Dialect contact and the Northern Cities Shift in Ypsilanti, Michigan

This research aims to explore the nature of dialect contact by examining the extent to which the speech of Appalachian migrants in Ypsilanti, Michigan is affected by an ongoing local change in pronunciation called the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). This work will chart the specific influences of age, gender, social status, and social network on these respondents in their adoption of this new pronunciation. Although there are sociolinguistic precedents which suggest that upper-middle class young women adopt these changes more quickly than others, there is debate about which of the above factors is most powerful in influencing the adoption of features of varieties of language in contact.;The community investigated here, Ypsilanti, Michigan, in southeastern Michigan, is distinguished by its large population of migrants from the southern region of the United States. Interviews were conducted with members of the Ypsilanti community who were born or whose parents were born in southern states. An acoustic analysis was carried out on the low-front vowel /ae/ from words read from a list by the respondents to determine first and second formant values. These formant values (or index scores derived from them) were then subjected to statistical analysis in order to determine the degree to which this vowel reflects participation in the NCS.;The two major hypotheses of this study are that: (1) the linguistic details of Appalachian participation in the shift will not differ from those of the local population or from those of other populations which have acquired or are acquiring the shift, and (2) the migrant inhabitants and their children whose social network ties are dense and multiplex (Milroy 1980) will not have accommodated or will have accommodated least to the NCS.;The results indicate that social network affiliation is the strongest predictor of retention of Appalachian pronunciation in Ypsilanti. Strong family, employment and friendship networks limited to the Appalachian in-group predicts that individuals do not acquire the Michigan pronunciation norm. The results for sex support the sociolinguistic generalization that women are first to change in the direction of a new norm. Age and social status do not predict acquisition or lack of acquisition of the local norm by Appalachians in Ypsilanti.;In addition the effect of linguistic environments on the NCS are explored with regard to the effects of linguistic environments on the NCS that have already been documented (Labov 1994, Ito 1999). These patterns were found to be quite similar and thus support the notion of a "universal" like pattern for such changes.