Megan Figueroa
Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.
Carrie Gillon
I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan Figueroa
And I’m Megan Figueroa, and we got people out there being racist again, Carrie. [both laugh]
Carrie Gillon
I’m so shocked. So, so shocked.
Megan Figueroa
Trump was racist again. When he was… What was it? Like a press conference with a border patrol– a Latino Border Patrol agent?
Carrie Gillon
He delivered a speech in tribute to to officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. Sorry, Border Protection.
Megan Figueroa
Right. Anyway, when he was about to introduce him, Trump says that he speaks perfect English. Is that right? Is that the correct quote?
Carrie Gillon
That is the correct quote.
Megan Figueroa
We both know that there is just so much more that’s wrong with that besides the linguistic bit. Systemic issues and stuff and like ICE and all this, but we talk about linguistic discrimination, this is one of those things that’s like equivalent to saying like if you say that when someone has a foreign accent and you say, Oh, wow, you’re really articulate or you know, all these things, but you’re acting surprised that they can actually quote unquote speak well.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, you’re being a bit of a dick.
Megan Figueroa
Right. So…
Carrie Gillon
Well, yeah. And you’re also being kind of– you’re being essentialist because you think that only certain people should be able to have the skills to speak English but like…
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Carrie Gillon
Whatever language you speak has nothing to do with anything other than where you grew up, or who your parents are. Or something like that. Like you take a baby from one end of the country– one end of the world and stick them in another part of the world. They’re just going to grow up the language that they speak there, not where they came from.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Carrie Gillon
It’s just– It’s bizarre. People still have these really weird racial ideas about how language works.
Megan Figueroa
I don’t know anything about this border patrol agent, except that he’s Latino. He might not even speak Spanish right?
Carrie Gillon
It’s possible Yeah, I have no idea.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, but yeah, so just because you’re Latino doesn’t mean you speak Spanish. So you’re…
Carrie Gillon
But even if you did, speaking Spanish has nothing to do with your ability to speak English. You can be bilingual
Megan Figueroa
Right. It’s- it’s racializing the Spanish language too.
Carrie Gillon
Yes.
Megan Figueroa
So… that was a real dick move. And of course, no one’s surprised that he would say something racist and xenophobic. And…
Carrie Gillon
No, it was– I’m sure it was on purpose too it’s like, hey look.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, yeah.
Carrie Gillon
I like some Latinos. Look at this guy. And also, I’m still gonna be racist while I say I like him so that the white supremacist know that I’m still a white supremacist,
Megan Figueroa
Right. Yep. Yeah, he’s one of the good Latinos just look at him. He’s in a border patrol agent uniform.
Carrie Gillon
And yet still…
Megan Figueroa
Right, right. And still bring him down a couple pegs.
Carrie Gillon
Fun times. And then, there was another article a couple days ago that was relevant to us.
Megan Figueroa
Yes, always. I like to think because I’m full of myself.
Carrie Gillon
Well, when it’s specifically about women’s voices, then obviously.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, it’s true. It’s a mashable.com article from the 22nd of August and it’s called Stop Telling Women How They Should Talk. It’s as if, you know, we’ve probably said the exact same thing before.
Carrie Gillon
I am 100% certain we said it at least one time.
Megan Figueroa
And it was by Rachel Thompson. They actually interview linguist Lisa Davidson, so that’s good. Yeah, so it’s basically what we talked about in our very first episode, and they even talk about like, we talked about the Lexicon Valley episode where they talk about it and they talk about that. They don’t call out the people like we do. But it’s ok.
Carrie Gillon
I guess she didn’t have the skills probably.
Megan Figueroa
True, true. The very last line is what really needs to change isn’t women’s voices, but how we think about women and their voices.
Carrie Gillon
Exactly.
Megan Figueroa
Exactly. So that’s definitely the moral of every episode.
Carrie Gillon
Yes.
Megan Figueroa
And just switch it out for women’s when it’s you know,
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Megan Figueroa
I mean.
Carrie Gillon
The relevant group, depending on what we’re talking about, but yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Exactly. And then the- the culmination of all that is… everyone, right? What really needs to change isn’t everyone’s voices but how we think about everyone and their voices.
Carrie Gillon
Although, I would say I think women are picked on their voices more. So other- other people are picked on for other things like oh, you don’t– you have bad grammar or your vocabulary is poor or whatever, you know, it’s not usually about how your voice sounds like that seems to be pretty women central. And gay men. Probably.
Megan Figueroa
Yes. But there’s a connection there.
Carrie Gillon
There’s definitely a connection.
Megan Figueroa
And one day we will talk about it with someone who has more authority on the subject.
Carrie Gillon
Yes. Yes, we will get there. The way people speak can be judged in many different ways, but it seems like voices is mainly about femininity.
Megan Figueroa
Yes, femininity. That’s it
Carrie Gillon
So many times.
Megan Figueroa
Oh. Heavy, heavy sigh. I know, it’s like a constant struggle.
Carrie Gillon
We’re going to be fighting this forever. As we said a few episodes ago. This is– It’s forever. Uphill battle.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, but this is a hill I’m willing to die on. Sisyphean battle. [both laugh]
Carrie Gillon
I just got to remember, I’ve gonna think like advertisers just constantly got to say the same thing over and over again, and eventually people will come around.
Megan Figueroa
Speaking of… Patreon, y’all.
Carrie Gillon
Sort of.
Megan Figueroa
Well, we keep reminding people that we have it.
Carrie Gillon
We’re advertising ourselves. Yes. Yes.
