African American voices in Atlanta

Kretzschmar Jr., W. A. (2015) African American voices in Atlanta. In: Bloomquist, J., Green, L. J. and Lanehart, S. L. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of African American Language. Series: Oxford handbooks. Oxford University Press: New York, NY, pp. 219-235. ISBN 9780199795390 (doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795390.013.28)

Abstract

Survey research in Atlanta suggests that the usual national generalizations about race and language need to be examined in the light of local evidence. The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States preserves recordings of interviews with a number of African Americans from the 1970s, to set a historical baseline for the community. A contemporary random-sample study of African Americans in Atlanta showed that our speakers were highly variable in their vowel production. They not only did not match national generalizations, but appeared to have more of Labov's "Southern Shift" than the local non-African-American speakers who were supposed to be characterized by it. Only a minority of speakers show “mean” behavior for the whole set of vowels. Still, black/white speech relations in the Atlanta metro area create perceptions such that a child from a historic African American neighborhood in Roswell had to "learn how to talk hood" to fit in with children from the Atlanta public schools. And Atlanta, with its central place in the hip-hop community alongside New York and Los Angeles, maintains an identity on the national scene with roots in local speech. History and contemporary evidence combine to show that African American voices in Atlanta belong to a complex system in which speakers can be themselves in their neighborhoods, while at the same time they participate in historical and national trends.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Additional Information: The present author and Sonja Lanehart, the PIs, are grateful for funding from NSF grant SBR-0233448 for the survey.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Kretzschmar, Professor William
• Authors: Kretzschmar Jr., W. A.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780199795390
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2015 Oxford University Press
• First Published: First published in Oxford Handbook of African American Language: 219-235
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy