BRIDGET L. ANDERSON is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA. Her research investigates the social and phonological meaning of fine-grained acoustic phonetic detail present in the everyday speech that people use to situate themselves in social worlds. It addresses the theoretical concern of the relationship between internal (i.e. phonological) tendencies, such as coarticulation, and external (i.e. social/ideological) constraints on language change. The overarching goal of her research is to model how the speech signal provides social/ideological as well as linguistic information and to determine the mechanisms by which acoustic cues carry different social/ideological information over time, space, socially meaningful groups, and for individuals.

• List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Empirical and Theoretical Background The Sociolinguistic and Demographic Context for the Study The Pilot Study Acoustic Analysis of /e/ and /ae/ for 5 Appalachian White Women, 5 African American Women, and 5 Northern White Women Field Techniques and Acoustic Methods The High and Lower-High Back Vowels The Patterning of /ai/ The Local and Supra-local Contexts for the Patterns of Usage Conclusions and Implications References Index