Megan Figueroa
Yes, we’re advertising ourselves.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, so you can find us at patreon.com/vocalfriespod. Basically everything we do online is vocal fries pod.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
So if you’re like, hmm? I wonder if they’re using such and such a social media platform. Look for vocal fries pod.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah. Because the Twitter the vocal fries was taken long, long ago.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, it’s fine.
Megan Figueroa
And here we are. But if you like what we’re doing….
Carrie Gillon
You can support us.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, we’re we’re indie podcasts. Trying to make the world a better place.
Carrie Gillon
One episode where we yell at you to not be an asshole at a time.
Megan Figueroa
Yep, exactly. Speaking of, today’s episode, we get to talk about New Orleans.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah.
Megan Figueroa
So. That’s fun.
Carrie Gillon
It’s a great city and we were supposed to be there a couple weekends ago. But that all fell through, so… We still ended up interviewing the person that we were going to interview at the live show. Lisa Sprouse. So yeah, it’s- it’s fun. We get to learn some new things about New Orleans English. So today we have a guest to talk about something we have never addressed. We’re actually going to talk about at least somewhat we’re going to talk about class for the first time. I’m really excited.
Megan Figueroa
We hint at it. We hint, we go near it. And then we’re like, whoop, we don’t know about it.
Carrie Gillon
So today we have Lisa Sprowls, who is a PhD candidate at Tulane, and her focus is on socio-linguistics and socio-phonetics of American dialects. In particular, Montana, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans. And today we’re going to focus on New Orleans. So welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Sprowls
Thank you.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, I’m so happy. I’m again about to learn everything. Because I know nothing.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, this is definitely an area that I know almost nothing about? Like almost, so it’ll be fun.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah. So where should we begin, should we talk about… let’s talk about what- what dialects exist in New Orleans.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
Like, broadly speaking, there are probably lots but…
Lisa Sprowls
So broadly speaking with the dialects, it honestly depends on what year the research was done and who did the research.
Megan Figueroa
Ah.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So the general accepted right now is that if we’re speaking narrowly there are three, which would be a New Orlean specific type of African American English, the working class white English, which is called Yat and then the upper class white English, which I refer to as Garden District English. That’s the area of the city it’s most closely related to. If we branch out, a lot of other people argue that there’s five. The three that I mentioned, then also a type of just Standard American English, which seems to be taking over some of the local dialects in the city. And there’s also a discussion of whether or not there is a Creole English in New Orleans, which would be the Creole African American population in areas of the city like the Seventh Ward? That population is notoriously difficult to research. So there’s not– there’s honestly not too much work on any of the dialects except for Yat which is very well established.
Carrie Gillon
So let’s- let’s begin with Yat then, since that’s the best studied. So what is the Yat dialect? What features does it have? Who speaks it? etc.
Lisa Sprowls
So Yat which comes from a greeting in New Orleans, “Where yat?”
Carrie Gillon
Ah!
Megan Figueroa
Woah.
Carrie Gillon
Wo-ah.
Megan Figueroa
You blew my mind.
Carrie Gillon
That’s awesome.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t actually refer to where are you? Where are you at, like, space wise? It’s actually unclear where that came from. There’s a bunch of different theories. One that always shows up is that it’s from musicians who would pass each other and say where you at? As in where are you playing tonight? Which then turned into where yat? Would you like to guess what an appropriate response to where yat is?
Carrie Gillon
No.
Megan Figueroa
Wait… Dang it, no. I have no idea.
Lisa Sprowls
So a pretty standard response will be something like I’m good.
Megan Figueroa
Ah, not what I was gonna say. I was gonna like say something like spatially definitely like…
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, it’s– space and class are very tricky in New Orleans. But… so yat is generally considered to be the working class white English dialect in the city. It would have started in traditional white working class neighborhoods like the Irish Channel, which is uptown closer to the river. Then other areas like the Ninth Ward, which is now predominantly African American was working class white up until about the 1960s.
Carrie Gillon
Oh, okay.
Lisa Sprowls
So that’s where that dialect would have likely began. It is now found mostly outside of the city. So Katie Carmichael has done a lot of work on Yat showing that it is mainly in St. Bernard Parish, right so we have parishes instead of counties in Louisiana. So St. Bernard Parish borders, Orleans Parish. There are a few different neighborhoods, mainly ones called Chalmette and Aerobie which are considered to now be the yat homeland. So it has moved slightly outside of the city. And it is associated with– to put it bluntly– it is associated with white flight, the movement of this dialect. So New Orleans very much fought against integration in the public school system. So this was the site of in 1960 Ruby Bridges who integrated one of the schools in the city, and a lot of people withdrew their children and even moved outside of the city. So that’s around the time that Yat moved into St. Bernard Parish. There’s also the question of is it actually distinct from African American English?
Carrie Gillon
Right. That’s a question that I wanted to get to for sure. So yeah, is it distinct from the African American English variety spoken in New Orleans?
Lisa Sprowls
So if we talk about the different features of African American English and yat there’s a lot of overlap between the two. Some of the standard features that are considered part of yat would be that it’s r-less. Post vocalic r-lessness is still very common throughout yat. It is receding through the generations.
Megan Figueroa
So example of that would be?
