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Investigating “self-conscious” speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Natalie Schilling-Estes
Natalie Schilling-Estes
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2150, estesl@leland.stanford.edu
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Abstract

This article examines PERFORMANCE SPEECH in the historically isolated island community of Ocracoke, North Carolina. Over the past several decades islanders have come into increasingly frequent contact with tourists and new residents, who often comment on the island's “quaint” relic dialect. In response, some Ocracokers have developed performance phrases that highlight island features, particularly the pronunciation of/ay/ with a raised/backed nucleus, i.e. [Λ-1]. The analysis of/ay/ in the performance and non-performance speech of a representative Ocracoke speaker yields several important insights for the study of language in its social context. First, performance speech may display more regular patterning than has traditionally been assumed. Second, it lends insight into speaker perception of language features. Finally, the incorporation of performance speech into the variationist-based study of style-shifting offers support for the growing belief that style-shifting may be primarily proactive rather than reactive. (Keywords: Ocracoke, performance speech, style-shifting, stylistic variation, register, self-conscious speech.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 53 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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