Mississippi 7

Listen to Mississippi 7, a 56-year-old man from Clarksdale, Mississippi, 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: 56

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/05/1960

PLACE OF BIRTH: Clarksdale, Mississippi

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: innkeeper and writer

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

The subject lived in California for 20 years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He smoked for seven years.

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): 02/10/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Headed out West, uh, lived a lot of different lives [laughter] and, uh, lived out there a couple of decades — um, very different life; and, uh, swore I’d never come home, but sometime life grinds on you and home’s a damn good option [laughter], and I love being back.

Uh, I’d been teaching school here and, um, just — I’d taught everything. I kind of changed career fields every few years, and, anyway, ed- education was a late-life venture, and I taught everything from elementary through community college and gang-bangers out West, and moved back here teaching elementary school; and after about two years, I was, uh, I was just done. Um, just educational system in malaise and, uh, just not a lot of parental support in the school system — uh, kids four to five reading grades below level and just not a lot of act-right [laughter], and I just couldn’t — I just was done. So I started writing for the local newspaper and managing the Clark House and done it, uh, seven years as of this weekend.

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:

• 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.