Strelluf, Christopher and Cardwell, Tasha (2019) Surveying borders in a speech community. Dialectologia (22).

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Abstract

This research reports responses to a language questionnaire for an extensive set ofphonological, lexical, and grammatical variables in Kansas City. Linguistic variables aremodeled with conditional inference trees and random forests against demographicfactors like age, race, and sex, as well as several geopolitical factors. Results show that --while Kansas Citians identify many cultural, political, and social barriers that shape life inthe city -- race is the primary social predictor of survey responses. Among sixteen surveyitems with significant predictors, race is most significant for nine. Geopolitical factorsthat Kansas Citians imagine as meaningful do not affect linguistic practice. Based on thisfinding, the article considers the “speech community” as a unit of sociolinguistic analysis,and concludes that the large metropolitan area can be thought of as a single speechcommunity, as long as the sample is racially homogenous.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Applied Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Language surveys -- Kansas City, Mo., Race -- Kansas City, Mo.
Journal or Publication Title:	Dialectologia
Publisher:	Universitat de Barcelona
ISSN:	2013-2247
Official Date:	November 2019
Dates:	Date Event November 2019 Published 4 October 2017 Accepted
Number:	22
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Related URLs:	Publisher

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