Lisa Sprowls
Even the pronunciation of– the pronunciation of New Orleans is often dialect specific. So in yat you’re likely to get either the r retained with New Orleans or New Aw-leans. That’s a common space of that r is going to get dropped. Word finally, the er suffix that r is going to get dropped on a lot of words. Bett-ah, for better is a really common one. Even more common, proper nouns like the month names you’re going to get Octob-ah, Novemb-ah, right? So it’s gonna drop even in more standardized situations. So then moving on th stopping which is the replacement of your inner dental fricatives, the orthographic th with a T or a D. Probably the most famous example of this would be with the New Orleans Saints. Who dat? Where instead of who that you’re getting Who dat? Or the whole phrase, who dat say they’re gonna be them saints? In that whole phrase. And that is a feature you’re going to find in yat at about the same level as you’re going to find it in African American English in the city. Our list is about the same. You’re going to find that in both. There’s a few older features that are very rare to find, but you do find them in both black and white working class English in the city. We have what’s called the coil curl reversal. So for example, my adviser told me she was at a subway, I think? She was carrying her son and the lady working behind the counter told her not to sperl her child instead of spoil.
Megan Figueroa
Oh, woah.
Carrie Gillon
When we- when we went to New Orleans a few years ago, Megan and I the first thing that we encountered was this actually
Megan Figueroa
Yes, in the airport, right?
Carrie Gillon
Yes, someone at the airport told us it’s cooking earl, like she went out of her way to explain.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, I love that.
Carrie Gillon
Which I love.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, yeah. Because I think I asked her how to pronounce New Orleans properly? Well, you know, quote unquote, properly like now that I’m in New Orleans, how do I say, you know, and then she went on to tell us about that and it was perfect. I love it.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah,
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. So that is it’s a little older, but that’s a feature that both white and black speakers tend to be aware of and they will talk about it. Not so much if they use it. If they use it, they’re not really gonna… right, the level of conscious awareness of using it is slightly lower, but talking about it in a meta linguistic sense is very high. I interviewed an older woman. She was in her 90s and she was talking about– she didn’t use it at all, but she was talking about her mother would always say that she was going to buy her new skirt [skoit] to wear to school.
Megan Figueroa
Wow.
Lisa Sprowls
Right.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
Or my neighbor doesn’t he was telling me about working on his car. He apologized for there being an oil [erl] spill on the driveway. Next door whenever he was changing the oil in his car. It’s a prevalent feature. It is on the decline, but you still do hear people use it and it’s used in a performative way as well. And to throw a little more complication into this, all of those features that you find in both Yat and African American English you also find in New York City.
Megan Figueroa
Oh.
Carrie Gillon
That’s true.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
And other port cities. Savannah and Charleston. It is receding there. You’ll find some of that there.
Carrie Gillon
Interesting.
Lisa Sprowls
Yat also has the split short a system of New York City English.
Carrie Gillon
Can you explain that?
Lisa Sprowls
A split short a refers to how, for most dialects, the vowel phoneme found in the word cat is pronounced relatively stable and quality across all speakers in all environments in the dialect. A split short a system refers to a tensing that usually occurs before voiced and nasal sounds. So for example, with a voiceless P. And for example map, you’d get that standard a [short a] sound map, but mad you would get a tensing raising of the vowel to me-at
Carrie Gillon
Oh, yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Fun. I love that sound.
Lisa Sprowls
So you get that… yes, you get that in Yat in New Orleans, which is not a southern feature. It is not really an African American English feature. So there’s a question of why that feature has popped up in New Orleans.
Carrie Gillon
Do you know why or is it an open question?
Lisa Sprowls
It is an open question. I’ve previously done some research, trying to kind of postulating why yat has the features that it does. There is a pretty strong trend going through current research that it may have to do with the time of settlement by immigrant groups that are coming through port cities.
Carrie Gillon
Okay.
Lisa Sprowls
The theory that we’re running is that it has to do with Italian but maybe more specifically Sicilian immigration through port cities… is a pretty strong commonality between New York City and New Orleans. New Orleans was the largest port of immigration south of New York throughout the 1800s.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
A lot of people coming through. We’ve done some research about 70 miles northwest of the city. Yat doesn’t really show up between New Orleans in the communities in that– in that expanse, but we get to this little town called Independence about 70 miles Northwest, where a lot of the Sycilian immigrants who came into New Orleans were– were harled to go to Independence because there is farming land there.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
And they are consistently showing these Yat futures.
Carrie Gillon
Interesting.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
So that- that’s one clue that that may be where it’s coming from. Other people have floated some theories that in the Reconstruction Era Following the Civil War, there were businessmen from New York City, who came to New Orleans to try to, you know, do some economic profiting, but that doesn’t explain why the rest of the South doesn’t have it.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Carrie Gillon
Is there something about the variety of Italian spoken in Sicily that would lead to this change or I mean, this distinction?
Lisa Sprowls
Not with that specific feature. There are some vowel differences between standard Italian and what is considered Sicilian, and Sicilian is either a dialect or a separate language depending on what source you’re reading as well.
Carrie Gillon
Right, of course.
Lisa Sprowls
But with that tensing, there doesn’t really seem to be a motivation for that happening.
Carrie Gillon
It’s interesting. I mean, it seems like you’re– it seems like it’s plausible that it’s coming from this- this particular group of people but then…
Megan Figueroa
But why?
Carrie Gillon
The language.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
That facts don’t line up but anyway, that’s very interesting.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, that’s- that’s probably going be our common trend today with New Orleans. This might be why it’s happening, but we’re not exactly sure.
Carrie Gillon
Well, that’s good, because people should realize that this is how science works. And we don’t always have the answers.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah. We’re following the evidence, but… We don’t know.
Carrie Gillon
We might not be there yet.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, yeah yeah.
Carrie Gillon
Eventually, hopefully, but maybe not.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
So okay, let’s go back to the Yat African American English difference, which seems to be small if it exists. So are there any actual differences or?
