Alabama 3

Listen to Alabama 3, a 50-year-old woman from Jackson County, Alabama, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1949/1950

PLACE OF BIRTH: Jackson County, Alabama

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: farmer

EDUCATION: high school

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

The subject has lived in Alabama all of her life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her speech remains unaffected by outside influences.

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

RECORDED BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/06/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in northeastern Alabama. I was born in Jackson County, and that’s, um, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Uh, the Jackson County borders on Georgia and Tennessee. My, uh, ancestors have probably lived there for well over a hundred years. I was, uh, raised on a farm. My father had a cotton farm, and a corn farm. And so as I grew up, I picked cotton, hoed cotton, pulled corn, fed animals and worked in a chicken house. And having done all that, I don’t there’s anything that is, uh, beneath my doing. If you’ve slopped hogs, you can do lots of things. I attended a small school. I think there were 15 folks in my ninth-grade class. Uh, my parents were unable to finish school themselves, because of their economic circumstances. My father was an orphan by the time he was 14, and my mother grew up in a very poor family, so they were not able to finish high school. Uh, the teachers that I had were very quickly, uh, my role models, and I would look toward them for what I was hoping my future would be, which would not be out somewhere in the hot sunshine, picking cotton. There’s not a lot of free time on a farm, but as I remember back on the things that we did in our leisure time, I remember simple things like playin’ hopscotch, playin’ with dolls, playin’ in a playhouse outdoors, watchin’ TV, playin’ dress-up, uh, listenin’ to the radio. And our homes were close together, although we lived in a farming community, so many times we would meet our neighbor friends outside, and we would ride our bikes. We would, uh, play softball. Sometimes we would have war with corncobs, which could be quite dangerous at times. I remember riding my bicycle, uh, with a neighbor.  She was riding the bicycle; I was on the handlebars, and somebody was on the back seat.  And we had this giant hill that we would tra- travel down. And one day as we were driving down the hill, we were, seemed to be going at the speed of light, and I was ejected from the bicycle, went rolling down the hill, and I have two scars now to prove that I was in that accident. Uh, so most of our free time we spent just doin’ the simple outdoorsy sorts of things, not a lot of TV watching, just very limited TV were we allowed. I also remember when we first got our telephone, which, I suppose people of my generation had telephones when they were born, but I didn’t. And I remember I was probably about 9 or 10 years old when we first got our phone. And we had a party line, so if you were to use the phone, you would pick up the phone and you would hear other conversations. Was really, uh, you really would want to listen to those conversations, but you knew it was wrong, so you would quickly pick it up and then hang up the phone. And I remember being limited to — my time on the phone — to 15 minute. I couldn’t talk any longer than 15 minutes on the telephone, which is probably a lot different from our young folks today. As I think about, uh, growing up, and I think about some of my fond memories, a lot of those would revolve around holidays. One in particular is Halloween, and I think Halloween is still one of my favorite times, simply because of the experience that I had at Miss Davis’s home. Uh, Miss Davis was an elderly lady, and she seemed to be elderly all my life. And she had had a large family, so she had a dining room table that sat either 12 or 14 people. I can’t recall exactly which. But at Halloween she would have her table just heavy with all her home-baked goodies, she would have, uh, popcorn balls, candied apples, cookies, cupcakes. Christmas was, um, a fun time, just like it is for all kids. My sister and I spent a good bit of time playing the guessing game as to where our mom might have hidden our gifts. And particularly I remember the Christmas that we were to receive stuffed animals. Stuffed animals were really the rage. All the young girls wanted a huge stuffed animal, and so did we. So we prowled through the house till we found our stuffed animals. Uh, I received a pink poodle, and my sister had a purple poodle. And we’d play with those for hours when our parents weren’t inside the home, and tried to put on a really surprised face the day we looked under the Christmas tree. Although we had been enjoying them for weeks.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/01/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject’s speech is characterized by a hard (r) in both medial and terminal positions, the resonant point shifting toward the throat; otherwise it is focused in the front of the mouth and the nose. She uses a fairly consistent i/e substitution, which you hear in words like “impty” for empty, and “expinsive” for expensive, and drops the “ing” suffix in words like goin’ and singin’. Short vowels often become diphthongs with the addition of a shwa sound, as in hand (hay und), and the (aw) sound opens to (ah) with no lip rounding, as in lawyer (lah yer). Notice the glottal-stop substitution for the medial d in didn’t, and the diphthong (aI) is shortened to the vowel (a) as in “laf” for life. Of interest are the syllabic shifts in Hal’ low een, and bi cy’ cle. The tempo of the speech is brisk, and the consonant action is strong, particularly the terminal “t.”

COMMENTARY BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/06/2000

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