Mixed sociolinguistic alignment and ethnic identity:

R-lessness in a Native American Community

Jason Miller

Fri. 11-12:40 A

The production of postvocalic r in items such as car and bird has proven to be a versatile marker of region, status, and ethnicity in American English for well over a century now. During the past century, the social role of r has shifted its evaluative status considerably, ranging between prestige and stigmatized marking within and across communities (e.g. McDavid 1949; Labov 1996; Myhill 1988; Feagin 1990). For example, extensive vocalization of r in some regions of the South might be correlated with older, upper-class white Southern speech at the same time it correlates with African American Vernacular English, as communities undergo linguistic change and shift the social significance of this variable cross-generationally. While its sociolinguistic role may be complicated, the obvious adaptability of postvocalic r makes it an ideal variable for examining some complex sociolinguistic relations over time, region, and social group.

The current study of Lumbee Vernacular English, a Native American speech community in Robeson County, North Carolina, shows the diverse ways in which postvocalic r can operate particularly with respect to ethnic marking. The social composition of Robeson County-- approximately a third African American, a third European American, and a third Native American-- constitutes a unique opportunity to examine changing roles and ethnic association for postvocalic r in a triracial community. Using a cross-ethnic, cross-generational sample, I show how the status of r mirrors the complexity of the past and current social relations among the three ethnic groups.

A quantitative study of r vocalization in several different linguistic contexts, including postvocalic, non-nuclear position (car, card) and nuclear position (bird, work), as well as stressed (barking) and unstressed syllables (mother), shows the differential social significance of r-lessness for the three communities. The European American community shows a movement toward r-fulness while the African American Community indicates fairly stable r-lessness, replicating other current studies of r-lessness in the South (Myhill 1988, Feagin 1990). The ethnic marking of r-lessness in the South is thus stronger with respect to the European American and African American communities. Interestingly, the incidence of r-lessness for Lumbee Vernacular English falls between the currently developing white and black extremes, although there is a slight movement toward r-lessness in the Lumbee community among younger speakers. By not favoring constriction to the extent of the current European American community and not favoring vocalization to the extent of the African American community, the Lumbee have managed to maintain a linguistic identity separate form the other two ethnic groups in this community. Their distinctive use of postvocalic r thus reflects a "mixed alignment" with respect to the two neighboring ethnic communities. The overlapping but distinctive linguistic identity currently fashioned for postvocalic r is supported by a profile of other dialect structures of Lumbee Vernacular English (e.g. the distinctive use of perfective I'm in I'm been there, the limited incidence of habitual be along some younger speakers, the use of a-prefixing, and so forth). The pattern shows how selective, mixed dialect alignment is used to mold a unique ethnic linguistic identity in a racially divided, multi-ethnic community.