Lisa Sprowls
Yes, culturally, there are a lot of differences. Especially after a lot of the Yats move to St. Bernard. But for the longest time, the Ninth Ward would have been white and black, right? On the same block. Even now, if you’re in the Ninth Ward, there are both white and black communities, but it really varies by block. New Orleans is by and large still, culturally and geographically segregated.
Carrie Gillon
I think that’s kind of the case for most cities in the United States.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
New Orleans is about 63% African American. So, it’s an overwhelming majority, but more concentrated in specific areas of the city. I would venture to guess that the reason they shared a lot of the commonalities would have been initially because of geographic space, and not necessarily cultural prejudice between the two groups? Especially if you look at some other research where Yat speakers are very insistent that the dialect they speak is very markedly different than African American English.
Carrie Gillon
I mean, it makes sense that they want to demarcate themselves because, yeah, that’s what people do. But it’s interesting that there’s not much of a difference.
Megan Figueroa
Right. Could they tell a difference? Can they tell the difference between themselves and the other group?
Lisa Sprowls
Not very well. So we’ve done some research on this. Looking at different verbal guise and map labeling tasks and then seeing if respondent race factored into how they’re labeling or perceiving speech in the city.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So we did do a verbal guise task where we recorded nine different New Orleanians all speaking the same sentence, and they’re from different areas of the city, either black or white, different ages, most had some college education a few only finished high school, but our focus was can listeners really demarcate race with any level of above chance, really. And so we had when we did this a few years ago, I think we had 49 people that responded to this– that listened to it– and of the nine recordings, we had seven were white speakers, we had two that were African American English speakers.
Megan Figueroa
And that was on purpose?
Lisa Sprowls
It wasn’t necessarily on purpose that way, but it’s just the willingness, the willingness of people to either participate as a speaker or listener.
Megan Figueroa
Okay.
Lisa Sprowls
So for these white speakers that we had, up through middle age of the speakers up to about 50? Both our black and our white respondents could identify race correctly between 89 and 100% of the time, so of most of the white speakers, they were way above chance in identifying that these were white speakers. But then our two oldest white speakers. So we had a 78 year old who was from the upper class white dialect. And then we had an 85 year old that was from Chalmette. So the working class two, as we think very distinct white dialects, the racial identification for the speakers was basically a chance for both black and white respondents ranging really anywhere between about 44 and 51%. Correct racial identification of these speakers. That may clue us into the fact that African American English and the white dialects from the city used to be a lot more similar than they are now.
Megan Figueroa
I see, ok.
Lisa Sprowls
It is likely that when race and class really started to diverge more in the city about 50 years ago, that the dialects similarly diverged from each other. We didn’t look too much at the class with the specific one. But we did find that within the race that match their own, right, so with the black respondents listening to the two black speakers, they could tell you class right they- they are much better at it than white speakers, just like with our seven white speakers, the white respondents were much better delineating well, this person probably is working class maybe finished high school, this person has a college degree. So for both races age is what confuses people within your own race in New Orleans assumes that class delineation is a lot easier to figure out. So there are those little nuances with race and class that we’re seeing with this. Something else interesting that came up with that if we switch to our two black speakers? We had a 33 year old female and a 67 year old female, the younger speaker very much confused all the respondents. Our white respondents could identify her race 39% of the time, and our black respondents could only do it 22% of the time.
Carrie Gillon
Oh, wow.
Lisa Sprowls
What we had with her she- she had gone to graduate school. So her socioeconomic class her education was higher than most of the other white speakers. So that really seemed to throw people off.
Carrie Gillon
That’s fascinating.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
Our older black speaker who was considered more working class? Our white respondents identified her race correctly 71% of the time and black respondents had 100%.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So there’s all these different nuances and then when people said that they couldn’t tell the race. It was interesting that often instead of just saying they didn’t know what race the speaker was, they identified the speaker as being Creole.
Carrie Gillon
Ah, that’s interesting.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. Which wouldn’t really work in cities outside of New Orleans.
Carrie Gillon
No.
Lisa Sprowls
In this kind of task, the I don’t know equivalent in other cities is were thinking the kind of the equivalent of saying that someone is Creole in these audio– in these audio guises because throughout the 300 years of the city, yes, the the meaning of Creole has shifted multiple times and there’s questions of ownership over what group is Creole, that at its base, someone that’s Creole is of mixed race origin.
Megan Figueroa
Okay.
Lisa Sprowls
So it’s kind of a catch all for this.
Megan Figueroa
Interesting.
Carrie Gillon
It’s very interesting. Yeah. So they can’t tell they’re like, Okay, they’re biracial.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. Yeah, they’re trying to cover their bases and including both.
Megan Figueroa
And that’s basically saying that they have influence from both dialects or from both kind of speakers, right? So the Yat and the African American. Okay, that’s really interesting.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah. But is there also a separate or was there ever a separate dialect associated with Creole people or no?
Lisa Sprowls
Likely there was, it may still be so very briefly because a discussion of Creole could be a whole semester class, to start with, Creole referred to slaves born in Louisiana, so and then it shifted to just being born in Louisiana. So both slaves and the European immigrants who then had children here, their children were considered Creole.
Carrie Gillon
Oh, okay.
Lisa Sprowls
After the US took over, which had stricter race laws than the Spanish and French who ruled Louisiana before, Creole then took on the meaning of being mixed race. It shifted again since then, where we still have people that say they’re white Creole versus black Creole.
Carrie Gillon
Oh.
Lisa Sprowls
Linguistically, if we’re talking about Creole English, we are associating it with Creole blacks, the African American mixed population in the city. The issue with this that we’ve encountered is I’ve heard from other researchers that getting people to self identify as Creole is the large barrier to studying Creole English.
