Arkansas Eight - Text
The speaker is a twenty-one year old Caucasian male who was born in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas on the Mississippi River. When he was eight, his family moved to Palestine, Arkansas about 40 miles inland from the Mississippi River. His speech exhibits strong Tennessee characteristics as well as typical Arkansas features. The speech has a strongly rhotic coloring. Medial consonants are often dropped ("sentimental") and the middle "t" in the word "treatment" receives a glottal stop treatment typical of the Ozark region. Note the the vowel in the dog. Vowels in much and once are elongated and pronounced farther forward in the mouth. Words like nearer, mirror and porridge are pronounced as one syllable. The subject's vowel in car and Marty is typical of Southeastern Arkansas and East Texas. The /l/ in the final position in little becomes an "oh" sound. The subject uses the characteristic southern monophthong for words in the price lexical set. Vowels are occasionally diphthongized as in accident and kit.
Interestingly, in Voice Production class, this student has consistently ended all his declarative sentences up in pitch, whether talking impromptu or working with text. However, on this recording, there is no evidence of this very Southern feature!
Recorded by Mavourneen Dwyer, 7.25.03, and edited by Paul Meier 8.20.03. Running time: 00:04:01.
TRANSCRIPTION
I was born in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1982, and for the next three years I was raised in Palestine, Arkansas, until my mother went off to college in Jonesboro, where I lived until the time I was in third grade and we came back to Palestine. I attended Palestine Wheatley Elementary School, an’ spent the rest of my time there.
(Uh) See, all through junior high and senior high, I played sports: football, basketball and baseball, and ran track. From the time I was about fifteen years old, I got my first truck, and also my first experience with ridin’ around drinkin’
(Um) We would (uh)-- we-- actually it was pretty sad, we actually had a charge account set up at this little store, for a couple of fifteen-year-olds, so we could charge beer. ’Cause we-- we could only come up there with change, and only able to buy a 40- or somethin’ like that every day.
I graduated at the top of my class from Palestine, and received a lot of honors from my student voting, like “Who’s who” in the school, and things like that. My senior year, during (uh) football season, my sister passed away in a car accident. (Uh) That was really kinda sad….
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, October 2, 2007