Michelle Nuckols: Primary Research
Cindy Nuckols is a 52 year old Caucasian woman who lives in the rural area of Hartford City, Indiana. She was born and raised in the small city of Dunkirk, Indiana, which has a population of about 2,500 people. She was raised in a traditional middle class home by both her mother and father, who had lived in the city of Dunkirk all their lives. She graduated from Dunkirk High School with an honors diploma in 1975 and immediately started working as dispatcher at a local trucking company. She never chose to go back to school to further her education.
There are very distinct variations in the phonology of Cindy's dialect that were noticed during an interview with her. These included the following:
There were also certain lexical items that were noticed throughout the interview.These included the following:
There were also certain grammatical variations that were discovered during Cindy's interview. These included the following:
There are very distinct variations in the phonology of Cindy's dialect that were noticed during an interview with her. These included the following:
- Cot/caught merger. Cindy displayed no distinction in the way that she pronounced the words cot and caught. This also affected the way that she pronounced other words like dawn and don.
- Velar nasal. The velar nasal is the ng sound at the end of words like sing. In Cindy's case, instead of pronouncing the ng at the end of the words, she dropped the g, causing words like walking to sound like walkin'. There were many instances throughout the interview where she displayed this type of speech.
- Schwa deletion. In American English, a schwa is an unstressed neutral vowel sound. Many times, Cindy would completely delete the schwa, making a word like the word suppose to sound like spose.
- Relaxed pronunciation.This affected how Cindy would say could have or would have. Instead of saying could have, she pronounced it coulda, as if she was placing the letter a at the end of the word.
There were also certain lexical items that were noticed throughout the interview.These included the following:
- Pop. When Cindy was shown a can of Pepsi, she was asked what she would call it, and her response was pop. This response was expected from someone from the Midlands.
- Tennis shoes. When Cindy was asked what she would call comfortable shoes that you wear on your feet while working out, she responded with tennis shoes. This outcomes was also expected from someone from the Midlands.
There were also certain grammatical variations that were discovered during Cindy's interview. These included the following:
- Variations in to be. Many times during the interview Cindy would use an incorrect version of the verb to be in a sentence. Most commonly, she would put the word was when, according to Standard English, it should have been were. An example of this would be, "There was a lot of girls in our high school."
- Positive anymore. There were several times when she Cindy would use the word anymore in instances where there was positive polarity. An example of this would be, "Well anymore, everyone plays videogames."