Carrie Gillon
Why is that?
Lisa Sprowls
There’s a tendency with a white researcher that people who are from these Creol areas will just identify as black because that is enough of a racial distinction when you’re talking to a white researcher. My advisor tried it, she took a black undergraduate student with her and then someone who had previously identified as a black to her I believe identified as Creole to the black student. Even if you- you’re pretty sure that someone is Creole, if they’re not going to label themselves as Creole there’s, you know, there- there’s an ethnic issue with that of can you include them in a study of Creole English, so it’s really the access to the population. There are a few Creole researchers Mona Lisa Saloy who is at Dillard University, has done some preliminary work of listing out these are some lexical features of Creole English suggesting that there is a Creole English, but there hasn’t been any in depth study of the population. Creole is also complicated if I’m not sure if you guys are aware of the group that calls themselves the Mardi Gras Indians.
Megan Figueroa
No.
Carrie Gillon
No.
Lisa Sprowls
Okay, so Mardi Gras Indians– I recommend look it up. It’s fantastic– Mardi Gras Indians are a population within New Orleans that claim to be the descendants of slaves who took refuge with indigenous populations around New Orleans. It falls under the umbrella term of Creole but it’s considered a separate group because it’s not the White Black mixing that you normally associate with Creole. They trace our heritage to black and indigenous groups.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So that would be another group. They’re very well known during Mardi Gras. They as a kind of as a tribute to these indigenous roots, they make these very lavish, almost Plains Indian style costumes and they parade in their crews throughout the city. They you know, they have their chance, they have some songs where the language that they’re using is unknown, right? They’re not even sure of what it is. People have tried to study the Mardi Gras Indian chants, people have come up with theories that it’s choctaw. Or that it’s mobilian jargon, or even that it’s just a variety of Creole French. Right. So that’s another complication of are you considering your Mardi Gras Indian population as a Creole population? Are you looking at them separately? Right, so race is not– it’s not really clear cut for any population, but in New Orleans, especially for a city that if you look at the demographics, and it says, well, it’s 63% black, but then you have your different nuances within this population of people who considers themselves to be African American who considers themselves to be Creole who doesn’t think that there’s a difference, right. So it’s a very complicated topic to look at.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah. And I think that’s important for our listeners, too. When we like, say we’re talking about one geographic region, it is so complicated, we’re not going to even like be able to get, you know, it’s just like the tip of the iceberg kind of thing where, like, it depends on who you’re talking to, you know, like there’s so many different factors that you can talk about in one geographic region that it’s like, we’re only- we’re only talking about one band. There’s so much more and we don’t mean to exclude it. Right. But it’s like…
Carrie Gillon
Can only do so much in one episode.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Right, exactly.
Carrie Gillon
So now I want to talk about… what was it called the Garden District dialect?
Lisa Sprowls
The Garden District. Yes. We know that class, especially amongst the white population in New Orleans, is pretty strictly delineated between the upper class and the working class in New Orleans. I guess kind of to move back a little bit. A lot of the media representations of New Orleans use a very exaggerated southern drawl, or even a Charleston type accent. So I’m looking at you Scott Bakula from NCIS: New Orleans. It’s not right– it’s- it’s like a- it’s like a tourist coming to New Orleans and expecting people to speak French. It’s not really what the city is anymore. But any notion of southerness is likely tied to upper class English in the city. So this is what I’m doing my dissertation on right now. All of this previous research has said there is an upper class white English, but no one has studied it. No one has labeled it as such. There’s a chance that there was a study done in the early 1950s by George Reinecke, where he made a map of adults that he interviewed and it labeled- it seemed to correlate with upper class areas the Garden District, an area called Esplanade Ridge, Uptown near Tulane and Loyola universities, but he didn’t call it upper class English. He didn’t call it Garden District English. He said that it was the English that was acceptable as the standard pronunciation in the city. Which is another big shift because it is not anymore, right? Usually if you ask people they will say that African American English or Yat slash Brooklyn sounding English is what’s authentically New Orleans. So we have this dialect that we know exists. It may have been considered the standard at one point it definitely is not now. We’re pretty confident that it’s socioeconomically it’s the highly educated, richer populations in the city that speak it, but no one has really established what it is. Kind of going off anecdotal evidence, we had people label different areas of the city on a map task and very consistently, the uptown and Garden District areas by both black and white speakers are being labeled pretty equally as Southern and proper. So that kind of clued us in to right so I am a sociophonetician. My focus is the phonetics of these different dialects. So that’s the angle I’m working on. I created the diff– I created the socio linguistic interview with the different careful and casual prompts, focusing on both general southern features, read the different monophthongs that you get out of the diphthongs. Some aspects of the Southern vowel shift the pin pen merger, is a big– is a big part of that that we’re focusing on. Other southern features like the r-lessness and I’m also including older southern features that you get in areas like Charleston, and somewhat in Savannah, things like the wwh distinction, where you get weather but whether two pronunciations of horse which is very hard for me to do, so, H O R S E is harse, and H O A R S E is horse.
Megan Figueroa
Interesting.
Lisa Sprowls
Traditionally in some of these older dialects, so I’m targeting some of these older features these traditional new almost what’s considered standard southern right along a lot of the features of the southern vowel shift but then I’m also including on my list of features to look at these Yat features. Right? So, the th stopping the coil curl issue, the split short a system to try to see what is showing up amongst these upper class speakers. So in the research that I’ve done so far, during the phonetic analysis, I’m pretty sure that if we put these people into a verbal guise with other general southern areas, people would just identify these upper class New Orleans as speaking a southern English.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
All the speakers that I’ve talked to so far have very high levels of r-lessness. It’s higher than what I’ve seen in the previous research I’ve done on a Yat.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So it seems to be a retention amongst the social class that is receding in the other classes in the city. That wwh distinction, all of the speakers that I’ve talked to have that the two versions of horse, a lot of speakers have that and then some unexpected futures that I wasn’t even sure… a distinction in h where H I M and H Y M N are not pronounced the same. They’re not both him.
