39th Annual Student Research Conference
Rhotacization of /ju/ in Memphis African American English
Nolan A. Regalo
Dr. Emily L. Olsen, Faculty Mentor
A monophthongal, front, rhotacized pronunciation of the sequence /ju/—so that human sounds like “hurman”—exists in the speech of some Black Americans from Memphis (and possibly throughout the Mississippi Delta). This project involved scouring hip-hop songs by Memphis artists, leading to discoveries that A) /ju/-rhotacization occurred in some ‘90s songs, but is much more prevalent in songs in the late 2010s–early 2020s and B) /ju/ does not rhotacize word-initially. Concurrently, I surveyed the knowledge and opinions AAE speakers from a city other than Memphis (St. Louis) have about the feature. This was done by hanging up flyers around predominantly Black areas of St. Louis city and county linking to a questionnaire. The Black St. Louisans surveyed have neutral opinions about friendliness and trustworthiness of users of the feature, but see it as indicative of lack of education, associate it with Memphis, and know of it through Memphis rappers.
Keywords: Language Attitudes, African American English, Phonetics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics
Topic(s):Linguistics
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Session: -6
Location: SUB Georgian C
Time: 2:15