Oklahoma 14

Listen to Oklahoma 14, a 34-year-old man from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 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: 34

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/03/1979

PLACE OF BIRTH: Oklahoma City

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian/Native American (Osage Tribe)

OCCUPATION: state senator

EDUCATION: J.D. from Oklahoma City University

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

The subject lived in Washington, D.C., for seven years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

His father was a high school teacher. The subject has also had Shakespeare training, and acted with Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park.

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): 10/04/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

In the spring of 2012, I taught a class with President Henry at OCU, and it was a, uh [tongue click], politics class, and, you know, time for the presidential-election year, and it was for honor students, um, there at the university. So, it was all all different years, all underclass men, Thursday nights, uh 6 to 9, and so every week, I created a syllabus, a very lengthy one, where we would tackle a particular topic, hot topic, in politic- politics, which I think is actually the name of the class. And, I’d, you know, kinda lecture for an hour, but I would use, you know, we had a great classroom where we had powerpoint and all that, and I would try to bring in as much multimedia as possible. And then, um [tongue click], we’d have a speaker very, almost always, an elected official of some kind and, uh, and then, you know, if we still had time we might talk internally. So, as an example, you know when we talked about education, you know I, I kind of spent my first hour explaining the bureaucracy of education, you know, who pays for what and and who, who runs what and who makes the decisions, so they understood that. And a little bit about sort of the history of American education and and how we got to the, to the system we have, which of course is not the system we had, you know, when we began as a county. We had no system at all. And, uh, and then I add Glen Johnson, who’s the Chancellor for Higher Education for the state, and Janet Barresi, the state superintendent, come and meet with the students in the second hour, and, um, and then if we had time, we, we chatted. And then, of course, President Henry’s role was to be there and to be brilliant as he is and, and, you know [chuckles], comment and and, um, and, and interact with the students. And, um, so it was a great experience and we got incredible feedback, and the students were fantastic, um. It’s just a lot of work, especially when it’s not your full-time job, you know, so I haven’t done it again. But, uh, someday I, I mean that could be my calling; I don’t know. But, we’ll see, uh, where life takes me. But it was, uh, it was great. I love to teach.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/04/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Strength of accent is light to moderate. The [u] vowel (goose) is nasal with the back of the tongue lifted (you, zoo, new, huge).  The [ɛ] vowel (dress) is replaced with the [ɪ] vowel (kit) – (when, then, superintendent, expensive, spent, Henry, lengthy).   The [r] consonant is hard, lengthened, and often overshadows either the previous or following vowel, sometimes the previous diphthong (Sara, Perry, superb, first, year, power, hour).  Sometimes, initial plosive consonants such as [d], [t], [p] are strongly hit, muscled, thus making the initial syllable of the word strong.  Only once does the personal pronoun “I,” diphthong [aɪ], become [a].  Consonant [t] drops at the end of the word “first.”  Initial [ɔ] vowel (long) lengthens in the word “all.”  In the word “liking,” diphthong [aɪ] (price) replaces [a] with the schwa, [ə] (until).  Once, the word “it’s” becomes “ish” [Iʃ].

There is a squeezing in the throat that brings some words to vocal fry at the end of some sentences.

COMMENTARY BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/05/2013

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.