Carrie Gillon
Oh.
Lisa Sprowls
There’s like a hh there’s this odd voicing happening on the h, so that there are a minimal pair.
Carrie Gillon
Well, which one’s which?
Lisa Sprowls
So H I M is him and then H Y M N there’s a different voice– it’s like hhymn. There’s almost like a pre-voicing going on with a little bit of that? Some other standard southern features: The i amount of dyphthongization is very high amongst the group that I’m looking at some other southern features, which doesn’t get talked a lot about with southern English is the replacement of word final E with an E [short e] or a schwa. So happe for happy is happening a lot. I even had a participant who’s last– whose first name ended with an E, and he doesn’t pronounce it. Right, even though that is considered the more standard way of pronouncing the name, he substitutes the shwa in his own name.
Megan Figueroa
That’s cool.
Carrie Gillon
Wow.
Lisa Sprowls
So if we just stop there, it does just seem like it’s the southern features. The split short a system is showing up. The th shopping is not with the speakers and I’m looking– my current age range of speakers is between 20 and 95.
Megan Figueroa
Oh, wow.
Carrie Gillon
That’s amazing.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, none of them really have the th stopping that we’re getting in the Yat and the African American English. But that split short a that’s showing up in the Yat system is showing up to a lesser degree it seems to only be before nasal sounds, so map and mad are the same but me-an for man so it seems to be a little more restricted in this group.
Megan Figueroa
And- and a short a system is not something that we find in southern English?
Lisa Sprowls
No, it’s not considered a feature of southern English that is- it is very largely stereotyped as a New York City feature and to an extent a Midwestern feature but on specific words like be-ag.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah. Okay.
Carrie Gillon
Is that because– because of the velar?
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, so that is it’s somewhat different, that velar raising. So we do see it more isolated in the Midwest, but yeah, the- the stereotypical association has never been with the South for a feature like this. But to me what’s a little more interesting, so if we take it to the more socio element of socio phonetic is the speakers are largely rejecting a Southerner association with their own speech.
Megan Figueroa
Are they getting reasons for this or?
Lisa Sprowls
Ye-ep. New Orleanians are very opinionated. It’s been– I would say it’s both– it’s- it’s a blessing to study in New Orleans because people are always going to resp– you never know what they’re gonna say. But they’re usually always gonna give you a reason. There’s a few different things where the most recent person I talked to kept making this distinction of at first you saying no, I don’t sound southern. But then he was saying, Okay, if I do sound southern I sound high southern.
Megan Figueroa
Ooh.
Lisa Sprowls
That’s not a terminology that I really come across as being a standard thing to talk about. He explained it to me he’s like, Well, he was like, high southerners plantation south. That’s upper class south. So, right? So there’s a class element coming in here. With, what is Southern, if they are Southern, were the upper class South I had another respondent who is he was one of my older ones. He’s 96, I believe. You know, I avoid asking people directly Are you southern? Because that’s, you know, it’s a blunt priming effect, but I asked him, Is there Southern English in New Orleans is New Orleans Southern? Going along with the other respondent who said that if it is it’s high Southern. He said no. He said southern is solid of the earth people. He said southern is what you get when you go to the farms outside of New Orleans. So there is there’s this trend coming through that there’s an in compatibility but between being upper class and being southern.
Megan Figueroa
Wow.
Lisa Sprowls
Even if the phonetic evidence that I’m getting from these interviews is that on paper, they are very noticeably southern in their speech that doesn’t match the perception that they have of themselves. Working class white and black speakers in the city have the perception that they are Southern, as we saw in the maps that they labeled, right? Right Garden Districts: Southern. Uptown: Southern. Near the universities: proper and southern. But the actual people that live in these areas are rejecting this association. So apart from the class difference, they also tend to differentiate geographic space within the South? So I had a respondent tell me that she went to Arkansas and Tennessee with her family when she was younger. This would have been in like the 1950s. And she said they sounded like yokels. They sounded like yokels and that she couldn’t understand what they were saying. The same respondent who told me that if he’s Southern, he’s high southern said that people always mimic his dialect. But he said that when he hears it– it sounds like they’re mimicking like a coal miner from like Kentucky or Tennessee, which the association I’m getting from being a linguist and also right, I’m originally from Pittsburgh. So I’m from Northern Appalachia, is that with the states they’re identifying they’re also kind of pinpointing the Appalachian south as being very markedly different than the south near New Orleans. If they are southern, they are definitely the upper class Southern and they are definitely not Appalachian southern.
Carrie Gillon
We talked to Paul Reed about Appalachia English and yeah. It’s the most southern of the Southern.
Lisa Sprowls
Yes.
Carrie Gillon
Is what we discovered so yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Right. So these- these people are performing a lil– They’re- they’re committing a little linguistic discrimination.
Lisa Sprowls
Yes. Of course.
Megan Figueroa
Just a little, yeah.
Carrie Gillon
We all do, so…
Megan Figueroa
Just sprinkle it on there.
