Tennessee 19

Listen to Tennessee 19, a 55-year-old man from Knoxville, Tennessee, 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): 06/09/1965

PLACE OF BIRTH: Knoxville, Tennessee

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: university lecturer and actor

EDUCATION: MFA in acting, BA, other actor training

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

This speaker lived in Los Angeles for four years and Chicago for four years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

This subject’s training as an actor means he is perhaps more conscious of his speech than someone from another profession might be. However, it is notable that he retains many features of his East Tennessee dialect in a field in which there can be a lot of bias against this speech pattern. His training gives him the ability to skillfully code-shift, but he generally chooses not to unless called upon to do so for a role.

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

RECORDED BY: Kathryn Cunningham

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/03/2021

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, yeah, I was um, uh, I was born and raised in Knoxville. Uh, I lived here until I graduated from college at the University of Tennessee, and then I went out to California and went to school, uh, and uh, uh, I, I was seeking to, uh, be trained as an actor. So I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts out on the West Coast and spent two years in that program where, uh, where they did put me in a – Southern [subject laughs] – Southern, uh, voice and dialect class, to, to teach me how to get rid of the Southern, but, you know, of course they made sure to let me know that, “Hey, that’s part of you, you don’t have to get rid of it, you just know – you just need to know how TO get rid of it.” So, um, I spent another couple years in Los Angeles, uh, came back to Tennessee in the early 90s, uh, for about a year and a half, and then I moved to Chicago for four years, where I did some improv and things along those lines, uh, and after that four-year stint, I came back again to Knoxville, and I’ve been here ever since. And, uh, uh, currently am a, uh, uh, faculty member in the Department of Theatre at the University of Tennessee, where I am a BIG Vol fan. I, I was introduced to the Vols, uh, when I was about six years old; that was probably the first game I ever went to, so, I’m, uh, I’m 55 now, so, I, I’ve got almost, you know, uh, 50 years’ worth of Vol fan in me. [Subject laughs.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kathryn Cunningham

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/08/2023

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This speaker is an interesting subject because he retains many East Tennessee features in his everyday speech despite his training as an actor. The East Tennessee features are more present in the contemporaneous speech sample than in the reading of Comma Gets a Cure, where the speaker is perhaps more consciously code-shifting and modeling something closer to a so-called General American dialect. As indicated in the speech sample, this speaker is a trained actor and teacher of acting, and, not surprisingly, he encountered speech training that made him conscious of his native speech, though not insecure about it.

Some classic East Tennessee features that are notable from this speaker are the STRUT target, which is quite central in his speech and that of many from this region. While he models a diphthong /aɪ̯/ in the PRICE set in some examples in the Comma Gets a Cure sample, we sometimes hear more of a monophthong /a/ in the contemporaneous speech. In his pronunciation of the word “on” in “put on” and “hold on,” you will note the suggestion of an ON/OWN merger that can be heard across many Southeastern U.S. varieties. The PIN/PEN merger can be heard in “expensive,” where the speaker models /ɪ/ in the second syllable, and of course in the first syllable of “Tennessee.” The word “long” (CLOTH) has a touch of rounding in the vowel, merging with his rounder THOUGHT target in most cases. FACE is also quite distinctive for this speaker, with a more open initial vowel in the diphthong /ɛ̞ɪ/.

COMMENTARY BY: Kathryn Cunningham

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/08/2023

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.