Texas 2

Listen to Texas 2, a 62-year-old man from Waco, Mart, and Austin, in central Texas, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 62

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1938

PLACE OF BIRTH: Mart, Texas

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian (Scots-Irish)

OCCUPATION: political lobbyist

EDUCATION: college

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

The subject has lived his entire life in central Texas, living in Waco and Austin. He was in Dripping Springs when recorded.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has studied Texas history extensively and taken various courses related to politics and business.

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

RECORDED BY: Pamela Christian

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/12/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in Mart, Texas, in a house, not in a hospital, and as many of my contemporaries were. Mart, Texas, is a cotton farmland area at that time that was inhabited mostly by three ethnic groups. Number one, which I belong to and come from, is pure Scots-Irish. The dominant ethnic group of Texas and the dominant culture of Texas is essentially a Scots-Celtic culture and I was born into that. My grandfather was born in Texas at the same town in a wagon. His father was killed on a cattle drive and his mother probably was a Cherokee squaw that he had picked up in east Texas before the Civil War. So that’s on my mother’s side. On my father’s side my great-grandfather came as a child, I mean my great-great grandfather, came as a child to Texas in 1845 from Mississippi/Tennessee area. The Curlies came was typical Scots that fleed the battle of Argoden — I mean Caloden — came to the United States, fought in the Revolutionary War, started going west, and they were typical Scots-Irish frontiers men. Part of the family came to Texas. Another part of the family went to Missouri and started the clothing manufacturing store … business. So my family were just poor Scots-Irish dirt farmers. In my community, that Mark was raised in, we had Germans on one side of town, they had farms generally, and the best- the best farms the Germans had. The other side of town were the little best, not quite as nice a farms, were the Czechs, and then the majority of the people there were Scots-Irish and then a large, ’bout third of ’em, were black farm workers. So all of those three things contributed to the language. I think that essentially the language is dominated by the Celtic’s Scots-Irish way of thinking and talking. One of the things that is in small towns in Texas, and mines the same way, is everyone has a nickname Every single person nearly has a nickname and that is — just goes through the whole town. We had, that’s both black and white, one of the- one of the black guys was called The Shadow because he was so, so black. If in one of the kids — and you got these nicknames from things that happened to ya as a child and they were usually very embarrassing things like a kid that — whose nose ran a lot or had a lot of colds or stuff, he was called Booger. And he called Booger the rest of his life. One kid, they caught him eating bugs when he was a child, he was eating these little doodle bugs, and so for the rest of his, his life his names was Bugsy. Hickey was a guy that had a big boil on the back of his- on his butt. His name was Hickey Butt. My nickname was Guildersleeve. And that came from the way I laughed when I was a child because there was a radio character named Guildersleeve on the radio in the forties and thirties, and that’s where my nickname came. And, and my family still calls me that. So first thing is: Everybody has a nickname.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Justin Knudsen

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/03/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject, who has a rich Texas dialect, reads most of Comma Gets a Cure, then proceeds to talk about his Scots-Irish heritage and Texas culture in general. Most notably, the subject mentions the strong use of metaphors, similes and nicknames in Texas speech. Note the major and minor elongations of vowels. The pitch patterns and rhythms of this speech are defined by internal vowel lilts that tweak the words upward. Endings of “ing” are pared down in words like “comin'” and “goin’.” Subject uses liquid “u” in words such as “tune” and “new.” Other words like “cure” and “pure” (already liquid “u”) are given an additional dose of the “y” sound. The “r” sound is created with a bearing-down action. The tongue is tense and curls upwards to the aveolar ridge as the lips tighten forward in the shape of a small “o.” Placement of sound is geared toward the back of the throat, just past the center of the hard palate. Note some present (but inconsistent) pronunciations and sound changes: “metaphor” pronounced metph[er]; “woman” pronounced w[ou]man; “on” pronounced [au]n; and “that” pronounced th[e]t.

COMMENTARY BY: Pamela Christian

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/12/2000

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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