Alabama 8

Listen to Alabama 8, a 67-year-old woman from Auburn, Alabama, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 67

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1934

PLACE OF BIRTH: Auburn, Alabama

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: retired laundress

EDUCATION: some high school

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was raised in Lee County, Alabama, during the Depression. Her family has lived for at least five generations in this community, which, except for the public schools, is still largely segregated. She was unable to finish high school but successfully raised four sons, supporting them by working in a laundry.

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): 17/05/2001

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 Auburn, Alabama, and raised in Auburn, Alabama. There was a family of eleven. Uh, fun. Uh, we didn’t go out very much. I had a strict family. And, uh, church, well, such as church socials and things like that. We … that was what we really took for fun. School was good. And, uh, I didn’t have any problems in school. OK, as I grew older, well, I was raised by my grand- grandmother and my aunt, and, uh, as I grew older, I married, had four sons. And, um, I raised the- them alone, and it was very hard. And for social life, it was bein’ around them, havin’ fun with them. And I worked. And we had fun just sittin’ around, laughin’ and talkin’ together. Didn’t go out v- … raised my sons by my, help of my aunt until, until they was … my, my youngest was, was 7 years old, and I moved out on my own. And, uh, we lived in the projects, and I, I worked at a, a laundry to support them. They were very sweet boys. I didn’t have no problem about gettin’ in, them gettin’ into trouble or anythin’. So, we lived a pretty normal life together. It was hard raisin’ four kids by, alone, but I did the best I could. And everythin’ turned out fine. Well, kids are very different now. Because they have this rule you can’t, you can’t, you know, discipline them. That’s very hard for me ’cause I’m used to, when a child disobeyed, not puttin’ ’im in the corner, uh, time out. I, uh, I believe in, in, you know, lightly spankin’, not to hurt, not to put marks or anythin’ on ’em. And I think that that was the best way, because now a kid think he can get, they can get by with anything, because they know you can’t do about it, but p- … set ’em in the corner, and the corner only lasts a few minutes. So, that’s, today, the kids of today are so different. When I was raisin’ my kids, because they don’t seem to have a- … to realize that this is their lives, and that they kinda have a- … they gotta be responsible. …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/01/2008

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 light [r] coloration, both at the ends of words and in the medial position, so you hear “suppot” for support and “nahmal” for normal. Consonant action is relaxed, particularly plosives in the terminal position. The rhythms of her speech are slow in general but accelerate for emphasis, as in the phrase “I never had any problems in school.” Neutral vowels tend to be elongated, as in “good” and “fun,” and diphthongs tend to broaden towards the parent vowel as in “ah” for “I.”

COMMENTARY BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/05/2001

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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