Residential segregation and ethnolinguistic variation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.33634Keywords:
segregation, ethnolinguistic variation, housing policy, variationist sociolinguistics, United StatesAbstract
One oft-hypothesized cause of ethnolinguistic variation is residential segregation. This review article synthesizes several strands of variationist sociolinguistic research, particularly among whites and African Americans in the United States, to show that the degree of residential segregation in a space does indeed have a strong effect on patterns of ethnolinguistic variation. In highly segregated spaces, ethnic groups diverge in their use of linguistic features, while in less segregated spaces, groups converge. Meanwhile, literature on housing policy indicates that residential segregation results from state influence. That residential segregation conditions patterns of variation thus entails that housing policy plays a role in this conditioning. This suggests that housing policy constitutes indirect language policy, in contrast to explicit policies which refer to some aspect of language use (media, education, etc.). In this situation, state efforts to separate ethnic groups have an indirect impact on the appearance of ethnolinguistic variation. Further research into the interface of language policy and variationist sociolinguistics is necessary, as housing policy carries clear links to variationist sociolinguistic theory.
References
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Blake, R. and Shousterman, C. (2010) Diachrony and AAE: St. Louis, hip-hop, and sound change outside of the mainstream. Journal of English Linguistics 38: 230–247. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424210374955.
Boberg, C. (2014) Ethnic divergence in Montreal English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 59(1): 55–82. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100000153.
Eberhardt, M. (2008) The low-back merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh. American Speech 83(3): 284–311. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2008-021.
Eberhardt, M. (2012) Enregisterment of Pittsburghese and the local African American community. Language and Communication 32: 358–371. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2012.08.002.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992) Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–490. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002333.
Fix, S. (2011) ‘Dark-Skinned White Girls’: Linguistic and Ideological Variation among White Women with African American Ties in the Urban Midwest. New York: New York University Dissertation.
Fridland, V. (2003) ‘Tie, tied and tight’: The expansion of /ai/ monophthongization in African-American and European-American speech in Memphis, Tennessee. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): 279–298. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00225.
Galster, G. C. (1986) More than skin deep: The effect of housing discrimination on the extent and pattern of segregation in the U.S. In J. Goering (ed.) Housing desegregation and federal policy 119–138. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.
Goodheart, J. C. (2004) I’m No Hoosier: Evidence of the Northern Cities Shift in St. Louis, Missouri. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University MA Thesis.
Gordon, C. (2008) Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291506.
Gumperz, J. (1962/1993) Types of linguistic communities. Anthropological Linguistics 35(1): 130–142.
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Hinton, L. N. and Pollock, K. E. (2000) Regional variations in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English. World Englishes 19(1): 59–71. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-971X.00155.
Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. (1999) The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2): 173–183. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740459900202X.
Jackson, K. T. (1980) Race, ethnicity, and real estate appraisal: The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration. Journal of Urban History 6: 419–452. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/009614428000600404.
Johnstone, B. (2009) Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84(2): 157–175. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-013.
Kerswill, P. (1993) Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: The role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(1): 33–56. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.1993.tb00042.x.
Kerswill, P. and Williams, A. (2000) Creating a New Town koine: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29(1): 65–115. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500001020.
Kohn, M. (2016) (De)Segregation: The impact of de-facto and de-jure segregation on African American English in the New South. In LAVIS IV: Language Variety in the South. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.
Kohn, M., Dickens, A. and Garcia, T. (2016) A New Majority: Latinx English and the Third Vowel Shift in Liberal, Kansas. Paper presented at NWAV 45, Simon Fraser University.
Labov, W. (1966/2006) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Labov, W. (1989) Exact description of the speech community: Short a in Philadelphia. In R. Fasold and D. Schiffrin (eds) Language variation and change 3–57. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Labov, W. (1994) Principles of Linguistic Change Vol. 1 Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, W. (2014) The role of African-Americans in Philadelphia sound change. Language Variation and Change 26: 1–19. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394513000240.
Labov, W., Ash, S., and Boberg, C. (2006) The Atlas of North American English. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110167467.
Labov, W., Rosenfelder, I. and Fruehwald, J. (2013) One hundred years of sound change in Philadelphia: Linear incrementation, reversal, and reanalysis. Language 89(1): 30–65. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0015.
Lee, J. (2016) The participation of a northern New Jersey Korean American community in local and national language variation. American Speech 91(3): 327–360. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3701037.
Lee, S. (2016) Phonetic Variation in Washington, DC: Race, Neighborhood, and Gender. Washington: Georgetown University Dissertation.
