Language as an emergent, self-organizing system
An unfinished manuscript
Started Mar. 2006
Thomas Leverett, CESL, So. Illinois University
Carbondale IL 62901-4518
Comments welcome
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Dialects and self-organization
It must be difficult for geographically-inclined people, as it was for me, to accept the fact that dialects just aren't purely geographical anymore. I used to hear stories about people who could tell where you were from by the way you talked - sometimes down to the county - but it just doesn't work that way anymore. Any theory of dialects and where they come from has to account for the change - why was it the way it was before? Why is it the way it is now? If language "devolves," why is it just as complicated now as it ever was?
To explain dialects I would start from my basic laws. First, the most important consideration is the perceptions of the individual speakers. If an individual hears several versions of a word, say, MissourEE and MissourAH (to take a well-known example), he will begin to associate one version with one set of situations and one set of people, and the other with other situations and other people. If, however, that speaker hears only one version, in his/her entire perceptual range, then there is not necessarily any association process going on.
In the early days of settlement of the state of Missouri by European and eastern settlers, it was settled in pockets; some settlers came from the midlands (saying MissourAH as they had also said CincinnatAH); others came from farther north, saying MissourEE. They tended to travel together and settle together, so that there were pockets of midlands settlers and northern settlers scattered throughout the state. Places in the state varied, but people agree that in general there was more MissourAH in the southeastern corner and the southwestern corner of the state; some areas were clearly mixed, and in terms of pronunciation it was a free-for-all in more than one place.
Association can be complex, but it's not that complex. The person on the ground has a simple question: who do you want to emulate? (or, if nobody, are you willing to go it alone?) If a critical density of one's neighbors says MissourAH, then MissourAH is more likely to win. Forces favoring this outcome are the desire to sound like one's neighbors, the desire to fit in, the desire to be understood, and, most importantly, the desire to not be associated with negative connotations of alternate dialects.
Some people, given this scenario, will not bend pronunciation to the majority position. Take the northerner (MissourEE) who has settled in an area where MissourAH is clearly favored. How strongly does he/she feel connected to that northern identity? Is he/she willing to be associated with that label, repeatedly and with all its consequences?
I'd like to stress here that the people on the ground are making decisions - for their own benefit, for their own reasons - and, as part of the larger picture, patterns are emerging. Except that in this notorious case, there was still quite a jumble, because MissourEE had won out in some areas and MissourAH in others.
Enter television, the single greatest change agent in the dialect map. Before television, it was likely that people in some corners of the state had not had much contact with other dialects. Maybe they had gone to the city a few times, but that didn't matter in their daily life, as, in their perceptual screen, a single sound system dominated, and the situation was stable. Sure, some northerners moved in occasionally, but in time they would change; politicians from the city would come through, but they would often attempt to sound like the locals, and, if successful, were in fact more likely to win. It wasn't that people were without input or awareness; most knew, at least vaguely, of the difference between their speech and that of people of other areas.
But a television announcer had to make a choice (in this case, MissourAH or MissourEE) and stick with it; and the television announcers, being authorities, influenced the perceptions of people on the ground, with their consistency if nothing else. In midlands (MissourAH) pockets, people began to feel that it was MissourEE in other places, MissourEE in the city, MissourEE on television, but MissourAH here. In northern (MissourEE) pockets, people began to feel that it was MissourAH only in certain rural pockets around the state; thus MissourAH became associated with rural.
Now a person in an area where both were heard had a problem. Using MissourAH carried a risk: one could be seen as rural, or marked as from an isolated, rural pocket of the state. Calculated risk-takers weighed their options. Politicians coming through had to decide whether it was more beneficial sounding "rural" than it was sounding urbane, or at least, not sounding like a bumpkin to listeners back in the city.
Some interesting points can be made from this language and dialect evolution. First, there is nothing inherently rural about -AH endings; CincinnatAH was anything but rural. To a person who hears nothing but MissourAH, MissourAH is just the name of a state. Second, the placement of settlers in pockets around the state may have been related to common origin, but the speech adjusted from there: changes were made by individual people, for their own reasons, based on their own perceptions and what they observed. Patterns were made from these changes, but in some cases those patterns weren't clear in the big picture for many years, or, it was difficult sorting out who said what, if in fact people were even consistent.
Actually measuring the perceptions of each individual person would be a gargantuan task. Measuring the associations of various sounds and dialects would be equally difficult, but not impossible. No doubt there are people who don't watch television; who still, in their limited circles, encounter only one version of the word; perhaps there are some who don't consider television an "authority" or consider it irrelevant if only because one doesn't talk to it. It would be an interesting study to see if any of these people would actually change their dialect in a television interview, knowing full well that their words would go out over the airwaves; that their dialect would be "marked" or associated as rural (or whatever); knowing full well that the majority of the audience would be expecting another variation of the name...
The politician is an interesting character in this drama because he/she is perhaps more interested in how he/she is seen by others. We are all guilty of working on this constructed image...but we don't have as much riding on it as the politician does. There is a good likelihood that more people besides the politicians changed their speech patterns depending upon whom they were talking to; people have been known to be surprised to hear themselves slipping into local dialect upon their return to a hometown they had long ago rejected. And this brings up another point - that to some degree it's unconscious, since the tendency here is to just slip into harmonic accents with those who we are communicating with - and not to think about it a great deal.
Page made and maintained byThomas Leverett, CESL, SIUC. Photo above by Chicago Tribune.