An Introduction to Language and Linguistics Chapter 9

An Introduction to Language and Linguistics Chapter 9 Dialect Variation by Natalie Schilling-Estes EXERCISE 2 Listening for ethnicity-based dialect features www. cambridge. org/fasold © Cambridge University Press

Click the icon to listen to the following excerpt of an interview with a young African American woman from Robeson County, North Carolina, and note all the phonological and morphosyntactic features of AAVE that you observe. You will probably want to listen at least twice, once for phonological features and once for morphosyntactic ones. Did you hear any features that strike you as characteristic of AAVE that were not discussed in the book or in class? Int: Do you remember any hurricane or storms or anything around here? Sp: Well, I remember um the eighty-four hurricane. Okay, we was in here, or was it um, I don’t think it was this trailer. We was like the green trailer. And it was like, remember it was turned the long way? Single wide? Okay well we was in the middle room. Alright and. . I was like in the upper room, I had my own room, Ronald and Donald had the middle room. And mama and them had the um back room.

But for some reason daddy was in our room asleep, and mama was in there watching T. V. , and I was in my room. All of a sudden we you know we heard this thing like a train you know. And I looked outside and oh lord the wind was just blowing, you know, and the outside toilets and stuff was all up in the air. Okay and you know, it was like boards flying everywhere, and it was like a red, red whirl just coming. And daddy was asleep, oh lord. I was like, “Daddy wake up!” Then when he finally woke up, he gonna try to drive to granddaddy house. Toilets flying everywhere and then he gonna try to drive! I said, “Oh, Lord!” I said, “We gone, Lord!” I was just like lord I just knew we was gonna die. But we ain’t die. He was trying to hold the car like this right here. But he parked it over there, he parked it right under that tree right there, as you’re coming into granddaddy yard right on that side. He parked it over there and all of us went in the house. I was scared to death. Int: Was Ronald and Donald born then? Sp: Mmhmm. You know they was hollering: “Aaaahh!”

Int: So he put all y’all in the car. And drove over there. Sp: We had I think it was the brown Pontiac too at the time. It was that brown Pontiac Bonneville. We had that car at the time. Mama after we finally woke him up, he woke up and realized what was going on and we went over granddaddy house. And I was scared to death. Lord, I ain’t never been that scared in all my life, I’m sorry. I was really scared, I’m serious. I mean because I was like, I said, “Oh, Lord!” I said, “I just know you gonna take me, I ain’t even lived my life, Jesus! I ain’t even ready, Lord!” But I mean you know I guess you know it wasn’t intended for us to go because everybody is entitled to their time to go.