Speaking from the heartland : the Midland vowel system of Kansas City

Abstract

This book rigorously examines the vowel system of Kansas City, a large metropolitan area in the center of the United States that typifies the American Midland dialect region. Drawing on acoustic measurements of more than 140,000 vowels recorded from sociolinguistic interviews with 50 Kansas Citians, it traces a half-century of sound change from 1955 to 1999. Results confirm findings from previous studies for Kansas Citians born in the 1950s, but also reveal a series of recent innovations that challenge Kansas City’s characterization is a Midland dialect city—or more broadly challenge the characterization of the Midland dialect. Specific features examined include the low-back vowel merger, the pre-nasal merger /ɪ/ and /ɛ/, the retraction of front lax vowels, the fronting of back vowels, and the allophonic raising of /ɑɪ/ before voiceless consonants. In examining these features in Kansas City, this volume also challenges explanations that have been offered for them elsewhere in American dialect research. In particular, it shows that front lax vowel retraction in Kansas City does not operate as a drag chain initiated by the low-back merger, and that the low-back vowel merger is unlikely to have spread into the city from the West. As such, this volume updates knowledge about one speech community, but also contributes more generally to studies in the phonetics and phonology of American Englishes.

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