Lisa Sprowls
So not only with- with Southern and with class, but when race comes into the conversation with these Garden District speakers, there’s what I’m currently referring to as an othering of black New Orleans. It is at its core linguistic discrimination. But there’s the question of do these speakers actually see that that’s what it is. Right to them. It may be that they’re saying something benign, that what they’re saying may just be an observation about race, when it actually comes off as being pretty discriminatory in what they’re saying. So I had a participant who, you know, spent all of his formative years in the Garden District area of the city, went to the private schools in the area and told me that, you know, when he was in school, he was surprised to learn that the black kids across town could read and write too. Right so just the geographic space in the city did not overlap, right for black and white for him. And it was almost like a shock that they could do the same things.
Carrie Gillon
It’s brutal.
Megan Figueroa
It’s brutal. Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
But you know, it didn’t- It was just a casual thing for him to say, right. He kind of said it with a little laugh, and I don’t- it wasn’t in a mean way.
Megan Figueroa
And he was older and older.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, he was an older speaker. Yeah. So to him, it was just a recollection- recollection from his youth. I don’t think that there was anything in his mind negative associated with it. Right. But linguistic discrimination is something that, you know, people honestly may not be aware that they’re doing or they’re likely not going to admit.
Megan Figueroa
Right, right.
Lisa Sprowls
They’re not going to admit that they’re taking part in that.
Carrie Gillon
If they’re conscious of their discrimination of this at this level, they kind of push it aside, or they aren’t conscious of it at all. They just think it’s a normal thing to say like they just it’s never occurred to them, that what they’re saying is actually– says something bad about themselves. Because they wouldn’t say it- I don’t think they would say it if they knew that.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. So if I can shift for a minute and talk about another study we did that we can talk about these- the discrimination coming into play. Around the same time we did the verbal guise, we did a map labeling task, and it was during the spring of 2016. Spring is carnival. So we went to different parades and we went to parade on Mardi Gras day. And while people were waiting for the parades to come through, we would approach different people and ask them if they wanted to fill out a map. So we asked people to label distinct speech areas of the city or where they thought people sounded differently than they did. We had 88 people that responded about 50% of them were white 38% were black 12 identified other as kind of the case with map tasks. A lot of people will just leave them blank. A lot of people only labeled one area and they labeled Chalmette right outside of the city and they labeled it as Yat. Really no further delineation of their thoughts on class or race. But in labeling it Yat, it does kind of indicate that they’re saying this is a white area, but there’s really nothing inherently negative about that label. So here’s an example of some descriptions we got on a map labeled by a white speaker. They circled five areas. They circled Aerobie and Chalmette and St. Bernard Parish, and just labeled it as Yat they circled the Garden District and put soft r’s almost like saying that the Garden District is r-less. So those three- those are three white areas really nothing discriminatory coming out in that but then they circle in an area of the city called Central City, which is almost an exclusively black neighborhood they labeled it as ghetto. And then they circled the Ninth Ward and wrote Ebonics.
Carrie Gillon
Oh my god.
Lisa Sprowls
Yes.
Megan Figueroa
Oh.
Carrie Gillon
Okay, so obviously, both of those labels are problematic, but like the fact that they’re distinguishing between them too? Is there anything there like why are they making a distinction?
Lisa Sprowls
That is a good question. I would guess off the labeling that in their head ghetto is less proper than whatever they think Ebonics is.
Carrie Gillon
Oh okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
Central City overall is– it’s one of more dangerous areas of the city. So that may come into play there. Right but it is overwhelmingly black just like the Ninth Ward is but Yeah, the question of why is the Ninth Ward just Ebonics, which is offensive in and of itself.
Carrie Gillon
Yes, yes, yes.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
But then to shift to something as extreme as ghetto.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
For another black area, or other things like so I live in an area the city called Gentilly, which is predominantly black. Another map circle Gentilly and just wrote dumb on it.
Megan Figueroa
No!
Carrie Gillon
Oh my God.
Lisa Sprowls
Yes. The same map, the only other area they circled was the Ninth Ward and it said ignorant but they wrote it in like I dialect and wrote ignant. So a further level of offense apart from just calling these people ignorant to try to mimic it and the way they think people talk in that area.
Carrie Gillon
Oh my god.
Megan Figueroa
That’s horrifying.
Carrie Gillon
I should not be shocked. I should not be shocked, but I still am a little.
Lisa Sprowls
Right and just how openly people are willing to label these and be like, yeah, you can like you can identify me by name. Here’s my offensive map. And I’m like, Thank you.
Carrie Gillon
Wow.
Megan Figueroa
Wow.
Lisa Sprowls
But if you look at the general trends, apart from just some of the specific maps of the different areas that people labeled, the trend was for white speakers to label white neighborhoods, and for black speakers to label black areas. So the overall trend was to just honestly to identify the areas that you’d know. But then if we shift to identifying the areas you don’t know, that’s when the white respondents came in with these discriminatory judgments of the black areas.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
The ghetto and the Ebonics. Interestingly, a lot of black respondents just told us that everyone in the city speaks the same. One white speaker said that, but it was much more common amongst the black speakers to say everyone in the city speaks the same.
Carrie Gillon
That’s interesting.
Lisa Sprowls
And then if we look at some of these specific areas, right, so we made heat maps of these different labels, uptown, which again, is the Garden District, the most commonly label amongst white speakers was standard and the most common label amongst black speakers was proper. Pretty similar in the association of what this is, Lakeview which is another upper class area, the– one of the most common words for both races was proper. So we’re getting with these white neighborhoods, both races are giving a pretty neutral or even what could be considered a positive association of how people talk in these areas. But if we look at some of the black neighborhoods, so again, the Ninth Ward, the most common label from black speakers was Black English. Ebonics was the most common from a white speaker. Right? So if you can call something African American English or Black English, you’re making a conscious choice to then call it Ebonics instead.
