Speech Variation in a Piedmont Community: Postvocalic r.

This article presents results of a study that was conducted to analyze the speech variation and social structure in a North Carolina Piedmont community. In this study, only one linguistic variable is considered which is the pronunciation of postvocalic "r." The sample for the study, was restricted to white residents of the community. Each of the 1,121 dwelling units normally occupied by white residents was located; a random sample of 400 units was selected from among these. The sample was evaluated by comparing respondents interviewed early (during August) to those interviewed later with respect to social and demographic characteristics and by comparing respondents to nonrespondents. It was noted that rates at which "r" was pronounced are not normally distributed about a single central value but tend to be bimodal. Moreover, such bimodality is most pronounced among the higher status residents of the community. A study of transcriber reliability shows that perception of "r" in postvocalic position, in at least one sense of the term perception, is influenced by the speech habits of transcribers as well as syllable structure.