Lipsitz, G. (1995) The possessive investment in Whiteness: Racialized social democracy and the ‘White’ problem in American studies. American Quarterly 47(3): 369–387. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2713291.
Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (1989) Hypersegregation in US metropolitan areas: Black and Hispanic segregation along five dimensions. Demography 26(3): 373–391. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2061599.
Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (2010) The continuing causes of segregation. In G. Bridge and S. Watson (eds) The Blackwell city reader 177–185. Oxford: Blackwell.
Massey, D. S. and Tannen, J. (2015) A research note on trends in black hypersegregation. Demography 52(3): 1025–1034. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0381-6.
Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1985) Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21(2): 339–384. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700010306.
Milroy, L. (1987) Language and social networks. New York: Wiley.
Milroy, L. and Milroy, J. (1992) Social network and social class: Toward an integrated sociolinguistic model. Language in Society 21: 1–26. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015013.
Muehlmann, S. (2014) The speech community and beyond. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, and J. Sidnell (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology 578–598. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342872.027.
Murray, T. E. (2002) Language variation and change in the urban Midwest: The case of St.
Louis, Missouri. Language Variation and Change 14: 347–361. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394502143043.
NCRC (2016) Home Mortgage Lending in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Surrounding Areas. Washington: NCRC.
Patrick, P. (2002) The Speech Community. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Language Variation and Change 573–597. Oxford: Blackwell.
Purnell, T. C. (2009) Convergence and contact in Milwaukee: Evidence from select African American and White vowel space features. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 28(4): 408–427. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09342069.
Purnell, T., Idsardi, W., and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1): 10–30. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X99018001002.
Roeder, R. V. (2010) Northern cities Mexican American English: Vowel production and perception. American Speech 85(2): 163–184. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2010-009.
Silver, C. (1996) The racial origins of zoning in American cities. In J. M. Thomas and M. Ritzdorf (eds) Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows 23–42. Los Angeles: Sage.
van Herk, G. (2008) Fear of a Black phonology: The Northern Cities Shift as linguistic White Flight. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14(2): 157–161.
Wiese, A. (2004) Places of their own: African American suburbanization in the 20th century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226896267.001.0001.
Wirth, L. (1938) Urbanism as a way of life. The American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 1–24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/217913.
Yaeger-Dror, M. and Thomas, E. (eds) (2010) PADS 94: AAE Speakers and Local Sound Changes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Anderson, B. (2008) Migration, Accommodation, and Language Change: At the Intersection of Regional and Ethnic Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582422.
Ashton, P. J. (1984) Urbanization and the dynamic of suburban development under capitalism. In W. K. Tabb and L. Sawers (eds) Marxism and the Metropolis: New Perspectives in Urban Political Economy 54–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Becker, K. (2010) Regional Dialect Features on the Lower East Side of New York City: Sociophonetics, Ethnicity, and Identity. New York: New York University Dissertation.
Blake, R. and Shousterman, C. (2010) Diachrony and AAE: St. Louis, hip-hop, and sound change outside of the mainstream. Journal of English Linguistics 38: 230–247. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424210374955.
Boberg, C. (2014) Ethnic divergence in Montreal English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 59(1): 55–82. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100000153.
Eberhardt, M. (2008) The low-back merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh. American Speech 83(3): 284–311. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2008-021.
Eberhardt, M. (2012) Enregisterment of Pittsburghese and the local African American community. Language and Communication 32: 358–371. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2012.08.002.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992) Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–490. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.002333.
Fix, S. (2011) ‘Dark-Skinned White Girls’: Linguistic and Ideological Variation among White Women with African American Ties in the Urban Midwest. New York: New York University Dissertation.
Fridland, V. (2003) ‘Tie, tied and tight’: The expansion of /ai/ monophthongization in African-American and European-American speech in Memphis, Tennessee. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): 279–298. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00225.
Galster, G. C. (1986) More than skin deep: The effect of housing discrimination on the extent and pattern of segregation in the U.S. In J. Goering (ed.) Housing desegregation and federal policy 119–138. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.
Goodheart, J. C. (2004) I’m No Hoosier: Evidence of the Northern Cities Shift in St. Louis, Missouri. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University MA Thesis.
Gordon, C. (2008) Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291506.
Gumperz, J. (1962/1993) Types of linguistic communities. Anthropological Linguistics 35(1): 130–142.
Hall-Lew, L. (2010) Ethnicity and sociolinguistic variation in San Francisco. Language and Linguistics Compass 4(7): 458–472. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00207.x.
Hinton, L. N. and Pollock, K. E. (2000) Regional variations in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English. World Englishes 19(1): 59–71. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-971X.00155.
