Guadalupe Navarro: Primary Research
Through the interviewing of Julio Navarro a 28-year-old Hispanic male from Elkhart Indiana, I experienced first hand the Midland Dialect.
For an example of lexical terms, he referred to soft drinks as Pop, which is very common for the region, compared to other regions that usually call their soft drinks Soda or Coke depending on the location. When asked how to pronounces the words “cot” and “caught” he pronounced them in the same way. Which makes the terms homophones, where /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ become phonemes. At the very end of my interview I asked Julio if he thought he had an accent. He Stated, “I don’t have an accent. When I speak English, only when I speak Spanish”. I feel as though the majority of the people from the Midwest think this because it’s such a melting pot of dialects. I think that is why inland or Midland dialect is a good middle ground accent in which no one really discriminates against it. However, at the same time no one really acknowledges it as unique or attractive in any way. This some what probably has to do with the fact that his dialect is starting to get more generalized since now a days people are moving around everywhere and dialects are mixing especially the farther west you travel. As stated by Davis and Houck in the readings of what Determines a Dialect Area, “We suggest that the further west you go one goes in the United States, the more dialect mixtures one encounters, and that terms like southern form and /or northern term become increasingly less descriptive and therefore less useful” (371).
- He was born in Ignacio Zaragoza a small rural town in Zacatecas, Mexico. He has also lived on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois; however, the majority of his life has been spent in Northern Indiana.
- He was raised in a household with both parents who speak little or no English and have had no education beyond the fourth grade.
- He is also one of 7 children and grew up in a household that in his words was lower middle class.
- He graduated from Concord high school 2002 and he is currently a double major pursing degree in Physics and Engineering from Indiana University and IPFW.
For an example of lexical terms, he referred to soft drinks as Pop, which is very common for the region, compared to other regions that usually call their soft drinks Soda or Coke depending on the location. When asked how to pronounces the words “cot” and “caught” he pronounced them in the same way. Which makes the terms homophones, where /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ become phonemes. At the very end of my interview I asked Julio if he thought he had an accent. He Stated, “I don’t have an accent. When I speak English, only when I speak Spanish”. I feel as though the majority of the people from the Midwest think this because it’s such a melting pot of dialects. I think that is why inland or Midland dialect is a good middle ground accent in which no one really discriminates against it. However, at the same time no one really acknowledges it as unique or attractive in any way. This some what probably has to do with the fact that his dialect is starting to get more generalized since now a days people are moving around everywhere and dialects are mixing especially the farther west you travel. As stated by Davis and Houck in the readings of what Determines a Dialect Area, “We suggest that the further west you go one goes in the United States, the more dialect mixtures one encounters, and that terms like southern form and /or northern term become increasingly less descriptive and therefore less useful” (371).