%

/ [s

odi]

NE

X—

XX

XX

XX

/!/

/d/ w

ord

initi

ally

,e.

g.,/

!æt/

[dæ

t]—

——

—X

X—

X—

Del

etio

n of

initi

al /w

/,e.

g.,/

w%̃n

/ [%̃

n]—

—X

XX

XX

X—

Uns

tres

sed

initi

al s

ylla

ble

dele

tion,

e.g.

,/b%

k ^z/

[k

^z]

XX

XN

EX

XX

XX

Fina

l /ow

/ to

schw

a,e.

g.,/

w&n

do/

[w&n

d%]

X—

NE

NE

XX

XX

XFi

nal /

ow/ t

o sy

llabi

c [r']

,e.

g.,/

halo

/ [h

alr']

X—

NE

NE

NE

XX

XX

/oy/

ung

lidin

g,e.

g.,/

boyl

/ [b

o!l]

NE

NE

NE

—X

XX

X—

Wor

d fi

nal i

ntru

sive

[t]

,e.

g.,/

w%̃n

s/

[w%̃n

st]

——

——

—X

—X

X/q

/ [t

] ne

xt to

nas

als,

e.g.

,/m

%̃n(/

[m

%̃nt]

——

——

—X

—X

—W

ord

fina

l /r/

loss

e.g.

,/ko

rn/

[ko!

n]—

——

——

XX

——

1. S

hort

ened

glid

e be

fore

the

voic

ed c

onso

nant

s in

the

inte

rvie

w,b

ut f

ull o

ffgl

ide

in th

e w

ord

list.

2. A

n ‘X

’ind

icat

es th

at th

e sp

eake

r pr

oduc

ed th

e di

alec

t fea

ture

. Par

enth

eses

indi

cate

that

toke

ns o

f th

e di

alec

t fea

ture

are

lim

ited;

NE

indi

cate

s th

at th

ere

is n

o ev

i-de

nce

for

eith

er v

aria

nt o

f th

e fe

atur

e.



Wolfram et al. 1999:108) and may have syllabic constraints (Hazen 2004). Throughoutthe lowland South, and among African American speakers, a succeeding voicelessobstruent such as the /t/ sound in light usually yields a full offglide (Labov, Ash &Boberg 2006:246).

Although all nine participants produce /ay/ ungliding, not all speakers produce itbefore a voiceless obstruent. All three of the non-migrants produce ungliding in thisenvironment, but only one of the six migrants does so. The low frequency of /ay/ungliding before voiceless obstruents in our data may be due to negative evaluationof the feature in the central and southern Appalachian region. Its frequency varieswidely with rurality and socioeconomic status, and it has gradually become stigma-tized over the last half of the twentieth century, both in Appalachia and in otherdialect areas (Hazen 2006:140). For most of the migrants in our study, the stigmaassociated with pre-voiceless /ay/ ungliding appears to have caused changes at thelevel of performative awareness, if not at the level of grammar. The combination ofdistinguishable phonetic environment and negative evaluation—most likely fromNortherners and lowland Southerners alike—has set the stage for a change in this“Appalachian heritage feature.” Scholars of English in Appalachia have consideredAppalachian heritage language to be a set of vernacular features traditionally linkedwith the region (Hazen & Fluharty 2004), although the term makes no claim aboutthe current usage of these features.

One variable not widely studied among Appalachian speakers, but found through-out West Virginia, is the vocalization of /l/ (e.g., cold co’d). Much less is knownabout /l/ vocalization than its liquid counterpart, /r/ vocalization, despite the fact that/l/ vocalization has become a worldwide feature (e.g., Ash 1982; Horvath & Horvath2005; Stuart-Smith, Timmins & Tweedie 2006). In contrast to the variation in /r/-ful-ness among Appalachian speakers (Labov et al. 2006:48; Mallinson 2006:195), /l/vocalization can be found both in the northern and southern areas of West Virginia.Our observations in connection with the West Virginia Dialect Project indicate thatthere is no overt stigma associated with /l/ vocalization.6 Consistent with our expec-tations, all nine speakers consistently produce postvocalic /l/ vocalization.

A more common feature in all varieties of English is consonant cluster reduction,also known as “t/d deletion” (e.g., fast fas’). Perhaps because this is a worldwidefeature for English (Chambers 2002:258; Schneider 2004:1126), it is not surprisingto find that all nine speakers reduce consonant clusters before succeeding conso-nants. The fact that all nine participants also produce this feature before vowelsdemonstrates the vernacularity of these speakers. We analyze this language variationpattern quantitatively below.

