Arkansas Three - Text
The subject is a 23-year-old Caucasian male born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. Both of his parents are natives of Arkansas, although the subject says that, over the years, his father has lost his regional accent. At present, the subject is a senior student at the University of Arkansas/ Fayetteville.
He is aware that his vocal delivery is somewhat "monotone" and he is working on trying to inject a little pitch variation into it. The "i/e" reversal is evident in words like "friends", "get up" and "getting". Medial consonants and consonant clusters disappear in words such as "Santa", "interstate", "under" and "probably". Also, the final consonant is left off in the word "band". The speaker pronounces the words "trying" and "playing" as one-syllable words. The dialect is rhotic and the pronunciation of "ar" in "Arkansas", "yard" and "car" sometimes tends to rhyme with "core" or "sore". The "a" substitution for the "aI" sound happens quite often in words such as "finds", "tried", "ideas", "size", "why", "my" and "kind". However, longer words like "horizon" and "nightmare" do receive the "aI" treatment. Also, observe that the vowels in the words "flood" and "hood"(childhood) are lengthened.
Recorded by Mavourneen Dwyer, spring 2000, and edited by Paul Meier. Running time: 00:04:18.
TRANSCRIPTION
I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I lived there until I was two years old, and then I moved north (uh) to North Little Rock just across the river. (Uh) I was-- I was raised in North Little Rock all my life.
(Uh) My parents-- (uh) one was born in Alma, Arkansas, and the other was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
I am 23 years old. I attend the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. (Uh) I'm a senior, (uh) about to receive my degree in drama, and now read some of the Rainbow Passage...
[READS A SHORT SELECTION FROM THE RAINBOW PASSAGE]
I have one brother who’s nineteen years old and is a student at Hendrix University in Conway. I have one sister who is-- will be eighteen in June. (Uh)She’s a senior in high school at North Little Rock, and plans on attending Baylor University or the University of Arkansas.
(Um) my mother lives in North Little Rock, with my grandmother. And I have a grandmother who lives in Alma. My father-- (uh) my mother and father are divorced. My father now lives in Austin, Texas, where he’s an attorney for a computer corporation.
(Um) The earliest remembrances I have of-- of my childhood were-- were in a house in the heights in Little Rock, before I moved to North Little Rock. (Uh) I remember playing in the front yard. (Um) I just remember running around in the front yard. That’s all that I really remember.
(Um) And then my next memories are of my house that I-- I mainly grew up in, in North Little Rock. I remember how-- how in the back yard was all woods, when I moved there. And now how, as far as the eyes can see, in my back yard, it is houses and car dealerships and(uh) interstate and so forth.
(Um) I remember Christmases as a kid, probably differently from other children, because (um) my Christmas presents were never wrapped. They were just put under the tree. That was fine with me. It saved me the time of having to unwrap my presents. (Uh) But I always wondered why Santa Claus wrapped other kids’ presents and didn’t wrap mine. (Uh) I thought that was kind of funny.
(Uh) Christmas Eve was always the hardest time for me to go to sleep ’cause I was always so anxious about what I would be getting in the morning. And I’d probably wake up around 4 a.m. and-- and go downstairs and see what I’d gotten. I remember having a dream one Christmas Eve, that I wo-- that I’d woken up too early, and had caught Santa Claus in the act, and he was – he was very upset with me for some reason. I remember that turning into a nightmare. And I remember trying to stay asleep longer, past – in years past, after that dream. (Um) I remember going into Mom and Dad’s bedroom and waking them up at the crack of dawn, and they-- they usually did not want to get up so early.
But (uh) th-- those are mainly good memories, about the family being together, and (uh)-- and how everyone had that morning together. And it was really happy because everyone was getting presents.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, October 1, 2007