Exploring Applications of Rootedness in Sociolinguistic Research in Southern Oregon

Abstract

The present dissertation discusses the importance of rootedness, defined as orientation towards place, and how it factors into sociolinguistic studies. Although rootedness is not a new concept in sociolinguistics, it has been infrequently operationalized to understand its role in language change. Linguists have discussed concepts similar to rootedness using other terms such as local loyalty (e.g., Ito and Preston 1998), cultural identity (e.g., Hazen 2002), regional identity (e.g., Miller 2008), and regionality index (e.g., Chambers 2000). Rootedness could be operationalized by assigning a numerical value to a person’s level of attachment to their community, based on their attitudes towards that community and plans around their future in the area. This method of quantifying rootedness is akin to the operationalization of other sociolinguistic variables such as age, socioeconomic status, gender, etc., in that it is a grouping mechanism for measuring how shared identities influence language use. Rootedness here is not a measure of how long a person has physically been in a place in contrast to Chambers (2000) and is not a measure of an individual’s interactions (e.g., Milroy 1980). Recent work has shown that rootedness is a variable that systematically correlates with speech patterns (e.g., Reed 2016). The objective of this research is to synthesize previous work in this field to develop an operationalization of rootedness for a specific study conducted in Jackson and Josephine Counties, Oregon from Fall 2017 through Spring 2018. The impetus for conducting research in this area comes from wanting to understand what the characteristics of the vowel system of a relatively rural Southern Oregon community are. This area is unique because of its location along the California-Oregon border and because of social changes due to in-migration from California and a changing agricultural industry. Because I thought traditional extralinguistic variables may not be explanatory for the region, I wanted to create a rootedness measure to investigate how attitudes towards place could potentially be expressed using language. The operationalization investigates questions such as travel, future plans in the area, and attitudes about living in the community. To demonstrate effectiveness of the operationalization, I apply it to the thirteen interview participants to determine if it differentiates people who would otherwise be grouped together or conversely groups people who would not be grouped together using traditional extralinguistic variables. The vowel system of these speakers is of particular interest in light of recent research regarding vowel systems on the West Coast (e.g., Fridland, Kendall, Evans & Wassink 2016). Using a small set of acoustic data, I explore the vowel system of the community and whether age, gender, and/or rootedness are helpful in understanding variation in the community. Given the presence of the low-back merger or near merger, BOOT fronting, BAT backing, BAN raising, and BEG raising for some speakers, it appears that the speakers are the most alike to speakers in Redding, California, located approximately 140 miles south. Some of these linguistic features are associated with California and some of them are associated with Washington state. However, like in Redding, the use of linguistic features associated with California is likely to not be speakers aligning themselves linguistically with California and/or urban California (Podesva, D’Onofrio, Van Hofwegen & Kim 2015). I found that women are leading in BAT backing. Regarding the rootedness metric conducted for this study, the inclusion of the rootedness score improved the performance of the statistical model for BAN raising, and a post hoc analysis of the rootedness score found that people who identified more neutrally towards Southern Oregon raised BEG more. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that more rural communities and borderland communities are important to study and that linguists should consider including rootedness in their study design.