Mississippi Four - Text
Interview subject is a 42 year old Caucasian male. He was born in Chillan, Chile, but moved to Jackson, Mississippi a few weeks after his birth. Later in life he also lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for a short time. For two years he lived in Texas with his family; one year in Crocket, and one year in Shiner, and a semester in Houston. He also lived in Montana for one year. The first thirty-odd years of his life were spent in Mississippi, but he moved to Champaign, Illinois for graduate school at the age of thirty. He is a College Graduate, and a Professor of History at a major Southern California University. He currently resides in Buena Park, California. The subject speaks on his upbringing in Mississippi, and two outdoor adventures as a small boy: one involving a snake, and the other involving him running down the streets naked in the snow. The remainder of the interview is a short remembrance about his grandmother and certain, “old” Mississippi words that he heard her speak from time to time. His dialect is characterized by a strong southern “drawl.” He uses pitch variation of vowels for emphasis, many interjected schwas (especially to create tripthongs), also glottals for emphasis in the medial position, and no pure vowels. For instance, most pure vowels become dipthongs, or even tripthongs. For Example: Cant would read, cai-ent with the final position /t/ being aspirated, though the word flows much more smoothly than a harsher “Texan” style accent. The flow of the dialect is very smooth, but with a lingering croaking “fry” throughout. Also, any /t/’s or /d/’s that are not aspirated are flaps.
TRANSCRIPTION
I’m 42, and I was born in Chillan, Chile. Uh, my parents were American, we were, uh, they were from Mississippi, and we came back to Mississippi immediately after I was born. And, uh, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived there, uh, for most of my life, and I lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, also. It was fantastic, uh… growing up in Mississippi was incredible. The, the, uh, it was very idealistic, uh, for me. In terms of we hunted a lot, and fished, and uh, we were in the outdoors a lot, so it was great. Uh, I remember like when I was a lil’ younger, I-I caught um, a, uh, a venomous snake, a-a water moccasin, and I was scared to let go of it. So my neighbor got a garbage can and took the lid off, and she said, “okay, now you throw it in there,” and I opened the eh, uh (snicker), so I did that (snicker.) And uh, it snowed when I was about five and I decided I was gonna r- which was very rare, so I decided I was gonna run naked through the neighborhood too, so that was a good, time (laughs.) For the most part it was, y’know, for the first thirty years of my life Mississippi was the main, place. Uh, I do remembe- my, uh, my grandmother, um, who was named er, Irlene (spelling?) Puckett … uh, had a lot of dialect words that are lost now. And she was from Scottish stock, and bor-she was born in 1911. So, she would have heard a lot of words, from older people when she was a little girl that were in use in the- probably in the earlier part of the, um, of the mid- early-to-mid-nineteenth century. So… for ghost she would say, haint. Uh, and she used a h- a holler, a hollow, uh, like a, y’know, a little, not a valley but like a, not a ditch and not a valley but in between. So a hollow was a holler, and a ghost was a haint. And to give up the ghost was to die. So, you were giving the ghost up, you, were would mean the ghost was leaving your body. So that was to give up the ghost.
Recorded by: Christopher Geer 11/08/07. Total Running Time: 00:04:57.30