Date Thesis Awarded

5-2023

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

Linguistics

Advisor

Anya Hogoboom

Committee Members

Leslie Cochrane

Kate Harrigan

Jon Pineda

Abstract

Expanding our understanding of how speakers with multiple conflicting identities may navigate the tensions between them through language use, this research looks at how two lesbians in Appalachia use the Appalachian feature of monophthongal /aɪ/ to express their identities as queer and/or Appalachian. Due to the studied and expressed disconnect between the two identities, I look at the possibility that the speakers will change their use of the Appalachian feature when discussing queer subjects. Using data from interviews conducted with the two speakers, I isolated two sections of speech pertaining to either queer or Appalachian topics and analyzed them for the amount of monophthongal /aɪ/ used in each section. Both speakers were found to use equal amounts of monophthongal /aɪ/ across both topics. This routine use of /aɪ/ is discussed using sociolinguistic and sociophonetic theories, such as Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004) concept of adequation and Reed’s (2014) proposed measure of rootedness.

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