Ron (and anyone nearby),

Don't underestimate undergrads. When I was a senior at the University of
Texas (there was only one then), as we had no field methods course in
archeology, one of our number who had taken a summer field methods class
offered to teach the rest of us, and after we surveyed and found a likely
site, we excavated it and she later (for an M.A. thesis) analyzed the data.
It turned out to have been the first systematically excavated stratified
site in the Austin area, and became an important reference point for later
professional work.

Just recently, an undergrad here at the University of Arizona, working as
a volunteer, I believe, examining details of satellite photographs of Mars,
discovered the cause of landslides on crater rims.

Even undergrads can be taught to use programs such as PRAAT on the computer
to analyze phonetic detail. The major difficulty would be in collecting
data that would reveal local differences, since Gullah speakers usually
strongly avoid using the variety with outsiders. Collecting growing-up
stories, descriptions of childhood games, procedures for activities that
most would be likely to know, or (a la Labov) stories of fear of being
killed [though this edges into tabu territory], would be most likely to
produce less-guarded natural language. Likewise, recordings of speakers
from one island could be played anonymously to speakers from another to
see if they could identify where the recorded speaker came from, and to
see if they could indicate points (without having to try to describe them)
where whatever was being said was a distinguishing marker. My guess is
that these are matters of intonation, stress, tempo, or vowel shadings
that will require a close instrumental phonetic analysis to tease out.

Likely there would not be sufficient time in a regular course to work on
this, but some places have senior honors seminars which could focus on
such analytical work, or a weekend volunteer group/club could be set up
do fieldwork and analyze data, as we did in archeology. Even better
would be to arrange credit for the weekend work, if desired, or to offer
this as a summer field methods class. I realize that the 'silo' effect
makes it difficult to collaborate across institutions, or even across
disciplines (e.g. folklore, history, earth sciences), but this might be
explored as a way of combining faculty strengths and student numbers.
There are other schools in the area that might be interested, and even
possibly NEH or NSF funding could be found. After all, part of Florida
history is that Gullah speakers escaped and found refuge among the
Spanish or Indians. It would not be amiss to combine forces with some
institution(s) in Georgia or even South Carolina (students are already
accustomed to interact with others at a distance on social media and
with Skype).

All of this said, there is still enough work for several dissertations
begging to be done.

  Rudy








Date:    Fri, 6 Jan 2012 14:20:24 -0500
From:    "Kephart, Ronald" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Gullah in need of sociophonetics

Rudy,

This has me pondering.  I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, the southern end of the
Gullah area.  I do have a colleague who has worked for many years with this
community, in several different places, and she carries students out into the
field pretty frequently.  The problem is that we have no grad students, only a
BA in anthropology.  We also have virtually no linguistics except for the intro
class I teach every semester.*  Still....  A couple of well-trained students
might could go out and record some, and bring it back for listening.  Hmmm...

Ron

*Does that make us not a real university?  I tend to think so, but that's
another thread.


On 1/5/12 10:39 PM, "Rudy Troike" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

A number of observers, lay and linguistically trained, have commented on
subtle local differences within Gullah by which natives can distinguish
speakers from different islands or even different settlements/plantations,
but which escape the impressionistic ability of the linguist to detect,
and of natives to articulate. If ever a situation cried out for the
application of sociophonetics, this would seem to be the ideal test-bed.
Several dissertations are begging to be done here.

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