Arkansas 23

Listen to Arkansas 23, a 61-year-old woman from Harrison, Arkansas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples. IDEA is a free resource; please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 61

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/08/1958

PLACE OF BIRTH: Harrison, Arkansas

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white (non-Latina)

OCCUPATION: professor of education and health professions

EDUCATION: Ph.D in educational leadership

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject spent there years in Memphis, Tennessee.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her husband lived in California for 20 years, though the subject does not believe it influenced her accent.

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

RECORDED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/01/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

The little neighborhood where I grew up, my brother and my sister and my mom and I lived with my grandparents for several years when I was in elementary and junior high school. And there were probably thirty kids that lived in a three-square block of our neighborhood. And every day after school we would come home and drop our books and then depending upon the season we would change our clothes; and in, uh, the warm weather, we would, you know, put on play clothes and go outside and go to the yard in front of, uh, one of our neighbor’s houses, and we would play football. And the boys allowed me to play because I was quite a football fan and had the best football in the neighborhood. So, I got to play football with the boys, and because I didn’t want to be the only girl, they let the other girls play as well because they knew that if I didn’t play, I wouldn’t play if the other girls played, didn’t get to play. And then if I didn’t play, they wouldn’t get to use my good football.

In the summer, during, uh, when school was out, on break, we would go out into the woods. It’s a miracle that we didn’t get snake-bit or something, but we would go down to a little stream, and we would dig rocks out of the, uh, the bed of the stream and try to make a little swimming hole. Um, we would take rocks and build little forts — uh, one of the neighbors didn’t like it because we would actually build dams on the little creek, and apparently he was relying on some of the downstream water to water some of his livestock. Um, we would smoke grapevines, um, and then we would smuggle toothpaste out of the house so we could brush our teeth out in the woods so we wouldn’t smell like grapevine smoke when we got back into the house. But, um, we would ride our bikes up and down the street; uh, our parents would always try to make us stay off the street on our bike because there were teenagers that were ler-learning to drive who were not very attentive to a bunch of renegade kids running around in the neighborhood. But it was a great place to grow up. It was very safe. No one ever considered locking their cars or locking their houses. And we would be outside until twilight when we could all hear our parents yelling for us to come in that it was suppertime.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/01/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject’s use of /r/ is strong and lengthened (superb, her, thirty, bird, for). The subject also lengthens a couple of monophthongs. The vowel /æ/ (TRAP) lengthens in the word “dam,” with slight tongue movement suggesting a yod “y” sound in the lengthening of said vowel. Vowel /i/ (FLEECE) also lengthens, with a variety of slight changes made to the sound. The vowel is simply lengthened in the word “stream.” But it can be preceded by the schwa /ə/ (COMMA) (creek, teeth). The vowel may also be preceded by the vowel /e/.

The vowel /u/ (GOOSE) receives strong emphasis (zoo, huge,) and a schwa /ə/ (COMMA) may precede it (tooth, goose, lunatic). Plosive consonants such as /b/, /d/, /g/, and /p/ receive particular emphasis (bowl, duke, dig, parents, goose, ball). /p/ experiences particular volume (private, superb, implied). A slight /ʃ/ (sh) occurs when the consonant cluster /st/ begins a word (street, strong.) /e/ (DRESS) becomes /I/ (KIT) (then, when, gently).

For the /eɪ/ (FACE) diphthong, the tongue is slightly lower, thus approaching the /aɪ/ (PRICE) diphthong (take, plain, day, play, paste, make, great). A schwa /ə/ (COMMA) precedes the diphthong /oʊ/ (GOAT) (go, smoke). The /ɔɪ/ (CHOICE) diphthong lengthens (boys). The monophthonging of /aɪ/ (PRICE) occurs before both voice and voiceless consonants (ride, hide, idea, drive, vine, livestock, liking).

COMMENTARY BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/01/2020

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.

• 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).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.