Keywords

sociophonetics, US Englishes, regional variation, generational change, GAMMs

Abstract

The late twentieth century in the United States marks the decline of regional vowel systems like the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift, replaced by supralocal systems like the Low-Back-Merger Shift.We chart such change in acoustic data from seven generations of White speakers (n = 135) in the Southeastern state of Georgia. We analyze front vowels affected by both the SVS and LBMS (DRESS, TRAP), plus PRICE and FACE, known respectively to monophthongize and centralize in the SVS, and LBMS-implicated LOT/ THOUGHT. The SVS is most advanced among Georgians born in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in FACE-centralization. In Generation X, retraction of front lax vowels begins, leading toward the LBMS. These results, which hold across genders and education levels, support findings that regional vowel systems declined precipitously following a Gen X “cliff,” raising questions about how such language changes are rooted in demographic transformations of that time period.

Original Publication Citation

Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, & Lelia Glass. “Boomer Peak or Gen X Cliff? from SVS to LBMS in Georgia English.” Language Variation and Change. DOI: 10.1017/S095439452300011X.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2023

Publisher

Language Variation and Change

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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