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4 Culture and the Lexicon The lexicon of a language tells the story of the culture of those who speak the language. Jaberg and Jud, who came to the United States to train fieldworkers for the Linguistic Atlas of the U.S. and Canada project (of which LAMSAS is a part), were proponents of a research interest focused on Wilner und Sachen, or words and things, that was rooted in the relationship between language and culture. Linguists have long realized the importance of the connection between language and culture. Schuchardt said that "Aile Genealogie mOO sich in Kulturgeschichte umsetzen" (Ail genealogy translates itself into cultural history), and Grimm noted that "Unsere Sprache ist auch unsere Geschichte" (Our language is also our history) (Wagner, forthcoming [1920]). Finally, as Johnson says in the preface to his 1755 dictionary (1979, cited in Aitchison 1991): "As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. " The present study offers a description of the vocabulary of the southeastern United States from two different eras of the twentieth century. Social, demographic, and technological changes between these two periods in time that have contributed to lexical change and variation will be described below. Cultural forces determine the strength of associations between words and particular social and regional groups. Changes in material culture, in lifestyles, and in institutions have led to losses and gains in the lexicon. The region has changed from one that was predominantly rural, with an economy based almost solely on agriculture, to one with a majority of its population in urban areas. According to Daniel 1986, in 1900 only 18 percent of Southerners lived in urban areas, compared to 40 percent of the nation as a whole. In contrast, urban residents made up 80 Culture and the Lexicon 56 percent of the Southern population in the 1990 Census. Women now participate in the workforce and other areas ofpublic life that were closed to them at the beginning of the century, and African Americans continue to struggle for a "second chance at reconstruction" (Daniel 1986). While full equality has not yet been achieved, many barriers have fallen, barriers that were imposed on all areas of society by legally mandated racial segregation. Public education was virtually unknown in the Southeast prior to this century. A revolution in transportation and communication technology has affected the daily lives of the entire population. This century has been one of unprecedented change in the world and in this part of the United States. Of all the linguistic levels, vocabulary is the most sensitive to such change since it is tied referentially to the culture. In this and other ways it differs from phonology and grammar. Certain aspects of language, such as its property of being rule-governed, are difficult to study with lexical evidence, while other features, such as its referential function, are ideally suited for analysis via the lexicon. This chapter will begin with a discussion of lexical variables as objects of study. This will be followed by an assessment of the relationship between cultural change and vocabulary change, which serves as the final part of a description of lexical change that was begun in the preceding chapter. The concluding section considers reasons for change in variation patterns by examining demographic trends. This research project was conceived as an attempt to describe patterns and change in the lexicon. The results of the analysis can now be examined in the light of varying perspectives on language change and cultural change to see which of these best fit the facts. Social and cultural situations that seem promising as plausible explanatory mechanisms for why the language has changed in the ways it has will be explored. In some cases, work by historians can be adduced to verify claims made here, though in other cases ideas are presented that will remain speculative until further research can be undertaken. The Lexicon as an Object ofStudy This study differs from most other sociolinguistic analyses by the choice of lexical items rather than phonological or grammatical features as variables. Lexical items are perceived as behaving in different ways from other levels of language, and as being less amenable to structural analysis (e.g., Kurath 1972:25). The lexicon is different in several ways. Culture and the Lexicon 81 For example, speakers can freely acquire new vocabulary throughout their lifetimes, and they may be more aware...

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