A vernacular dialect feature that is much less common in the English-speakingworld is lenition of initial /!/ (e.g., them ‘em). This language variation pattern isa feature of Appalachian heritage language (Wolfram & Christian 1976:54). Itaffects almost exclusively /!/, not /(/, and occurs primarily in function words (e.g.,them, there). This distribution suggests that this lenition is more likely in prosodi-cally less prominent environments. Furthermore, the frequency of these items most




likely promotes storage of their reduced forms as part of the lexical entry (Bybee2007). Eight of the nine speakers produce this feature. Like the other widely distrib-uted variables, the strong representation of this feature indicates that it was frequentin previous decades (Bailey, Wilke, Tillery & Sand 1991).

Word final intrusive [t] is an often-stereotyped feature of English in Appalachia(e.g., oncet). As with /ay/ ungliding before voiceless obstruents, the overt stigmati-zation of this feature appears to cause older speakers to produce it less frequentlyand, therefore, has hampered its transmission to younger generations. It is not a well-represented feature among the speakers in this sample: only one of the three non-migrants and one of the six migrants produces it in our recordings.

Both migrants and non-migrants produce prenasal stopping (e.g., wasn’t wad-n’t) (Schilling-Estes 1995) and gliding of monophthongs (Thomas 2001:34). Thereis also no clear-cut difference between migrants and non-migrants in production ofschwa raising (Butters 1981).7 It is surprising that the migrants have maintained thisdialect feature, since it is heavily stereotyped outside of Appalachia—for example, inpopular comic strips like Snuffy Smith, and in TV characterizations like The BeverlyHillbillies. By contrast, fewer migrants produce final /ow/ to /r/, while all non-migrantsdo, despite the fact that the feature is equally stereotyped outside of Appalachia.

The distinction between migrants and non-migrants may best be characterized interms of gradient group differences. If differences between migrants and non-migrants were categorical, such that members of each group had different variantsof each variable, they would be of little benefit to the migrants as they transitionedbetween their home communities and their adopted regions. We speculate thatmigrants produce some features more frequently than others as a function of theirsociolinguistic awareness of each feature and its linguistic prevalence.

In regard to sociolinguistic awareness, because /ay/ ungliding before voicelessobstruents is stereotyped in the mainstream media, movement to a region where thefeature is stigmatized causes migrants to see it as a point of distinction betweenmigrants and non-migrants. In his interview, John and the interviewer discuss thedifferences they have noticed between how family members speak and how othersspeak, specifically speakers of Northern dialects. This heightened sociolinguisticawareness is also evident in passages where migrants note a difference between theirown speech and non-migrants’ vernacular speech patterns. John, who does not pro-duce any /ow/-to-schwa raising, draws a distinction between the way he says volca-noes and the way his non-migrant father, Bradley, pronounces the word as“volcanuhs” [v%lken%z]. Migrants are highly aware of sociolinguistic differences,even within their own families, and readily associate specific features with non-migrant family members. They characterize the associated dialect features as being“back home,” not necessarily as “bad” or “wrong”; nevertheless, the migrants under-stand that using a vernacular variety may cause others, especially those outside theregion, to perceive the speaker as unintelligent or uneducated. Only after the inter-viewer (his sister) encourages him to see his vernacular variants as valid, John asserts,




“But I agree . . . that people shouldn’t be discriminated against from, because of theway they talk. It’s not a limit on your education or your intelligence.” As a relativelyyoung man who works outside the community to support his family, John is highlyaware of sociolinguistic differences, and his linguistic profile includes few variantsthat are highly stigmatized or stereotyped in the mainstream media.

In regard to linguistic prevalence, deletion of initial /!/ occurs primarily in func-tion words (e.g., the); since these serve a grammatical role, they are largely inacces-sible to conscious awareness and therefore resistant to alteration. John’s vernacularvariants, for example, fall mainly in this category. If speakers do not discover differ-ences in their speech or are not made aware of them by others, they are less likely toalter their speech and use a different variant.

In terms of the construction of sociolinguistic identity, migration appears to offertwo possibilities. On the one hand, migrants may reduce nonstandard variants asthey become more aware of them; on the other, speakers like Mortimer and Eugenemay embrace vernacular variants to construct a “down-home” identity that empha-sizes their country roots.

Table 3 presents vowel mergers for speakers who read a reading passage andword list. This table reflects our auditory assessment of paired words on the word list(e.g., pin~pen). The first two columns summarize the data for two migrant speakers,and the second two columns summarize the data for two non-migrants. All four ofthe speakers merge /&/~/#/ before alveolar and bilabial nasals (the front-lax merger),but distinguish /o/ and /$/ before /l/. The other mergers reflect trends in progress in


Table 3Vowel Mergers in Word Lists, Production

Jenny John Bradley Lizzie

Front-lax pre-nasal merger, Merged; Merged; e.g., pin~pen Merged Distinct* Merged Merged/o/~/$/ merger before /l/,e.g., pole~pull Distinct Distinct Distinct Distinct/u/~/$/ merger before /l/,e.g., pool~pull Distinct Merged Merged Merged/)/~/a/ merger before /t/,e.g., caught~cot Distinct Merged Close Close/)/~/a/ merger before /k/,e.g., hawk~hock Distinct Merged Distinct Close/&/~/i/ merger before /l/,e.g., feel~fill Distinct Distinct** Merged Merged

*For the three pairs, John produced one pair with a clear distinction and two that were fully merged. **John commented immediately after finishing the reading passage that he had practiced the pair for twodays in order to make the distinction.



