Name that Accent
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In 2019, we wondered how Oklahomans perceive and label Oklahoman accents. Well, actually, Dr. Freeman wondered what people mean when they say Oklahoma has a "country" accent. How is that different from Southern? Can people tell the difference? In part 1 of the the Oklahoma English project, "Accent Copy Cat," senior Jenna Curran recorded Oklahomans reading a short story naturally and then in several other accents, including "Southern" and "country." Vowel pronunciations are the most common way linguists distinguish regional accents, but our imitators' vowels didn't differ much between their natural, Southern, and Country readings. But maybe Oklahomans cue in to something else -- could listeners tell them apart?
In this experiment, when Oklahoman listeners heard the natural readings, they said the speakers sounded educated and somewhat Midwestern; but they thought the speakers reading the story in Southern or "country" accents sounded Southern, "country," and somewhat "hick/redneck," but both accents were "somewhat" Oklahoman. They had the same reactions to the Southern and Country imitations, regardless of which one the imitator intended (which makes sense if the imitations were truly similar, like we thought). But they rated the natural readings differently (and more positively), even though the vowel pronunciations were similar, too. We'll have to look at things other than vowel pronunciations to find out what they cue into, but for now, we can say that the mix of Midwestern and Southern dialect features in Oklahoma might make both Midwestern and Southern accents sound equally "Oklahoman," and the Country accent might be Southern by another name.
Presentations
- Freeman, V. & *Curran, J. (2020, January). "Is Country the same as Southern?” Characterizing the Oklahoma Country accent via imitations. Poster, American Dialect Society (ADS), New Orleans, LA.
- *Curran, J. & Freeman, V. (2019, November). Country or Southern: Does it even matter? Language and Linguistics Student Conference (LLSC), Edmond, OK.
Related Work
- Part of the Oklahoma English project
- Part of the Country Accents project
- Prior step: Accent Copy Cat
Student Corner
Students
- Jenna Curran
Data and Materials
- Ratings from 27 Oklahomans (many college-age females, but not all) who heard sentences read by four young Oklahoman women, both naturally and in various imitated accents (clips from the Accent Copy Cat sessions). Rated each "speaker" (very-somewhat-not) for regional accentedness and attributes like "educated;" includes write-in adjectives for first impressions. Listeners didn't know they were hearing the same people or imitated accents. See the ADS poster above for a summary.
- Basic demographics of the speakers (age, gender, hometown size, etc.).
- Rating task in Qualtrics, including consent and demographics; flyers, IRB forms, etc.
Project Ideas
- Further analysis of write-in first impressions.
- Analysis of ratings of other accent imitations beyond Okie, country, Southern.
- What features do listeners use to identify accents?
- What makes someone good at identifying accents? (or noticing that they're imitations?)
- Collect reactions from listeners from other regions: how do they react to natural Oklahoman accents and the imitations? Do the imitations sound accurate to people from the imitated places?
- See also: ideas in the Student Corner of Accent Copy Cat.