The podcast about linguistic discrimination
If you listened to our episode on Southern American English, you can read more about it below. If you haven’t listened yet, you can find it here.
What other features are there in Southern American English (SAE)? We mentioned many features of Southern American English but managed to leave out a few interesting ones. My favourite one that we skipped is double (or even triple) modals. Modals are auxiliary verbs (in English, anyway) that tell you something about likelihood, ability, permission or obligation (e.g., ‘would’ or ‘can’, etc.). In SAE you can double up on modals, unlike in most other dialects of English. So you can say “I might could go to the store”. Why might speakers use more than one modal at a time? Because they can. But also, double/triple modals might be more polite than single modals, in dialects that allow them.
If you’ve listened to our episode about swearing, here are links to the articles, books, etc. we talked about. (If you haven’t, please download it here. And if you like it, please subscribe!)
If you’ve listened to our episode about vocal fry, you might have questions about what vocal fry really is. (If you haven’t, please download it here. And if you like it, please subscribe!)
What is “phonation”? When we speak, we manipulate many parts of our mouth; this includes the larynx and vocal cords (also called vocal folds). When we use vocal fry, our larynx is compacted and the vocal cords become slack, which creates a lower frequency. When we use falsetto, our vocal cords are stretched, creating a higher frequency. More information can be found here.
