Postvocalic /r/ as an Index of Integration into the BEV Speech Community

FOR SOME TIME NOW, LINGUISTS studying black English vernacular (BEV) have regarded the different varieties of this dialect as representing a post-creole continuum, with the more acrolectal forms having strong similarities to standard English and the most basilectal forms more closely resembling an earlier creole (Stewart 1967, 1968, Dillard 1972).' Although individual speakers frequently command a range of levels of this continuum, we may say that, roughly speaking, the higher an individual black is on the socioeconomic scale, the more likely he or she is to speak an acrolectal variety of BEV. This picture of the situation is universally accepted; nevertheless, individual studies of BEV have for the most part focused on one or another part of this continuum (e.g., Labov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis 1968, Spears 1982). This may be contrasted with the situation in creole studies, where the emphasis has always been on examining the continuum as a whole (e.g., Bickerton 1975, Rickford 1987). The present work, in common with research such as Labov (1987) and Bailey and Maynor (1987), is directed towards examining data from different sections of the BEV speech community in order to gain an understanding of the social and linguistic nature of this continuum. The linguistic variable examined here, deletion of postvocalic /r/, is one which shows different frequencies of application in different sections of the BEV speech community. Thirty-four subjects were chosen for study, so as to represent a range of varieties of BEV from most acroletal to most basilectal. First, I will discuss the speech community these subjects live in, Philadelphia. Then, I will report the findings of a quantitative study of /r/-deletion for these speakers. My final section discusses the implications of these results in terms of the linguistic nature of the post-creole continuum.