Virginia 2

Listen to Virginia 2, 21-year-old woman from Norton and Hillsville, Virginia, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1979

PLACE OF BIRTH: Hillsville, Virginia

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: college student

EDUCATION: college sophomore

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

The subject moved to Norton, Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains, at age 13 and lived there until she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, for school, a year and a half before this recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Rinda Frye

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/02/2000

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’m from a really small town in Virginia. It’s called Norton. The population is only 8,000. It’s the smallest city in Virginia. It’s up in the mountains, up in the Appalachian Mountains, an’ actually the town right next to mine is called Appalachia. Kinda interesting. An’ the city itself is only a mile long, and (um) everybody is really, really close, because everybody knows your business. You couldn’t do anything without everybody knowing, which has its good an’ bad sides. My family was, unfortunately, very well known, because of my parents. They worked in two fast food restaurants, and so, they heard all the gossip, which [giggles] got me into trouble a few times. But for the most part, there’s really good. And my neighbors an’ everybody was really close. (Um) I’ve always loved theatre, an’ I studied it there too. And my high school was only a block and a half a way, so I walked every day. In the snow, uphill. An’ I studied theatre there one year, an’ we had a play competition in Virginia. And I got to the state finals, an’ I was the star of the play. It had “A Girl with the Funny Nose,” and we got fifth place, and the whole city found out about that. They were all very happy, and it’s — the city itself is very close — it’s about a half an hour away from Kentucky an’ about 45 minutes from Tennessee. An’ my city’s up in the mountains more than any other one around it, so we get a lot more snow than anybody else, but I loved it. And I used to live in a place called Hillsville, Virginia, an’ that’s about two and a half hours away from there, an’ that’s more — it’s lower to the ground. It’s almost on (um) ocean level. But the, the dialect was different, but I really like it too, and I s– went to Kindergarten there. An’ my very first theatre experience, when I knew I wanted to be in it for the rest of my life — I was in — I was 5 years old, an’ my two best friends an’ I were in the Christmas play, and one — and they were both boys. I was — ev’rybody was so jealous of me. An’ they were both in love with me, and (um) one of ’em was Santa, an’ the other was a reindeer, an’ me an’ the other reindeer had to get on our hands and knees an’ crawl an’ bring the Santa in. An’ the night of the performance, we wrecked. We hit the — one of the places where all the kids were standin’, an’ Santa fell off. His beard fell off, his hat fell off, so ev’rybody started laughin’ but I loved the attention, and I knew from then on that’s what I wanted to do. And then, our other performance that year, we had — ev’rybody had a letter, and ev’rybody had to get up in front of all the audience and say their letter, say a little poem about the letter, an’ then sing a song about it. I was so proud, because I was the only person that had one letter to themself. Ev’rybody else was in twos or threes or fours. And my letter was S, and I still to this day can remember the poem. It’s, “S is for seesaws and swings painted blue. It’s also for sliding boards an’ sandboxes too.” My p_____ knows the rest, which is really funny. I can’t remember it. An’ then I sang “It’s a Small, Small World.” And from then on I knew that I wanted to do theatre, an’ I tried to study somewhat in school; my high school an’ middle school, but we had such a limited program that that was not much of an option. But I enjoyed my life there.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/07/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject speaks with the mountain dialect of Norton. Like many female speakers from Appalachia, she speaks with a strong nasal resonance and predominantly in her upper register. Listen for the glottal stop substitution for a medial “d” in “couldn’t,” and for the shift almost to an “aI” diphthong for “e.” Unlike most Appalachian speakers, she substitutes “a” for “aI” only when it is in the terminal position or when followed by a phonated consonant, as in “time” or “fine,” but not “like” or “write.”

COMMENTARY BY: Rinda Frye

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/02/2000

The archive provides:

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• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
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