Illustration from Texas Monthly, June 2003
Research by UTSA professors, students featured in Texas Monthly
(June 17, 2003)--According to research by a group at UTSA, the Texas accent is as popular as it ever has been, and may even be more popular than in the past when James Dean addressed Elizabeth Taylor in "Giant" saying, "Yew shore do look purty, Miss Leslie."
In an article by Texas Monthly writer Pamela Colloff, UTSA linguists Jan Tillery, Guy Bailey and two of their students are widely quoted regarding their research on the Texas accent. The accent appears to be spreading across all socioeconomic groups and particularly outside of the largest urban areas and among people thirty and younger.
Tillery, an associate professor of English, and Bailey, linguistics professor and UTSA provost and executive vice president, are conducting fieldwork for a study called the National Geographic Survey of Texas Dialects, which examines how Texans speak.
"Our research is ongoing and we hope to find out why the Texas accent actually seems to be growing in use," said Tillery. "It seems more and more Texans are holding on to their heritage through language."
So far, their research has indentified the monophthongal (or flat "i") as the key component of a Texas accent. This flattened vowel is the sound that makes "night" sound like "naht."
As part of the study's research, two of the professors' graduate students in linguistics, Amanda Aguilar and Brooke Ehrhardt, recorded conversations at Ella's Barber and Beauty Salon in Helotes, a community near the UTSA 1604 Campus. Three generations of women work at the parlor, and the students scrutinized the ladies' use of certain words and phrases.
Similar research is ongoing throughout the state as part of the National Geographic study.
Read more about the Texas accent in a Web-only story at Texas Monthly.
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2003