The relationship of the individual to the group is one of the central issues in language variation, particularly in mono-ethnic enclaves. This study examines the role of the individual and the group in Roanoke Island, NC, the largest African American community on the Outer Banks. Phonological and morphosyntactic variables representing four generations of African American speakers indicate increasing group accommodation to regional dialect norms while preserving core ethnolinguistic traits. Despite the macro-level trends, the speech of individuals on Roanoke Island reveals high levels of variation within each generation. Several factors may affect the variable frequencies expressed by individuals: mobility (both realized and desired), inter-ethnic contact, and personal versus public identities. We investigate how multiple factors affect individual variation, demonstrating both common and distinctive generational trends. Although individuals often align with the overall patterns of their generational cohorts, their speech also exhibits flexibility of group affiliation and personal style.
Bailey, Guy, and Erik Thomas. 1998. Some Aspects of African-American Vernacular English Phonology. In African-American English: Structure, History, and Use, ed. Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh, 85-109. London: Routledge.
2.
Carpenter, Jeannine. 2004. The Lost Community of the Outer Banks: African American Speech on Roanoke Island. MA thesis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
3.
Carpenter, Jeannine. Forthcoming. The Lost Community of the Outer Banks: African American Speech on Roanoke Island. American Speech.
4.
Carpenter, Jeannine, and Sarah Hilliard. 2003. The Lost Community of the Outer Banks: African American Speech on Roanoke Island. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, October.
5.
Carpenter, Jeannine, and Sarah Hilliard. 2004. Shifting Parameters of Individual and Group Variation in African American English: The Case of Roanoke Island. Paper presented at American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Boston, January.
6.
Carpenter, Jeannine, and Janelle Vadnais. 2004. External Factors in Dialect Alignment: The Case of Static Locative to. Paper presented at Southeastern Conference on Linguistics Meeting, Tuscaloosa, AL, April.
7.
Chambers, J. K.2003. Sociolinguistic Theory. 2nd ed.Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
8.
Childs, Becky, and Christine Mallinson. 2004. African American English in Appalachia: Dialect Accommodation and Substrate Influence. English Worldwide!25: 27-50.
9.
Click, Patricia C.2001. Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, 1862-1867. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
10.
Dorian, Nancy C.1994. Varieties of Variation in a Very Small Place: Social Homogeneity, Prestige Norms, and Linguistic Variation. Language70: 631-696.
11.
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
12.
Fasold, Ralph W.1972. Tense Marking in Black English: A Linguistic and Social Analysis. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
13.
Green, Lisa J.2002. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Guy, Gregory R.1980. Variation in the Group and the Individual: The Case of Final Stop Deletion. In Locating Language in Time and Space, ed. William Labov, 1-36. New York: Academic Press.
15.
Hazen, Kirk. 2000. Identity and Ethnicity in the Rural South: A Sociolinguistic View through Past and Present be. Publication of the American Dialect Society 83. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
16.
Hazen, Kirk. 2002. Identity and Language Variation in a Rural Community. Language78: 240-257.
17.
Johnstone, Barbara. 1996. The Linguistic Individual: Self-Expression in Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
18.
Kretzschmar, William A., Virginia G. McDavid, Thomas K. Lerud, and Ellen Johnson. 1994. Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
19.
Kurath, Hans, and Ravin I. McDavid Jr. 1961. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
20.
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
21.
Labov, William. 1969. Contraction, Deletion and Inherent Variability of the English Copula. Language45: 715-759.
22.
Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robbins, and John Lewis. 1968. A Study of the Non-standard English of Negro and Puerto-Rican Speakers in New York City. Report no. 3288. Philadelphia: US Regional Survey.
23.
Mallinson, Christine, and Becky Childs. 2005. Communities of Practice in Sociolinguistic Description: African American Women’s Language in Appalachia. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics10 (2): 1-14.
24.
Payne, Arvilla C.1980. Factors Controlling the Acquisition of the Philadelphia Dialect by Out-of-State Children. In Locating Language in Time and Space, ed. William Labov, 143-178. New York: Academic Press.
25.
Rickford, John R.1999. African American Vernacular English. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
26.
Roberts, Julie. 2002. Child Language Variation. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 333-348. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
27.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. Investigating “Self-Conscious” Speech: The Performance Register in Ocracoke English. Language and Society27: 53-83.
28.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002a. Investigating Stylistic Variation. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 375-401. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
29.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002b. On the Nature of Isolated and Post-isolated Dialects: Innovation, Variation and Differentiation. Journal of Sociolinguistics6: 64-85.
30.
Schneider, Edgar W.2003. The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth. Language79: 233-281.
31.
Schreier, Daniel. 2003. Insularity and Linguistic Endemicity. Journal of English Linguistics31: 249-272.
32.
Wolfram, Walt. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
33.
Wolfram, Walt, and Dan Beckett. 2000. The Role of Individual Differences in Earlier African American Vernacular English. American Speech75: 1-30.
34.
Wolfram, Walt, Becky Childs, and Benjamin Torbert. 2000. Tracing English Dialect History through Consonant Cluster Reduction: Comparative Evidence from Isolated Dialects. Southern Journal of Linguistics24: 17-40.
35.
Wolfram, Walt, and Ralph W. Fasold. 1974. The Study of Social Dialects in American English. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
36.
Wolfram, Walt, Kirk Hazen, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. 1999. Dialect Maintenance and Change on the Outer Banks. Publication of the American Dialect Society 81. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
37.
Wolfram, Walt, and Erik R. Thomas. 2002. The Development of African American English. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