West Virginia speech. The low-back merger has spread throughout West Virginia andKentucky over the last half of the twentieth century (Hazen 2005; Irons 2007). Table 3reflects this trend: the oldest migrant, Jenny, maintains a clear distinction, while theyoungest migrant, John, produces a complete merger. The two non-migrants, whowere both married adults by the time the merger may have reached them, producenearly merged forms.

The /u/~/$/ merger before /l/ emanates from western Pennsylvania (Labov et al.2006:70; see Thomas 2001:51 for extensive citations). Researchers have also foundit in Southern Ohio (Flanigan & Norris 2000). The pre-lateral liquid environmentlowers the F2 values for the preceding vowel, shrinking the formant space of the pre-ceding vowel (Thomas 2001:50) and provides an opportunity for merger. For thesefour speakers, only the migrant who lived in Detroit from the 1940s to 1997 main-tains the distinction; the other three speakers uniformly produce the merger despitethe thirty-eight-year age range between the youngest and oldest speaker.

Perhaps the most socially salient merger in Table 3 is the /&/~/i/ merger before /l/,which clearly distinguishes migrants from non-migrants. This merger has nearly thesame geographic distribution as the high-back pre-/l/ merger (Labov et al. 2006:71;Thomas 2001:51). It is not surprising that the oldest migrant does not produce thismerger, since it may not have been present in the region during her formative years.The youngest migrant, John, demonstrates the social saliency of this feature in hisinterview. Although John admits to the interviewer that he does not actually distinguishthese vowels in his normal speech, he believes that it is “correct” to distinguish themand states that he worked on pronouncing them before reading the word list. John’sattempt to conform to standard norms shows that this merger is on the social radar.

To some extent, the phonological features in Table 2 can be divided into twogroups: those with a wider geographic distribution and those with a more limitedgeographic distribution.8 The /ay/ ungliding feature is ubiquitous in the U.S. South,and it is a regular feature of African American English in the U.S. North, as well.However, /ay/ ungliding before voiceless obstruents is mostly confined to Appalachia.All three non-migrants in our study produce this feature, but only one migrant doesso. Features such as the change from /ow/ to /r/ are more geographically limited thanconsonant cluster reduction, and this is reflected in the distribution patterns of ourdata. As a general principle we find that the more local the feature, the more it isaffected by migration.

Turning to morphological features, Table 4 presents language variation patternsfor morphological features frequently cited as characteristic of Appalachian dialects.A few of the patterns are shared widely among the participants in this study. All ninespeakers alternate between velar and alveolar variants of the (ING) variable (e.g., Iwas walking) (Houston 1985; Labov 2001).9 Seven of the nine speakers regularlyproduce leveled was (e.g., I don’t know what they was playing) (Hazen 2000; Smith& Tagliamonte 1998; Tagliamonte 1998; Tagliamonte & Smith 1999) and multiplenegation (e.g., We didn’t have no TV ) (Green 2002:77).10 We can draw little distinction




115

Table 4Morphological Feature Distribution

Bella Jenny John Silas Mortimer Eugene Charley Bradley Lizzie

(ING): [&*]~[&n] I was walkin’ X X X X X X X X XLeveled was: I don’t know what they was playing. X X NE X X X X XMultiple negation: We didn’t have no TV — X — X X X X X XNonstandard past tense forms: And we just

knowed each other all of our life — — — X X X X X XArticle absence: take him to Ø movies with us X X — — X X X XDemonstrative them: And back in them days,

moonshine was the thing — — — — X X X X XAuxiliary deletion: we Ø been married 50 year — X — — X X X — XAdverbial -ly absence: if I remember correctØ X X — — X X — Xa-prefixing: You could hear them a-laughing

all through the house — — — X X X X — XCopula absence: Bella wanting to do your hair — — — — X X X X —Plural absence: nouns of weight/measure: There’s

where we lived for about forty year. — — — — — X X X XPersonal datives: Then I got me a job — X — X X — — — XParticiple for past tense: She done canning. — — — — X X X X XZero marking for irregular past tense: He knew

I needed the job…so he give me more chances. — NE — NE X — — X XExistential they: As long as they was a crowd around her — — — NE — — — — XExistential it : it wasn’t as many houses — — — NE — — X — —Scotch-Irish subject verb concord* Most of them does. — — — — — — (X) X —

*Leveled was was not taken as evidence of Scotch-Irish subject verb concord.

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between the migrants and non-migrants based on these three Appalachian heritagelanguage features. However, distinctions arise on the individual level. For example,the participants Bella and John produce fewer vernacular forms than other speakers,perhaps because they recognize these forms as non-standard.

