Oklahoma 16

Listen to Oklahoma 16, a 55-year-old man from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 55

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/07/1958

PLACE OF BIRTH: Oklahoma City

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: mayor of Oklahoma City

EDUCATION: MBA from NYU

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

The subject went to college in New York and also lived in Texas for eight months and Oregon for seven months.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He has broadcasting training and experience.

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): 26/07/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Through the years, I have perfected the creation of the peanut butter sandwich. I think a lot of people, uh, think it’s very simple. They think it, uh, it, it takes only a couple of ingredients and a few minutes and, and, uh, don’t put a lot of thought into it. But, through the years, I’ve noted that that that, uh, careful thinking about the peanut butter sandwich can can really increase the enjoyment on, on the the eating side. So, what I do is first of all, make sure it’s it’s the freshest bread, and and if, if the bread is not fresh, then I will just not have a peanut butter sandwich. The bread has to be good because the bread is so much a part of of the experience. I prefer the crunchy peanut butter, and uh, I, you know, a lot of people I know question that, but, uh, you know, to me it’s, its, it’s not as if you can’t have a peanut sandwich without crunchy peanut butter, but why would you? Um, second, I’ve I’ve only recently, um, evolved from one jelly to another. Uh, for, for I guess the better part of fifty years, I’ve been a grape guy. I just love the grape jelly, and it has been my jelly of choice, um, for as long as I can remember. But recently a friend of mine handed me some homemade jelly that her mother had made from fresh strawberries. And over the course of consuming that jar, I realized that, even though her jelly was gone, I now wanted to start buying strawberry at the store instead of grape. That’s a revelation to me that I would change jelly at age 55, uh, is something I didn’t see coming. Um, but, um, uh, I think one other thing to keep in mind on the peanut butter sandwich is is keep it fairly simple, um, peanut butter, jelly um, uh, you might want to add some almonds or some nuts to it, but stay away from the honey; uh; stay way from the marshmallow cream. Uh, this is not dessert; this is meaningful food and, uh, one of life’s staples.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/07/2013

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: It’s a General American accent with some Oklahoma coloring.  The [u] vowel (goose) is slightly nasal with the back of the tongue lifted (new).  This tongue lift also occurs in unstressed syllables containing the [ɪ] (kit) vowel, making this vowel approach an [i] (fleece) vowel (expensive, managed).  Occasionally, in a stressed syllable containing the [ɪ] (kit) vowel, [I} becomes [eɪ] (face) diphthong ie (think).  The [ɔ] vowel (north) drops when “for” is repeated twice, thus becoming “fr.”  The last consonant of “would” and the first consonant of “you” form to make the “ʤ” (judge) sound in “… but why would you?”  The [ʊ] vowel (foot) changes to [o] (goat) in the word “woman.”  The [ɪ] (kit) vowel in “evolved” changes to a schwa [ə] (comma).  Personal pronoun “I” [aɪ] (price) often becomes [a] (dance).

COMMENTARY BY: Ben Corbett

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/07/2013

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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