Holmes, J. and Meyerhoff, M. (1999) The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2): 173–183. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740459900202X.
Jackson, K. T. (1980) Race, ethnicity, and real estate appraisal: The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration. Journal of Urban History 6: 419–452. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/009614428000600404.
Johnstone, B. (2009) Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84(2): 157–175. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-013.
Kerswill, P. (1993) Rural dialect speakers in an urban speech community: The role of dialect contact in defining a sociolinguistic concept. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(1): 33–56. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.1993.tb00042.x.
Kerswill, P. and Williams, A. (2000) Creating a New Town koine: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29(1): 65–115. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500001020.
Kohn, M. (2016) (De)Segregation: The impact of de-facto and de-jure segregation on African American English in the New South. In LAVIS IV: Language Variety in the South. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.
Kohn, M., Dickens, A. and Garcia, T. (2016) A New Majority: Latinx English and the Third Vowel Shift in Liberal, Kansas. Paper presented at NWAV 45, Simon Fraser University.
Labov, W. (1966/2006) The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Labov, W. (1989) Exact description of the speech community: Short a in Philadelphia. In R. Fasold and D. Schiffrin (eds) Language variation and change 3–57. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Labov, W. (1994) Principles of Linguistic Change Vol. 1 Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, W. (2014) The role of African-Americans in Philadelphia sound change. Language Variation and Change 26: 1–19. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394513000240.
Labov, W., Ash, S., and Boberg, C. (2006) The Atlas of North American English. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110167467.
Labov, W., Rosenfelder, I. and Fruehwald, J. (2013) One hundred years of sound change in Philadelphia: Linear incrementation, reversal, and reanalysis. Language 89(1): 30–65. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0015.
Lee, J. (2016) The participation of a northern New Jersey Korean American community in local and national language variation. American Speech 91(3): 327–360. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3701037.
Lee, S. (2016) Phonetic Variation in Washington, DC: Race, Neighborhood, and Gender. Washington: Georgetown University Dissertation.
Lipsitz, G. (1995) The possessive investment in Whiteness: Racialized social democracy and the ‘White’ problem in American studies. American Quarterly 47(3): 369–387. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2713291.
Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (1989) Hypersegregation in US metropolitan areas: Black and Hispanic segregation along five dimensions. Demography 26(3): 373–391. Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2061599.
Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (2010) The continuing causes of segregation. In G. Bridge and S. Watson (eds) The Blackwell city reader 177–185. Oxford: Blackwell.
Massey, D. S. and Tannen, J. (2015) A research note on trends in black hypersegregation. Demography 52(3): 1025–1034. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0381-6.
Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1985) Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21(2): 339–384. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700010306.
Milroy, L. (1987) Language and social networks. New York: Wiley.
Milroy, L. and Milroy, J. (1992) Social network and social class: Toward an integrated sociolinguistic model. Language in Society 21: 1–26. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015013.
Muehlmann, S. (2014) The speech community and beyond. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, and J. Sidnell (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology 578–598. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342872.027.
Murray, T. E. (2002) Language variation and change in the urban Midwest: The case of St.
Louis, Missouri. Language Variation and Change 14: 347–361. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394502143043.
NCRC (2016) Home Mortgage Lending in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Surrounding Areas. Washington: NCRC.
Patrick, P. (2002) The Speech Community. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Language Variation and Change 573–597. Oxford: Blackwell.
Purnell, T. C. (2009) Convergence and contact in Milwaukee: Evidence from select African American and White vowel space features. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 28(4): 408–427. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09342069.
Purnell, T., Idsardi, W., and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1): 10–30. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X99018001002.
Roeder, R. V. (2010) Northern cities Mexican American English: Vowel production and perception. American Speech 85(2): 163–184. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2010-009.
Silver, C. (1996) The racial origins of zoning in American cities. In J. M. Thomas and M. Ritzdorf (eds) Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows 23–42. Los Angeles: Sage.
van Herk, G. (2008) Fear of a Black phonology: The Northern Cities Shift as linguistic White Flight. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14(2): 157–161.
Wiese, A. (2004) Places of their own: African American suburbanization in the 20th century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226896267.001.0001.
Wirth, L. (1938) Urbanism as a way of life. The American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 1–24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/217913.
Yaeger-Dror, M. and Thomas, E. (eds) (2010) PADS 94: AAE Speakers and Local Sound Changes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Published
2019-05-02
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How to Cite
Duncan, D. (2019). Residential segregation and ethnolinguistic variation. Sociolinguistic Studies, 12(3-4), 481-501. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.33634
