The Mysterious Uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift

1
The Mysterious Uniformity of the Northern Cities
Shift
William Labov, University of Pennsylvania
Methods XIII Leeds
August 8, 2008
2
William Labov Home Pagewww.ling.upenn.edu/labov
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Some substantial differences in dialectology
New World Old World Time Depth 200
years 2000 years Spatial range 3000 mile 500
miiles Major tendency Divergence Dialect
leveling Variables Phonological Phonological/Morp
hological, Level of awareness Low High
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The trajectory of this inquiry into the
mysterious uniformity of the Northern Cities Shift

• The discovery of the NCS in several Northern
  cities.
• The triggering event of the NCS in western New
  York state.
• The westward expansion to the Inland North.
• Differentiation of the NCS by social class and
  gender.
• The uniformity of the NCS throughout the Inland
  North.
• Ideological background from settlement history.
• Modern day reflections. . .

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The Northern Cities Shift in ChicagoExperiments
on Cross-Dialectal Comprehension, 1989
Word Phrase Sentence 1 .
______ _____________ ___________________ 2.
______ _____________ ___________________ 3.
______ _____________ ___________________ 4.
______ _____________ ___________________
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The Northern Cities Shift
desk
busses
mat
head
boss
block socks
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The Telsur Project
designed to obtain a comprehensive view of the
phonological changes in progress in the English
of North America a telephone survey of all
cities of population 50,000 and over names
chosen from local telephone directories,
concentrating on major ethnic groups of that
city first 2 subjects who were locally born and
raised accepted as representative of that city (4
to 6 in the largest cities) 762 speakers
interviewed representing 325 cities, most
1992-1999 conversation on local developments
elicitation of particular words perception and
production of minimal pairs semantic
differential e.g., whats the difference
between a bag and a sack? acoustic analyses of
systems of 439 speakers, 130,000 vowels
provided data for the Atlas of North American
English, (Berlin Mouton/degruyter, 2006.
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Rochester, New York
9
Rochester
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Extended sample of speech from Sharon K., 35,
Rochester, TS 359
Sharon K. is an advanced speaker of the Northern
Cities Shift. Listen for the raising and
fronting of short a in Catholic, adding, taxes,
fact fronting of short /o/ in
modeling, lot backing of short /e/ in send,
went, sending fronting of /ay/ in nine
backing of /i/ in tuition Yeah, well I
send my kids to private school, but--across the
street from me is a Catholic school, yknow I
send em there. I went there, in fact I live in
the house that I grew up in. Were re-modeling
right now, uh adding on to the family room, and
doing the work. We-we like the neighborhood, and
we feel very comfortable here. We like all the
neighbors, yknow, neighbors Ive known since I
was nine. Bishop Parity behind us, but I dont
know if were gonna be sending him there. The
tuition could be very expensive. As it is now,
were paying a lot for public. . .Yknow we pay a
lot of--taxes are very high here.
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Vowel system of Sharon K., Rochester
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Northern Cities Shift of Sharon K., 351995,
Rochester NY, TS 359
KIT
STRUT
TRAP
DRESS
THOUGHT
LOT
13
Northern Cities Shift in the vowel system of
April S., 20, Rochester NY, TS360
KIT
STRUT
TRAP
THOUGHT
DRESS
LOT
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Where did the Rochester accent come from?
15
Migration to the Rochester area
Kniffen and Glassie 1966, Fig. 7
16
Community movement
Mass migrations were indeed congenial to the
Puritan tradition. Whole parishes, parson and
all, had sometimes migrated from Old England.
Lois Kimball Mathews mentioned 22 colonies in
Illinois alone, all of which originated in New
England or in New York, most of them planted
between 1830 and 1840.
--Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture
The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee
in the old Northwest, 1953. P. 14.
17
Cities on the Erie Canal
18
The impact of the Erie Canal
The impact on the rest of the State can be seen
by looking at a modern map.  With the exception
of Binghamton and Elmira, every major city in New
York falls along the trade route established by
the Erie Canal, from New York City to Albany,
through Schenectady, Utica and Syracuse, to
Rochester and Buffalo.  Nearly 80 of upstate New
York's population lives within a 25 miles of the
Erie Canal. The Erie Canal A Brief History
No established village had ever mushroomed so
rapidly as Rochester, growing from 1507 to 9207
within a ten year span - Blake McKelvey, A
Panoramic View of Rochester History. Rochester
History 112-24.
19
Growth of population along the Erie Canal
Erie canal
20
The TRAP vowel in the speech of immigrants to
western New York State
21
Nasal short-a system of Diane S., 37, Providence,
RI
22
Continuous short-a system of Jesse M., 571996,
New Britain CT, TS465
23
Broad-a system of Denise L., 21 1995, Boston
MA, TS 427
24
Split short-a system of Nina B., 62 1996, New
York City, TS 495
25
Input of short-a systems to cities on the Erie
Canal, 1817-1825
nasal (WNE)
broad (Boston)
continuous (SWNE)
split (NYC)
26
General raising of /æ/ for Sharon K., 35 1995,
Rochester, NY, TS 359
27
Westward expansion
--A. Wexler. Atlas of Westward Expansion. NY
Facts on File, 1995. p. 64
28
Rochester
Detroit
29
The Northern Cities Shift of Sabrina K., 37
1994, Detroit MI, TS 176
KIT
STRUT
TRAP
DRESS
THOUGHT
LOT
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Social variation
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Gender and social category determination of five
elements of the Northern City Shift in a Detroit
suburban high school