Megan Figueroa
Right.
Carrie Gillon
Oh, yeah.
Lisa Sprowls
It’s a very conscious choice to do that. And then we have New Orleans East, which is another block area, black respondents tend to call it blue collar or just black. Two of the most common response- responses from white labels was lack of education and ghetto.
Carrie Gillon
I should not be so shocked but again, it’s just like horrifying.
Lisa Sprowls
Right, so I said before, right, it’s a blessing to do research in New Orleans. It’s- it’s also very discouraging at times.
Megan Figueroa
Right. I mean, it’s- it almost seems like it’s hopeless, like, Oh, that feels so hopeless.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah.
Carrie Gillon
But, but it also feels like this microcosm of what’s going on in the United States right now. Right. Like…
Megan Figueroa
That’s what I mean, that’s why I feel so hope–
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, yes. I mean, yes, it is hopeless a bit. Well, you could interpret it that way. But I think like, seeing the reality of like, how shitty white people can be is important.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, no, yeah. Sure.
Lisa Sprowls
The new complication we’re getting with that, right. So more of just the cultural is, New Orleans has taken down a lot of Confederate– I don’t even want to call them monuments because it’s rough– but monuments, right. So they’ve taken down a lot of them. And that has led to– it’s not even people really in New Orleans that are upset about this, but we’re getting a lot of protesters coming in from other areas of Louisiana and other areas of the South that now all of a sudden want to claim New Orleans as being very southern.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah. Whereas before they ignored it.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah. So a good thing– the label I go with is Nick Spitzer, who’s an anthropologist and city once told me that New Orleans is south of the south and north of the Caribbean.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, that- that’s a good description.
Lisa Sprowls
Right. So it’s never really culturally or linguistically really been considered part of the South. But then when people want to take away any of those southern relics, they want to claim it as the south they want it to be the south again.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Yep.
Lisa Sprowls
Right. So there we are getting a little bit of that resurgence in the city right now. It’s so unclear if there’s really an effect on the language of the culture in the city right now.
Carrie Gillon
You might expect that the white speakers would want to disambiguate themselves even more from Black Speakers. That’s what I would predict kind of like so in our music episode, we were talking about how different genres are associated with you know, different varieties of American English and this- the country music is becoming really r-full because it’s like really, really white.
Lisa Sprowls
I mean, that would be super interesting to look at in New Orleans because, you know, New Orleans has its own right even within hip hop and rap are largely associated with New Orleans but there’s a New Orleans specific genre right bounce music is very specifically New Orleans, right. [music starts]
Carrie Gillon
We tried to get Big Freedia on the show. It didn’t work, but maybe we’ll try again.
Lisa Sprowls
That would have been fascinating. Very, very nice person.
Carrie Gillon
Yes.
Lisa Sprowls
But right even within the music in New Orleans, right, the language is showing through right so call and response in rap music largely comes from bounce music, which comes from New Orleans, that call and response likely comes from either the Mardi Gras Indians or the fact that New Orleans was such an African city when it was founded.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
Right. So the language is coming through and music in New Orleans as well. Right?
Carrie Gillon
Yeah. Oh, yeah, we could do a whole nother show just on that stuff. And I would love that maybe maybe we will at some point.
Megan Figueroa
What would upper class African Americans say they speak?
Lisa Sprowls
I myself haven’t done too much with African American English in the city. From some of the stuff I’ve read and some of the researchers I’ve talked to, there is a little bit of a trend amongst the upper class African American speakers in the city to trend a little more towards a standard English, right. So it doesn’t really trend towards southern as the upper class white English does a little more towards standard.
Carrie Gillon
That’s interesting. It kind of makes sense that that might be the case. It’d be interesting to see.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, the class distinctions amongst the black population in the city has not been studied to the extent that it really deserves.
Carrie Gillon
Right.
Lisa Sprowls
So what I’m working on right now is really the one of the first really like class based associations. A lot of the previous work on Yat is inherently class based as well, but it bleeds a little more into a race based analysis. While the Garden District English lends itself a little more to a class association.
Carrie Gillon
So do you have like a last message for our listeners? A takeaway?
Lisa Sprowls
A takeaway… you know, without trying to like wax poetic or anything, New Orleans really is unlike any other culture or linguistic area that I’ve encountered, right, there’s just something that– it is just uniquely New Orleans and I would say people should experience it and maybe my really last takeaway is that if you are going to visit, you’re going to study that please never pronounce it New Orleans [long e]. New Orleans is only for Louie Armstrong when he’s singing. We don’t call it that. [music starts]
Carrie Gillon
That’s a good one. I like that. Okay, well, thanks again. That was awesome.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Carrie Gillon
Of course. Yeah.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah, absolutely. I would say my takeaway from this is just that you have to go visit for sure. Like everything you’re saying to me, I was like, just like thinking about my time there and how wonderful it was.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah, I want to go back. We were supposed to be there this weekend. But anyway.
Lisa Sprowls
Yeah, the weather’s really not that nice right now. So. You’re not.
Megan Figueroa
No, it’s.
Carrie Gillon
Yeah. It’s not that great here either. I try.
Megan Figueroa
Yeah. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you.
Lisa Sprowls
This one specific weekend, New Orleans is just terrible. You don’t- you don’t want to visit.
Carrie Gillon
Alright, fair enough.
Megan Figueroa
Okay, well, thank you so much, Lisa.
Lisa Sprowls
Thank you.
Carrie Gillon
And don’t forget, don’t be an asshole.
Megan Figueroa
Don’t be an asshole. Bye.
Carrie Gillon
The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by Chris Ayers for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
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