Both non-migrants and older male migrants produce regularized past tense forms(e.g., knowed) (Wolfram & Christian 1976:80), and migrants and non-migrants shareother vernacular features, such as demonstrative them (e.g., back in them days)(Wolfram & Christian 1976:118), adverbial -ly absence11 (e.g., If I remembercorrectØ) (Wolfram & Christian 1976:104), and a-prefixing (e.g., You could hearthem a-laughing) (Wolfram & Christian 1976:69; Montgomery to appear). However,while all non-migrants produce tokens of absent plural -s on nouns of weight andmeasure (e.g., forty mile), only one migrant produces this Appalachian heritage fea-ture. Other morphological heritage language features are not found in these speakers’interviews, including third person reflexive regularization (e.g., hisself) (Wolfram &Christian 1976:119) or perfective done (e.g., I done forgot when it opened) (Wolfram& Christian 1976:85).

One morphological feature, existential they (Montgomery 2006b; cf. Green2002:80), was very difficult variable to assess. Almost half the speakers producedtokens intermediate between they and there.12 Only one participant, Lizzie, consis-tently produced clear tokens of existential they where the standard requires there,and only one (non-migrant) speaker produced tokens of existential it, which dialec-tologists generally characterize as a Southern form and a feature of AfricanAmerican English.

In sum, non-migrants produce more vernacular morphological forms thanmigrants overall; however, two of the older male migrants, Mortimer and Eugene,produce vernacular forms at rates comparable to non-migrants. We cannot identify apattern in these phonological and morphological tables that clearly distinguishesmigrants from non-migrants. Apparently, migrants from Appalachia did not abandonAppalachian heritage features in any sweeping way, although we recognize that thefrequency of vernacular features might drop if we were to interview the migrants intheir adopted homes.

The retention of vernacular features among older male migrants like Mortimer andEugene may result from what Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1999) call “concentration”of dialect features in insular migrant communities. Similar to the situation Evans(2004) describes, the fact that these migrants live in predominantly Appalachian com-munities facilitates the maintenance of their Appalachian heritage. This includes theretention of an Appalachian sociolinguistic profile with reinforced frequencies ofshowcase vernacular variants. Further examination of which features Appalachiandiaspora communities maintain and suppress may shed further light on this issue.

An alternate explanation for the retention of vernacular features might focus on lan-guage across the lifespan. As Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) demonstrate, while mostspeakers’ production of a given phonological variable remains stable after the critical




period, the production of a sizeable minority may undergo change; they also show thatvariables with greater social salience are more likely to undergo change. This may bethe case for phonological variables like /ay/ ungliding before voiceless obstruents,which are currently undergoing change in Appalachia. It is not clear how morpholog-ical features might vary across the lifespan, but many sociolinguists believe them to bemore socially salient than phonological features (e.g., Wolfram, Hazen & Schilling-Estes 1999) and thus more open to conscious manipulation (e.g., -ing). If this is true(at least in the case of U.S. English), then variation might be attributable to style shift-ing rather than completed language change within the individual.

An additional external social factor should be noted in connection with these fea-ture tables. Over the course of the twentieth century, education levels rose andchildren spent less time in the fields or mines to support themselves and theirfamilies. As a result, of the seven siblings in our study, the younger siblings stayedin school longer than the older siblings; only the youngest sibling, Bradley, gradu-ated from high school. John, in the younger generation, attended college for fouryears and produces heritage language features much less frequently than his father,aunts, and uncles.

Quantitative Analysis

To explore the impact of migration on vernacular features, as well as the interac-tion of migration with other external social factors, we employ quantitative analysisof several Appalachian variables: irregular verb variation, demonstrative them, wasleveling, and consonant cluster reduction.

Variation in irregular past tense forms has attracted the attention of scholars(Atwood 1953; Wolfram & Christian 1976; Christian 1978; Montgomery 2004a) as amarker that “plays a role in middle and working-class communities in West Virginia”(Hazen & Fluharty 2004:57). Most participants produce vernacular past tense irregu-lar verb forms, with the exception of Jenny, Bella, and John. These three speakers areall migrants and high-school graduates. Following Wolfram and Christian (1976), weclassified irregular verb variation into four categories and took simple counts. Themost heavily populated category, “uninflected past tense on word form,” containstwenty-five tokens, some of which we reproduce in example (1) below. Wolfram andChristian (1976) identify this category as the most common uninflected past tenseform; in reproducing these findings, our data demonstrate continuity in Appalachiandialects over the generation since Wolfram and Christian completed their study.