æ
TRAP LOT THOUGHT DRESS
STRUT
Source Eckert 2000
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Further westward settlement
33
Settlement patterns shown by diffusion of
building methods from seaboard nuclei
--Kniffen Glassie 1966. Fig. 27
34
The North/Midland lexical isogloss
35
Coincidence of the North/Midland lexical line and
NCS isoglosses
36
Measures of the development of the Northern
Cities Shift
37
Four measures of the progress of the Northern
Cities Shift
38
Means of six Northern Cities Shift vowels in the
speech of Sharon K., Rochester
EQ /æ/ higher and backer than /e/
AE1 /æ/ lt 700 Hz
UD // back of /o/
ED F2(e) - F2(o) lt 375 Hz
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NCS vowels in the system of a Midland speaker,
Mimi P., 31 45 2000, Indianapolis IN, TS 775
EQ /e/ higher than /æ/
F1 700
UD // front of /o/
AE1 /æ/ gt 700 Hz
ED F2(e) - F2(o) gt 375 (523 Hz)
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The Northern Cities Shift AE1 measure raising
of /æ/ to F1 lt 700 Hz.
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The Northern Cities Shift EQ measure reversal of
relative positions of /e/ and /æ/
42
The Northern Cities Shift ED measure front-back
alignment of /e/ and /o/
43
The Northern Cities Shift UD measure // backer
than /o/
44
U.S. at Night
The Inland North
Grand Rapids
Milwaukee
Syracuse
Rochester
Chicago
Flint
Buffalo
Detroit
Cleveland
Kenoshat
Joliet
Toledo
45
Do current patterns of the communication flow
contribute to the uniformity of the Inland North?
46
Relationships among Americas Most Populous
Metropolitan Areas
North/Midland boundary
47
Fridlands view of African-American participation
in the weakening of /ay/ in Memphis
Tie, tied and tIght the expansion of /ay/
monophthongization in African-American and
European-American speech in Memphis, Tennessee.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 7279-298, 2000.
48
Social correlates of four measures of the
Northern Cities Shift N71
Age Female Years of 25 yrs Gender Education
AE1 34 8.6 EQ 34
26 ED 112 H.S. -68 UD 37
-16
P lt .001, P lt .05
49
Yankee cultural imperialism and the Northern
Cities Shift
50
Settlement patterns of four regional cultures
Yankee Virginia Quaker Upland
South Settlement Towns Plantations
Farm Isolated villages clusters House
location Roadside Setback Corner- Creek cl
usters spring Internal Low Moderate High Ver
y high migration Persistence 75-96 50-75 40-60
25-40
David Hackett Fisher, Albions Seed, p. 814
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An ideological opposition dividing the Inland
North from the Midland
...among the new arrivals to Jefferson County,
Indiana was a species of settler strikingly
different in outlook from small southern upland
farmers. . . these newcomers not only displayed a
disgusting predilection for self-improvement
schemes but were also fond of pointing out out
their virtues to those who took life at a less
feverish pace.
It was the Yankees who were described as yearning
to constitute a social and cultural elite that
would sponsor and support higher education,
literary societies, and lecture courses, and
follow their inclination to regulate the morals
of the whole society.
--Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture
The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee
in the old Northwest, 1953
52
The meddling Yankee
Taxed with being busybodies and meddlars,
apologists own that the instinct for meddling, as
divine as that of self-reservation, runs in the
Yankee blood that the typical New Englander was
entirely unable, when there were wrongs to be
corrected, to mind his own business.
--Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture
The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee
in the old Northwest, 1953, P. 6.
53
The Yankee perspective
One of the most distinguishing features of the
Yankees of the 19th century had been their
confidence that theirs was a superior vision and
that Americas future depended on their ability
to impose their order on the life of the nation.
. . They established thousands of public schools
and private colleges, filled churches and lodge
halls with committed believers, and codified
their version of morality in the statute books.
--Morain, Thomas J. 1988. Prairie Grass Roots An
Iowa Small Town in the Early Twentieth century.
Ames, IA Iowa State University Press. P. 256
54
Correcting Midland speech patterns
At Greensburg in southeastern Indiana, the
Reverend J. R. Wheelock advised his eastern
sponsors that his wife had opened a school of 20
or 30 scholars in which she would use the most
approved N.E. school books, to be obtained by a
local merchant from Philadelphia. She makes
defining a distinct branch of study and this
gives her a very favorable oppy. of correcting
the children thro them, the parents of a
heap of Kentuckyisms.

