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Abstract
This dissertation investigates the relationship between ethnicity and place among 44 young adult Latino English speakers in the state of Georgia using a mixed-methods approach. While varieties of Latino English have been studied in traditional destination communities (TDCs) like Texas, California, or New York, where the Latino populations are multigenerational, the ethnolect is largely undocumented in new destination communities (NDCs) like the Southeastern and Midwestern regions of the US, including Georgia.
This dissertation first investigates how LE speakers construct their ethnic and place orientation identities using a discourse analysis approach. A thematic analysis of the sociolinguistic interview questions that focused on latinidad, Southernness, rootedness, and discrimination resulted in subsets of themes that aided in placing speakers along identity continua. Subsequently, speakers were grouped into the following four identity groups, which emerged from the data:(i) Southern oriented and rooted in Georgia, (i) Latino oriented and rooted in Georgia, (iii) Latino oriented and non-rooted to Georgia, and (iv) American oriented and non-rooted in Georgia.
Secondly, an acoustic analysis of two vowels investigates how LE speakers perform their “Southern” Latino identities, where the results of generalized linear mixed-effects modeling show bide glide weakening and boat backing to pattern similarly to LE speakers in other NDCs. bide glide weakening, measured by trajectory length (TL) is conditioned by gender and identity group, where male speakers have shorter TLs than their female counterparts and where groups (i) and (iv) are significantly more likely to participate in glide weakening. For boat, ethnic contact with whites and identity group best predicts F2 at 35% as a measure of backness. Here, speakers with more white ethnic contact have the most fronted boat vowel, namely those in identity groups (ii) and (iii).
The integration of these two analyses suggests that bide and boat play varying indexical roles depending upon the ethnic and place orientations ex-pressed across identity groups. I propose a framework of indexical feature matrices which function responsively and complementarily to maximize distinctions among individual speakers while allowing for intra-ethnic solidarity with the LE ethnolect. The intra-ethnic variation observed points to LE in Georgia as an emergent and vibrant ethnolect.
This dissertation first investigates how LE speakers construct their ethnic and place orientation identities using a discourse analysis approach. A thematic analysis of the sociolinguistic interview questions that focused on latinidad, Southernness, rootedness, and discrimination resulted in subsets of themes that aided in placing speakers along identity continua. Subsequently, speakers were grouped into the following four identity groups, which emerged from the data:(i) Southern oriented and rooted in Georgia, (i) Latino oriented and rooted in Georgia, (iii) Latino oriented and non-rooted to Georgia, and (iv) American oriented and non-rooted in Georgia.
Secondly, an acoustic analysis of two vowels investigates how LE speakers perform their “Southern” Latino identities, where the results of generalized linear mixed-effects modeling show bide glide weakening and boat backing to pattern similarly to LE speakers in other NDCs. bide glide weakening, measured by trajectory length (TL) is conditioned by gender and identity group, where male speakers have shorter TLs than their female counterparts and where groups (i) and (iv) are significantly more likely to participate in glide weakening. For boat, ethnic contact with whites and identity group best predicts F2 at 35% as a measure of backness. Here, speakers with more white ethnic contact have the most fronted boat vowel, namely those in identity groups (ii) and (iii).
The integration of these two analyses suggests that bide and boat play varying indexical roles depending upon the ethnic and place orientations ex-pressed across identity groups. I propose a framework of indexical feature matrices which function responsively and complementarily to maximize distinctions among individual speakers while allowing for intra-ethnic solidarity with the LE ethnolect. The intra-ethnic variation observed points to LE in Georgia as an emergent and vibrant ethnolect.