The category “participial extended for preterit use”—that is, use of the participialform without its auxiliary to represent the preterit—contains only eight tokens (see [2]for examples), although several forms, such as seen, have become frequent in largeparts of West Virginia. The inverse category, “preterit extended for participial form,”has no tokens. Finally, the category “preterit suffix added for past tense”—that is,




suffixation of the productive past tense morpheme to the present stem of an irregu-lar verb, as in growed or blowed—contains only four tokens (see examples under[4]). All non-migrants produce the vernacular forms; they are entirely absent onlyfrom the speech of migrants. Irregular verb variation is not frequent in the data, butits presence suggests sustained use of these forms, particularly “uninflected pasttense,” over the course of a generation, and therefore provides evidence for the ver-nacularity of the language variety.

(1) Uninflected past tense on word form: 25 tokens.a. The little colt turned around and run around behind this house (Eugene).b. Well, it wasn’t as many houses, I think, when we first come down in here

(Charley).c. She took care of me and give me anything I wanted (Bradley). d. In the one-room school, I remember {the school} had a health nurse, and she

come around to give all the children their shots (Lizzie).(2) Participial extended for preterit use: eight tokens.

e. I seen stars (Mortimer).f. She was ninety-five when she passed away in 2000. And up till she was ninety

she done real well, I thought (Lizzie).(3) Preterit form is extended to the participial form: no tokens. (4) Preterit suffix added for past tense: four tokens.

g. He watched me grow up, and I saw him ride horses up and down the road. Andwe just knowed each other all of our life and we got married (Lizzie).

h. A warehouse, Sandy Valley, wasn’t it? Something like that warehouse. That’s theonly two jobs I ever knowed my dad a-having (Lillian).


Table 5Rate of Demonstrative them for those in all Factor Groups

Factor group Factor them

Animacy Animate 6/10 60%Inanimate 20/28 71%

Sentence position Subject 5/8 62%Predicate 21/30 70%

Prepositions Prepositional phrase 10/17 58%Non prepositional phrase 16/21 76%

Education Graduated HS 2/11 18%Did not graduate HS 24/27 88%

Gender Female 1/3 33%Male 25/35 71%

Migration status Stayed 7/14 50%Migrated 19/24 79%

Total 26/38 68%



Scholarship on demonstrative them is regrettably scanty (Wolfram & Christian1976:118), and the work that exists does not provide a clear set of internal linguis-tic and external social constraints. In an exploratory fashion, we use the combinationof internal factors shown in Table 5—“syntactic position” (subject vs. predicate),“animacy” (animate vs. non-animate), and “prepositional phrase”—to tease out thefactors that influence demonstrative them expression.

The data indicate that the internal factor “prepositional phrase” and the externalfactor “education” most strongly influence the expression of demonstrative them,although none of the internal linguistic factor groups is statistically significant inchi-square tests.13 The presence of the prepositional phrase is a disfavoring environ-ment for demonstrative them, with a 58 percent rate of demonstrative them when itoccurs inside the prepositional phrase, but a 76 percent rate when it occurs outside.As we will show, education through high school is a disfavoring factor for theexpression of almost all vernacular Appalachian variants, and participants who didnot graduate high school produce demonstrative them at a rate of 88 percent.14

Interestingly, nearly all of the tokens of demonstrative them (twenty-five out oftwenty-six) occur in the speech of male participants.

Unlike demonstrative them, was leveling—that is, the leveling of the distinctionbetween singular and plural past tense forms of be (e.g., I was in high school and Wewas in high school)—has received extensive scholarly attention, including sociolin-guistic studies of the phenomenon in Appalachia (e.g., Montgomery 1979; Feagin1979; Christian et al. 1998; Hazen 1996, 2000).

Was leveling is subject to several linguistic constraints, and following Smith andTagliamonte (1998), we analyze our data according to the internal linguistic factorgroups shown in Table 6. We use the same external social factors as above fordemonstrative them: “gender,” “education,” and “migration status.”


Table 6Rates of was Leveling by Grammatical Category

was

Plural existential 6/7 86%First person plural 17/28 61%Second person plural 3/5 60%Collective 3/6 50%Conjoined 3/5 60%3rd person plural pronoun 11/22 50%3rd person plural noun 7/13 54%Positive 41/77 53%Negative 9/9 100%Adjacent 45/80 56%Non-adjacent 5/6 83%



Previous research has shown that plural existentials favor leveled was (e.g., Therewas cars everywhere) (Cheshire 1982; Eisikovits 1991; Feagin 1979; Hazen 2000;Wolfram & Christian 1976). In our data, plural existentials co-occur with leveledwas 86 percent of the time; there is no statistically significant difference among theother subject categories.15 The literature on was leveling also notes a strong correla-tion between negation and was leveling (Britain 2002; Hazen 1998; Wolfram et al.1999), and in our data, the participants produce 100 percent of the negative pasttokens of be as was. Studies with speakers in Ocracoke, North Carolina (Wolframet al. 1999) and Warren County, North Carolina (Hazen 2000) find that non-adjacency,in which the subject is separated from the verb in some way, appears to favor wasleveling. In our data, there is a small difference between the frequencies of adjacentand non-adjacent tokens of leveled was. However, unlike the Ocracoke and WarrenCounty speakers, participants in our study do not distinguish between positive andnegative past forms of be.

