An attitude survey of three Alabama speech varieties

This study examines dialect-based attitudes in Birmingham, Alabama, focusing on three local speech varieties labeled, old standard (OS), standard (S), and nonstandard (NS), using the matched-guise technique. Thirty eight raters evaluated five taped voices, three of which corresponded to the three varieties under study on fifteen semantic scales. Raters were asked to judge each speaker's possible occupation, education level, geographic location, and whether the speaker would fit into the respondent's circle of friends.;Results reveal that raters preferred the linguistic and social variants of S over both OS and NS, rating it more positively on most scales. For most respondents, variations in S and OS indicate more education and more prestigious occupations as well as greater likeability than NS. Respondents also assigned NS to overwhelmingly rural areas, S to urban, and OS to a mixture of both rural and urban locations. I conclude that the attitudes demonstrated in Birmingham reflect the notion that standard varieties are more favorable and nonstandard varieties are less favorable based on social mobility. Attitudes also point to social distance between the varieties and a possible in-progress dialect abandonment of OS.