Comparing Phonetic Characteristics of African American and European American Speech

Erik R. Thomas, Elizabeth L. Coggshall

African American English (AAE) has been studied more heavily, by far, than anyother forms of American English. Nevertheless, much of the emphasis has beenplaced on morphosyntactic variants and its phonetic characteristics are poorlyknown. We examined several variables to see how AAE differs phonetically fromEuropean American English (EAE) varieties in North Carolina.Forty interviews were drawn from the North Carolina Language and Life Projectcorpus at North Carolina State University from three North Carolina counties:Hyde, Robeson, and Warren. Speakers included ten older and ten younger African Americans and ten older and ten younger European Americans, balanced among the three counties and by sex. The interviews were all conversational. Tokens were measured with the Praat software using methods appropriate to the particular variable.