The participation of women of color in back vowel fronting in Portland, Oregon
This study suggests widespread fronting of both GOOSE and GOAT and confirms that Women of Color (WoC) in Portland, Oregon do participate in regional dialectology, with clear evidence of Back Vowel Fronting. This study provides evidence for the existence of GOAT fronting in Portland, Oregon. The findings of this research demonstrate the need for expanding the diversity of sampling with respect to race and ethnicity in North American dialectology. Minority or non-white speakers of English have been historically overlooked in sociolinguistic dialectology, the result of both ideological and practical choices (Chambers & Trudgill, 1980; Labov, Ash and Boberg, 2006; Labov, 1966). In this study, fourteen natives of Portland, Oregon who identified as WoC (binned into the categories Black (n = 4), Latina (n = 4), Asian American (n = 5), and Native American (n = 1)) participated in sociolinguistic interviews that included spontaneous speech, a reading passage, and a word list.