Table 7 summarizes the effect of external social factors on was leveling. Theeffect of the factor group “education” (high school graduate vs. non-graduate) isstriking. Non-graduates produce tokens of leveled was at a rate of 86 percent, whilegraduates produce them at a rate of only 37 percent. “Migration status” also strongly


Table 7Rates of was Leveling for Social Factors

was

Education Graduated high school 18/49 37%Did not graduate HS 32/37 86%

Migration Stayed 19/42 45%Status Migrated 31/44 70%

High School: p < .001 in chi-square test: 21.4408 (df 1).Migration: p < .025 in chi-square test: 5.6143 (df 1).

Table 8Individual Rates of was Leveling

was

Lizzie 6/18 33%Bella 5/5 100%Mortimer 10/11 91%Eugene 13/17 77%Jenny 2/5 40%Charley 4/4 100%John 1/6 17%Bradley 9/20 45%



affects was leveling, but in an unexpected direction. Migrants produce tokens of lev-eled was at a rate of 70 percent, while non-migrants produce them at a rate of 45 per-cent.16 Across all participants, the lowest rate of was leveling was 17 percent, but therates for all other speakers are above 30 percent, and the rates for four speakers areabove 70 percent. The frequency rates for individual speakers indicate that was lev-eling is common for almost all speakers, but can vary widely within a community(cf. Wolfram and Beckett 2000).

Linguists generally believe that consonant cluster reduction is conditioned byboth phonological and morphological factors. In Table 8, we present our analysis ofconsonant cluster reduction among our participants. Following Tagliamonte andTemple (2005) and many other studies on –t/-d deletion, we divide the “morphemic”category into “mono-morphemic,” “bi-morphemic” (almost all are regularly conju-gated past tense forms), and “semi-weak verbs” (e.g., slept). Using the Varbrulstatistical package, we find the category to be significant and, as expected, “mono-morphemic” is the most favoring factor for consonant cluster reduction.

Given the higher number of tokens for this variable, we are also able to useVarbrul regression analysis (Tagliamonte 2006) to assess the statistical significanceof these external social factor groups. “Gender” is statistically significant: menproduce tokens of reduced consonant clusters at a rate of 82 percent while womenproduce them at a rate of 68 percent. Although we find “education” and “migration


Table 9Consonant Cluster Reduction

Education Graduate 282/371 76%Non HS graduate 243/299 81%

Migration Non-migrant 232/305 76%Migrant 293/365 80%

Gender Female .367 129/189 68%Male .554 396/481 82%

Morpheme Mono-morphemic .628 318/361 88%Bi-morphemic .348 187/284 66%Semi-weak verb .355 18/23 78%

Succeeding {/l/ 18/18 100%}phonological {[t]/[d] 74/74 100%}environment {nasal 42/42 100%}

Voiced obstruent .937 88/89 99%Voiceless obstruent .858 109/112 97%Glide .631 44/48 92%Pause .382 43/53 81%/r/ .215 7/13 54%Vowel .119 96/217 44%

Input 0.872 Chi-square/cell = 0.7261 Log likelihood = –200.051

Total 525/670 78%



status” to be statistically significant for the variables above, we do not find them sig-nificant in relation to consonant cluster reduction. Non-graduates produce reducedconsonant clusters at slightly higher rates than graduates, and migrants produce themat slightly higher rates than non-migrants.

Notably, the overall rate of consonant cluster reduction falls on the vernacular endof the continuum.17 Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2004:253) summarize rates forthis variable from several communities: Standard American English speakers have areduction rate of 12 percent before a non-consonant for mono-morphemic forms and3 percent for bi-morphemic forms; Southern African American working-class speakershave a reduction rate of 72 percent before a non-consonant for mono-morphemicforms and 36 percent for bi-morphemic forms.

Again following Tagliamonte and Temple (2005), we assess the preceding andsucceeding phonological environments not only for vowels and consonants, butusing finer distinctions, as well. We find only the succeeding phonological environ-ment to be statistically significant.18 Essentially, the condition that has the strongestinfluence on reduction is the presence of a succeeding alveolar.19 Succeeding obstru-ents are the next most favoring environment for reduction, followed by succeedingnon-alveolar sonorants or a pause. The difference in frequency between succeeding/l/ and succeeding /r/ environments is also interesting. We surmise that this orderingreflects a difference in the point of constriction for these two liquids: /l/ has a firmpoint of contact at the alveolar ridge, while American English /r/ has its highestdegree of constriction at the velar region (cf. Raymond et al. 2006).

The influence of the succeeding phonological environment on consonant clusterreduction follows a pattern researchers have found in numerous other communities(see Table 9). Looking at the intersection of morphemic status and succeedingphonological environment, our data confirm the findings of previous studies inwhich morphemic status is a significant category before vowels. In our data, mono-morphemic forms before vowels have nearly twice the rate of consonant clusterreduction compared to bi-morphemic forms before vowels. The patterns of conso-nant cluster reduction in our data are at the vernacular end of the spectrum, but com-parable to those of other communities in the literature (see Table 10). Therefore, itis surprising that there are no significant differences either between migrants andnon-migrants or within the “education” factor group.


