Massachusetts 9

Listen to Massachusetts 9, a 28-year-old woman from South Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 28

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1977

PLACE OF BIRTH: South Boston

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian (Irish descent)

OCCUPATION: speech therapist

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

The subject went to school in Indiana and also spent time in Mexico.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She claims to be able to “code switch” back and forth, and, in her reading of Comma Gets a Cure, performs in a what she perceives to be a more typical Southie dialect. (The listener will notice her erratic rhoticity in the NURSE lexical set but the general absence of rhoticity in all other vowel + R sets.)

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

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2005

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 South Boston, and … in 1977.  I think right after the time of busing, and that was a time when there were not a lot of people in South Boston who were not from here.  Um, it was a very family-oriented town, and everybody had a strong accent, in which they didn’t pronounce their Rs.  So, um, that was very normal for me growing up. I grew up in a single-family home, um, raised by my mother, who worked a lot of jobs to support us.  And, um, and I went to college here at Boston University, um, with a very diverse crowd of people.  I then took two years off.  I traveled around a place.  I worked in Mexico, and I bartendered here and there.  Then I went to grad school in Indiana.  I went to Indiana University of Bloomington for two years, to get my master’s in Speech Therapy.  Um, I am now a speech therapist working in the Lynn public schools, which is a city right outside of Boston.  Um, I, I have a special spot for my Southie accent, which comes out, um, here and there when I’m hangin’ out with my old Southie crew, or when I’ve had a couple cocktails.  However, I think that, when I went to Indiana University, um, and maybe even a little bit before that, when I was working in a, a touristy section of Mexico, um, I just got really frustrated with the stigma that I feel like the South Boston accent brought on. Um, I think a lot of people, um, give you a bit of a stereotype.  Um, with the accent, people love to make fun of it.  People constantly want you to tell them that “you pahked yah cah in Hah-vahd Yahd.”  You know, and they, they just think it’s great, whereas we just kinda think it’s our normal speech, not anything too funny about it for us.  But I, I guess I really just got sick of people makin’ fun of the accent, so I think I, I did a bit of code switchin’ and I developed more of a standard American, standard American accent.  And, um, that is what I generally use, although I — like I said — I switch back and forth.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/01/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

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

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.