--Richard L. Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture
The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee
in the old Northwest, 1953, P. 114.
55
Tim Frazer, The language of Yankee Cultural
Imperialism
...we must learn what led to the establishment of
Inland Northern as a prestige dialect in the
Great Lakes region we need to understand as well
why scholars like Kenyon, George Phillip Krapp
and Hans Kurath...embraced the concept of Inland
Northern as a General American. Perhaps the
language of Yankee cultural imperialism was
appropriate for a century of corporate expansion,
leveraged buyouts, and American military
intervention in the Philippines, Central America,
the Caribbean, Vietnam, and the Middle East.
from Heartland English., ed. T. Frazer, U. of
Alabama Pres, 1993.Pp. 60, 66.
56
Yankee ideology and American reform movements
Imbued with the notion that their was a superior
vision, Yankees dutifully accepted their
responsibility for the moral and intellectual
life of the nation and set about to do what
needed to be done, with or without an invitation
from the uneducated, the undisciplined, the
disinterested, or the unmotivated Cultural
uplift Yankee style also meant attacking sin and
sloth. The initial settlement of Iowa coincided
with three very active decades for American
reform movements. Health fads, prison reform,
womens rights, crusades for new standards of
dress---the northern states teemed with advocates
of one cause or another. Most important among the
reform movements of the day were the issues of
abolition and temperance. Morain, Thomas J.
1988. Prairie Grass Roots An Iowa Small Town
in the Early Twentieth century. The Henry A.
Wallace Series on Agricltural History and Rural
Studies. Ames, IA Iowa State University Press.

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Election 2004 results by state
58
1973-1982 Restoration of the death penalty after
Furman 1972.
59
States with no death penalty and the Northern
dialect area
60
An experimental approach to the ideological
correlates of Inland North and Midland speech
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Passage 1 in Experiment 1 (from Sabrina K., 37,
Detroit MI, TS 176)

• short o fronting
• short a raising
• oh lowering

The--the way I got hired for this one job was
really weird, cause I went in for a . . .
secretarial position is what I went in for, and
they had hired. . .ah-- somebody else that didnt
know anything, but it was a buyers daughter, so
then she got the job. And uh--they called me
because I had done shipping and receiving as far
as--the paper work, and they had asked me if Id
help out cause their--shipper had just had a
heart attack and she wasn comin back for a
while.
62
The Northern Cities Shift of Sabrina K., 37
1994, Detroit MI, TS 176
KIT
STRUT
TRAP
DRESS
THOUGHT
LOT
63
Passage 2 in Experiment 1 (from Mimi P., 45
2000, Indianapolis IN, TS 775)

• short o back of center
• tense a before nasals lax a, e in that
• aw fronting
• fronting

I read, a-n-nd like most women, I like to go
shopping and play card games with family and
friends and that kind of thing, nothing really
exciting. We used to go camping quite a bit on
the weekends, but our lives have shifted enough
that we dont do that much right now, but uh
thats what we do.
64
NS means of Mimi P., 45 2000, Indianapolis IN,
TS 775
KIT
DRESS
STRUT
TRAP
THOUGHT
LOT
65
Cities assigned to Detroit and Indianapolis
speakers by student listeners at Indiana
University N90
66
Political opinions ascribed to an Inland North
(Detroit) and Midland (Indianapolis) speaker by
students at U. of Indiana, Bloomington N90
No significant difference in judgments of
intelligence, trustworthiness, education Midland
speaker judged more friendly (p lt .00001)
67
Structural constraints and driving forces
68
General principles of chain shifting

1. Tense vowels rise along the peripheral track.
2. Lax nuclei fall along the nonperipheral track
3. Back vowels move to the front

69
The Northern Cities Shift
70
An image of the swimmer in the bay. . .
does the Australian crawl, the breast stroke,
backstroke, the butterfly, back to the crawl
again and thinks to himself, I am really making
this current move!
71
The mysterious uniformity of the Inland North
does not eliminate social variation is the
structural base on which social variation is
built is itself the product of social forces
larger than local identity that we are only
beginning to understand