Tennessee 11

Listen to Tennessee 11, a 50-year-old woman from Memphis, Tennessee, and South Carolina, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/09/1968

PLACE OF BIRTH: Lancaster, South Carolina

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: stay-at-home mother

EDUCATION: associate’s degree

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

The speaker was born in Lancaster, South Carolina, and moved to Memphis at the age of nine. She lived there for 34 years before moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the time of this recording, she had lived in Pittsburgh for seven years. The speaker also spent two years earning her associate’s degree in Atlanta, Georgia.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Mia Taylor (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/01/2019

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, I grew up in two different cities. So I grew up until I was nine in Lancaster, South Carolina. It was a small town about 45 minutes south of Charlotte, North Carolina. About the only thing in the town was a mill that made sheets and towels. So everybody in the town either worked on the executive level down to sweeping the floors in the mills, so it was kind of a poorer town. And then, in Memphis: completely different, um, full of Southern charm, um, full of history. It’s a big city, but it’s a small city in the way that people live. There’s not a lot of diversity in Memphis; I don’t think in either city that I grew up in there wasn’t. Um, and that’s about that. …

Um, people in Pittsburgh are, um, more welcoming, um: a totally different type of living. But when I moved here I felt instantly at home. Everybody is friendly; um, for the most people don’t judge. Um, in Tennessee, where I was from and the area we were from, it was, it was who was keeping up with who and who had more, and it was one of the main reasons that we wanted to leave, because it’s ridiculous, and I don’t feel that here. I said I have friends from all walks of life, all different family scenarios, and we all feel as one, and you would never get that in Memphis, at least for where we grew up.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mia Taylor (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/01/2019

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).

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