Arkansas 4

Listen to Arkansas 4, a 56-year-old woman from Fayetteville and Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 56

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1944

PLACE OF BIRTH: Fayetteville, Arkansas

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: medical technician

EDUCATION: college

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

She has lived in Arkansas all her life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Pitch variety is more evident when the speaker is talking about her family, upbringing and personal life. Her parents and both sets of grandparents were also born and raised in Arkansas.

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

RECORDED BY: Mavourneen Dwyer

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/02/2001

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 currently live in Bella Vista, Arkansas. I was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, when my parents were both students at the University. My dad got his law degree while up here at the University, and once we moved to Little Rock, he started his law practice there for a short time, before getting diverted into other occupational professions. Law, I guess, just didn’t suit him. Um, my dad was originally from Harrison, Arkansas, and my mother, uh, was born and raised in eastern Arkansas in a little town called Marmaduke. And she was — she later moved with my grandmother to another small town called Wynn, uh, mostly an agricultural community, a lot of cotton and this type of stuff, back in the early ’40s and ’50s. Um, some of the memories I had — I was raised in Little Rock, like I said, when my dad moved there to set up law practice. Um, don’t remember much about growing up there until 1957, when we had the great Central High School Incident, as we like to refer to it. Uh, I remember schools closing at that time because of the Central High School problem, and having to attend elementary school in our church, since the schools were closed for two or three weeks at that time. Um, Little Rock was a nice place growing up. Can’t say that I would want to live there now. Uh, Northwest Arkansas was a wonderful place to live. My grandparents, on my dad’s side, were from Northwest Arkansas, and then my grandparents on my mother’s side were from Eastern Arkansas. So it was a — kind of a clash of cultures. …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/10/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Her speech is strongly rhotic (r-colored). The “i/e” substitution is to be heard in words like “many” and “attend.” Vowels in words like “bridge,” “band,” and “red” are lengthened and sometimes diphthongized. The vowel in “do” and “university” are also diphthongized. The long “i” of “time” and “sign” always receives an “ah” substitution. There is a certain degree of nasality in the tone that can be typical of the Arkansas dialect.

COMMENTARY BY: Mavourneen Dwyer

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/02/2001

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).

 

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