COLUMBUS, Ohio – For people living in some parts of the United States, their accent might not just indicate where they live – but also who they think they are.
In a small study in rural northwestern Ohio, researchers found that men who had a "country" identity – for example, a love of hunting and guns, pickup trucks and country music – showed different vowel patterns in their pronunciations than did their neighbors who showed more interest in pursuits like theater, golf and rock music.
"We are used to language patterns like accents being regionally based – you talk like the people who live around you," said Kathryn Campbell-Kibler , co-author of the study and associate professor of linguistics at The Ohio State University.
"But here we found that aspects of language may be tied to identity rather than just where you happen to live."
The setting of the study – Defiance County – is key.
Defiance County is in a "transition zone" between the Inland North accent, which is spoken around the lower Great Lakes including Chicago, Detroit and Toledo, and the Midland accent, which includes parts of western and southern Ohio through the Midwest. The western part of Ohio has a gradual transition while the east, with European settlement shaped by the Western Reserve, has a much sharper border.
The result is that the area is a linguistic melting pot where speakers use a mix of features from both the North and the Midland, Campbell-Kibler said. So, in this study, the researchers investigated whether two factors other than the county's location might influence accents of the residents: travel patterns and country identity.
The study, published recently in the journal American Speech , involved recorded interviews with 22 men in the county. The researchers looked specifically at five vowel patterns and how they differed based on travel patterns and country identity.
One hypothesis was that people who traveled a lot for work or other reasons might pick up accents tied to where they visit. The researchers compared those who traveled to Toledo or Michigan – firmly in the Inland North – with those who traveled to Fort Wayne, an Indiana city also in the transition zone, and those who didn't travel much.
But travel affected only one of the vowels studied, the LOT vowel, with those traveling to Toledo more likely to use the Inland North pronunciation (where "hot" may sound more like "hat"). And this finding was not very robust, Campbell-Kibler said.
Much more robust were the findings about the country identity. Through the course of the interviews, the researchers asked participants about their hobbies, music choices and vehicle choices. Each participant was given a score for whether they mentioned connections to things like hunting, fishing, gardening, 4H and livestock (country identity) or hiking, biking, golf or video games (not country.) They were also asked about their high-school identity. Those who said "rednecks" or "ag kids" were given points for a country identity while those who said "band geeks" or "nerds" were not.
The researchers also asked each participant if they felt they had more in common with someone living in Fort Wayne, the nearest city, or with someone living in a similarly rural community in Idaho. Those who scored high on country identity were much more likely to say they had more in common with a person in rural Idaho.
Findings showed that those who identified more strongly with country practices were more likely to use two vowel patterns often associated with the South or Appalachia, even though Defiance County is hundreds of miles from those regions. For example, they may pronounce "my" like "ma."
Although there was some Appalachian migration to Defiance County in the 20th century, participants didn't maintain connections to family in Appalachia or connect their country identity to roots there. Instead, they defined being country as being about what someone does — especially having gardens and livestock.
Campbell-Kibler said she suspects that the results found in this study probably would be found in other parts of the United States.
"People today are influenced not just by the people they live near, but by all they read and see on the internet and television," she said. "The way people talk can be affected by who they want to be, not just where they live."
Co-authors on the study were Martha Austen and Shontael Elward, who did the work as graduate students at Ohio State, and both now have PhDs in linguistics from the university.
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