Mississippi 6

Listen to Mississippi 6, a 45-year-old woman from Friars Point, Mississippi, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 45

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/11/1970

PLACE OF BIRTH: Clarksdale, Mississippi

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: writer

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

The subject has never lived outside Mississippi. She grew up in Friars Point, near Clarksdale.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She mentions that she smoked for two years while in high school as an influence on her speech.

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

RECORDED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/09/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, I am from this area. I have lived here all my life. I live about five miles from the college, um, on the site of an old plantation. Um, when I was first married, which was very young, when I was 18. I’ve been married 27 years now. I grew up across the street from my husband, in a really small river town here called Friars Point. Um, we lived in the original plantation house when we first got married; it was built in 1882. Um, it’s on school section, 16 Section land now, so we were forced out of there when the water situation got really bad; it was just not a good situation with the water; we had a baby, so we moved. And the house now, sadly, is almost on the ground. It has just, um — it looks like the earth is about to swallow it up. The, um, school board obviously couldn’t afford to maintain it; they wouldn’t allow us to buy it, because it was sitting on 16 Section land, but there were hand-carved mantles; there was original wallpaper, which I’ve got some pieces of framed in my home now. So we moved to Clarksdale, and we lived in Clarksdale for 13 years, and we had a son on — my daughter’s the oldest, and we lived here for 13 years and then, one of the same houses on the plantation, which is called King and Anderson — around here it’s still known as King and Anderson — um, this would have been the grandson of the original house built in 1882; the house was still, this house was still there built in probably the ’50s, and so it had been left, um, abandoned, so it had been vandalized, and it was in terrible condition; went under foreclosure; my husband bought it, we completely renovated it, um, and so that’s where we live now, and so that’s the story.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/10/2016

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:

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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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