Degree of ‘Outdoorsyness’ as a Predictor of Language Variation in Central Wisconsin
Sociolinguistic research has mainly focused on urban areas, thus largely ignored language variation in rural speech communities. The present paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining language variation in one rural central Wisconsin speech community. This paper draws on sociolinguistic interviews and wordlist data from 65 native Wisconsinites who live in and in towns around Wausau, WI. The interview data was used to code the notion of ‘outdoorsyness’ by considering each individual’s profession, preferred free time activities, as well as attitudes towards living and spending time in town versus out in the country, while the wordlist data was used for formant extraction. Results show that a raised use of MOUTH indexes a local rather than a macro-social category within this speech community: the higher the degree of ‘outdoorsyness’, the more likely MOUTH was raised while a lower degree of ‘outdoorsyness’ increased the chance for a relatively lower realization.
