One Shift, Two Groups: When Fronting Alone Is Not Enough

Abstract

Examining the cultural differences between urban and rural lifestyles is a consideration that is relevant for the description of many speech communi-ties. A sociolinguistic analysis that only surveys urban speakers cannot ac-curately capture or convey the dialect diversity of a region. This paper ar-gues for a critical distinction between rural and urban speech for the map-ping of dialect geographies, and furthermore, for a recognition of the rural lifestyle as reflected through linguistic ideology and subject to variation. The paper will focus on the fronting of the vowel /uw / in the speech of European Americans in Northern Arizona. The /uw/-fronting feature is a dominant feature of a new urban vowel shift in the Western states, and is also characteristic of ill-defined national norms of ‘country ’ speech. This paper will first show that /uw/-fronting in Northern Arizona English is evi-dence for the region’s participation in a California-based vowel change, but secondly that /uw/-fronting in Northern Arizona can also be part of a con-trasting vocalic system that marks rural lifestyle and rancher identity. Northern Arizona is therefore a site of comparison between two distinct Eng-lish varieties marked by a shared linguistic variable. Considering the ur-ban/rural distinction as well as analyzing multiple linguistic features is there-fore necessary for accuracy in this and any other dialect analysis.

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