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At present little is known about regional variations in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Regional variation in AAVE allows for a closer examination of the convergence‐divergence controversy. Researchers are still in disagreement on whether AAVE is converging to white speech or diverging away from white vernaculars. In addition, speakers of AAVE who have more contact with whites have been observed to assimilate toward such speech and have less of a change in their lexicons and phonologies (Ash and Myhill, 1986). These findings have implications for the dialects of African Americans residing in the midwest region where communities are less segregated. The present study investigated AAVE dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee – specifically, productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. Results showed that AAVE speakers from Davenport produced vocalic and postvocalic /r/ in all contexts, in sharp contrast to AAVE speakers from Memphis who showed a consistent pattern of variation in /r/ usage according to phonetic context. The implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.
Hinton et al. (Wed,) studied this question.