Table 10General Findings for Consonant Cluster Reduction

Mono-morphemic Bi-morphemic Semi-weak

Consonant 161/163 99% 80/88 91% 9/13 69%Non-consonant 87/128 68% 48/137 35% 4/5 80%Pause 33/38 87% 9/14 64% 1/1 100%Vowel 54/90 60% 39/123 32% 3/4 75%



Conclusion

Our study of language variation within a family that has participated in theAppalachian diaspora provides insights into changes taking place in Appalachia as awhole. Although Cabell County speech is not likely to change its orientation as part ofthe southern Midland dialect region, patterns of language variation in the county areundergoing influence from other regions. Unlike areas of the United States with highpopulation growth, such as the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina orAtlanta, Georgia, this influence does not come from inbound nonnative residents whobring different sociolinguistic norms with them. Instead, for the Appalachian Midland,and in particular for its historically poorer counties, this influence comes from thereturn of Appalachian migrants as they visit and eventually retire to Appalachia.

The Appalachian heritage language features that are most likely to persist amongmigrant Appalachians are phonological, in particular /l/ vocalization, /!/ deletion,and /ay/ ungliding before voiced consonants. Morphological variants are less likelyto persist, which suggests that the Northern standard language norms exercise influ-ence on the expression of these vernacular variants not only in migrant communities,but also at home in Appalachia.20 As we show in this paper, the immediate result maynot be dramatic shifts in variants; instead, speakers may develop a heightened senseof prescriptive appropriateness. We speculate that some speakers hypercorrect tolocal standards because they are more aware of differences between the dialects, butthis hypercorrection may only be the case for variables that are also found amongworking-class speakers in Northern areas.

The significance of the external social factors “education” and “migration status”in our analysis provides insights into how migrants negotiate their linguistic identity.For speakers who graduated from high school, the need to find work may help tocondition their adoption of non-vernacular variants. Migrants typically report thatothers have remarked upon their language in the workplace, although vernaculartraits such as was leveling also occur among Northern working-class speakers. Asfor the external social factor “migration status,” while migration has a significantinfluence on the frequency of was leveling, migrants actually produce was levelingat a higher frequency than the non-migrants. Despite the assumption that Appalachiahas higher rates of was leveling than the North, exposure to northern varieties doesnot lower the frequency of leveled was.

Some researchers suggest that the bonds of common language and culture thatexist in isolated communities promote the preservation of heritage language variantsin Appalachian diaspora communities (Blanton 1985; Kahn 1973:83). Overall, ouranalysis does not find that migrants preserve Appalachian heritage language patternsto the same degree as their non-migrant family members; nevertheless, for somevariables, such as consonant cluster reduction, migrants and non-migrants show similarpatterns of variation. This may be an example of a “community voice” (Burkette2007:293), whereby younger members of a community use the language of the oldestgeneration to express solidarity. While the migrants in our study are not categorically




younger than the non-migrants, by using the vernacular variants associated with“home” at higher frequencies, migrants can express feelings of solidarity when theyreturn to the home community.

We find that the effects of migration on language variation patterns for the partic-ipants in our study are mixed. The factor “migration status” correlates in the expecteddirection for only one phonological dialect feature, /ay/ ungliding before voicelessobstruents. Migration in Appalachia has certainly had tremendous economic, social,and personal effects, but in contrast to the conclusions of Smith-Jones (1997), we donot find that migration itself has wrought radical changes on English in Appalachia.Instead migration seems to operate on a highly individual level, and the social struc-ture of the family in this study does not impose any set mold for “family” language(Hazen 2002). There are few linguistic variables that clearly distinguish migrantsfrom non-migrants. Based on this study, we argue that migration should be consid-ered as a multifaceted and non-uniform social factor in Appalachia that cannot betreated in isolation from other factors.

Although not consistently, migration has had an effect on the language of theAppalachian migrants, increasing the probability of leveled was and demonstrativethem and slightly increasing the probability of consonant cluster reduction. Wespeculate that migrants heighten vernacular features in their speech due to theiridentification as West Virginians isolated within their adopted communities. Thisphenomenon is not at its terminal point in development. News sources have reportedrecently that, for the first time in nine years, more people have moved into WestVirginia than have moved out of it. According to these reports, the people movinginto West Virginia are “people that have lived here before” (Turchetta 2007); like theparticipants in our study, many had moved away to work and are now retiring tolocations closer to their families. Under these social conditions, the retention of ver-nacular Appalachian heritage features in the speech of the migrants in our study isnot surprising. Even though they have lived for decades in Northern and Midwesterndialect areas, these speakers, like members of many other Appalachian families,have maintained regular contact with family in southern West Virginia and havealways intended to retire to their homeland. The tie to home is strong for many WestVirginians, and cumulatively it has had an effect on socially significant patterns oflanguage variation.

Notes1. However, the eldest female participant, Lizzie, commented that neighbors were not as close and

familiar with each other as they were when she was growing up.2. From http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/54/54011.html. The median value is from 2000, and

the income figure is from 1999.3. The recording time for each speaker varied. This is relevant for both of the following tables, partic-

ularly the morphological table, because some of these features show up rarely. Given the limited amountof recorded speech for each participant, the frequency of these features is remarkable. Recording timesrange from twenty to forty-five minutes for each speaker.




4. We employed acoustic assessment to orient ourselves to variables such as /ay/ ungliding.5. We understand the concern over whether the offglide of any vowel is actually fully unglided or not

(e.g., Thomas 2001:34). For the speakers in this study, as is true for most speakers, the extent of glideweakening varies. A detailed description would require acoustic analysis, especially of different preced-ing phonetic environments. The auditory assessment that the speakers produced shortened offglidesbefore voiced consonants is relatively simple to make.

6. /l/ vocalization is frequent in local radio and television advertising in northern West Virginia.7. One reviewer asked if schwa raising is a lexicalized feature restricted to the word <soda>. Since we

have no examples of the word <soda> with a schwa, this may be the case; however, we have examples ofschwa raising in other words, suggesting it is a phonological process, or at least a widespread lexicalizedfeature: “She did laundry for people and made extra (/-stri/) money like that” (1, 10:24), “Make an extra(/-stri/) dollar” (1, 10:32), “On a Sunday (/-di/), you’d stay at home” (1, 30:13), “kindi laughin’” (vs.“kinda laughin”).

8. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for noting this point.9. Although Wolfram and Christian consider this a phonological variable, Labov (2001) and Hazen

(2006) review the extensive literature on the variable and find scant evidence that the alternation has anyphonological constraints.

10. We realize that for some of these variables, the migrants most likely heard the vernacular variantsin their adopted homes as well.

11. The data from Charley, however, does not include an environment in which potential –ly absencemight occur.

12. These intermediate forms usually contain [#%] or some lax-front vowel with a relatively short glide.It is unclear whether this is the result of word-final /r/ vocalization or glide shortening, since both phono-logical processes appear to be active for these speakers.

13. However, the number of tokens is admittedly too small to make highly confident generalizationsabout the overall population from which the samples have been taken. For “animacy,” chi-square was0.445 (p = .50471), for “subject type,” it was 0.164 (p = .68550), and for “prepositional phrase,” it was1.311 (p = .25221).

14. The “education” division was statistically significant: chi-square was18.08 and p < .001.15. Of the “subject type” factor group, research has shown that the existential subject is the most

favoring factor for the expression of leveled be, and personal pronouns are the least favoring factor(Cheshire 1982; Eisikovits 1991; Feagin 1979; Hazen 2000; Wolfram & Christian 1976). Therefore, weeliminated existential forms from chi-square tests in the hope of teasing out the relationships betweenother grammatical forms and leveled was. The chi-square test requires at least five tokens in each cell toproduce an accurate generalization of the overall population from which the sample is taken. The “subjecttype” factor group had two factors with enough values for a chi-square test: “third person plural pronoun”and “third person plural noun.” The chi-square test here is not significant (chi-square = 0.04839; for sig-nificance at the .05 level, chi-square should be greater than or equal to 3.84) due to the nearly even splitbetween past tense was leveling and the were variant in both the “plural noun phrase” and “plural pro-noun phrase” categories. More data are necessary to determine whether these categories condition wasleveling in any way.

16. The categories of migrant and non-graduate are not evenly distributed. Most migrants are alsonon-graduates, although the migrants have the only college-educated speaker.

17. Standard controls for lexical skewing were in place, with no more than five of the same tokentaken from any one lexical item that did not show variability.

18. Succeeding /l/, [l]/[d], and nasals factors do not have Varbrul weights because they were “knock-outs”—that is, consonant cluster was reduced before these three categories 100 percent of the time.

19. The nasal category was predominantly alveolar.20. To the best of our knowledge, northern features, such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, have not

affected these Appalachian migrants.




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Kirk Hazen is professor of linguistics in the Department of English at West Virginia University. He spe-cializes in variationist sociolinguistics, and his interests include Appalachian English, African AmericanEnglish, and varieties of Southern U.S. English. His teaching goal is to foster better understanding of lan-guage variation for his students and the public.

Sarah Hamilton has a BA in English and Linguistics from the University of Toronto, and an MA inEnglish from West Virginia University. She is finishing an MA in Linguistics at York University. Her cur-rent research focuses on demonstrative pronouns in Appalachian English, and her teaching experienceranges from composition to linguistics classes.




migration and the appalachian diaspora

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