Allison Burkette | University of Kentucky (original) (raw)

Papers by Allison Burkette

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, Sep 7, 2022

Archaeologists give voice to the past through their writing, creating a series of dialogues betwe... more Archaeologists give voice to the past through their writing, creating a series of dialogues between themselves and the peoples, landscapes and artifacts of the past and also between current ideas about those pasts and how they connect or conflict with previous scholarship (Joyce 2002). Writing is the means by which archaeological knowledge is produced, shared and negotiated, which is why, as part of a wider reflexive archaeology, writing within the discipline has

Exploring Linguistic Science, 2018

American Speech, Jul 11, 2021

<jats:p>This paper discusses the linguistic, social, and geographic distribution of a-prefi... more <jats:p>This paper discusses the linguistic, social, and geographic distribution of a-prefixing data in the Linguistic Atlas Project (LAP) of North America. Over 3800 instances of the a-prefix were extracted for analysis from the LAP interview data of 1527 speakers from across the United States, collected between 1931 and 2006. While the LAP a-prefix data do not generally deviate from patterns observed in the sociolinguistic literature, they do offer a more nuanced picture of infrequent prefixed forms, including uncommon constructions and verbs that appear as a-prefixed forms less frequently. A-prefixers in LAP tended to be white men, although it should be noted that between 30-47% of the female speakers in four of the surveyed LAP projects also used this feature. The geographic distribution of the feature suggests that the a-prefix is not Southern so much as it is Eastern, with pockets of lesser and greater usage as one moves westward across the country. Additionally, this paper casts the a-prefix as a rural phenomenon, rather than as a strictly Southern one, which opens the door to discussions of the feature as a means of indexing participation in (or affinity for) a rural lifestyle. Overall, this paper demonstrates that LAP data are a tremendous resource and a key piece of the puzzle of understanding regional and social variation.</jats:p>

Crossing Borders, Making Connections

Crossing Borders, Making Connections

Translation Studies, 2016

This article offers a preliminary comparison of available data from three regional surveys of Eng... more This article offers a preliminary comparison of available data from three regional surveys of English: the Linguistic Atlas Project, the Survey of English Dialects, and the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland, taking as its focus the survey item 'kindling'. Intended as a pilot study, the following discussion highlights the benefits and challenges of combining data from these surveys. This study suggests that a comparison of atlas-style survey data would be productive and that these surveys, in addition to valuable information about variation in language, contain a great deal of cultural information. Finally, this article suggests that the 'kindling' data provide evidence of a "material effect"; in other words, the data suggest that physical surroundings have an influence on the vocabulary of different regions. keywords: language variation, linguistic atlas, language and material culture Kindling, as many readers likely know, refers to the small pieces of wood used to start a fire. The method many of us presently use to start a fire at home consists of flicking the switch that turns on a gas fireplace, though starting a fire (be it in a fireplace, an outdoor fire pit, a grill, or a campfire) is something of an art form, perhaps even one that verges on being lost. Fire-starting vocabulary, however, shows no signs of being lost; the terms kindle and tinder, for example, have been co-opted as brand names for Amazon's series of e-readers and the popular dating app, respectively. 1 In both cases, the adoption of a fire-starting moniker makes sense, given the application of the following definitions from the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED): kindle, v.1 1. With reference to a fire, flame, or flammable substance. a. trans. To start or light (a fire); to set fire to, ignite (something flammable). b. intr. To begin to burn; to catch fire; to burst into flame. 2. trans. fig. a. To arouse, give rise to, or inflame (a feeling, emotion, etc.) b. To incite, inflame, or stir up (a person, mind, thought, etc.); to make ardent or eager. [revised for the OED3 in Sept. 2016]

This paper explores the cultural and historical forces that created variation in terms for " ceme... more This paper explores the cultural and historical forces that created variation in terms for " cemetery " , including links between language and material culture, using cemetery terms found within two Linguistic Atlas data sets to demonstrate how colonial influence, cultural changes, and physical locations contribute to linguistic variation. Speakers' lexical choices in the 1930s still show the effects of the religious and social climates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Northern and southern colonial trends were still influencing regional language use several hundred years later. Furthermore, for the LANE data we find that the physical location of historic cemeteries has an effect on speakers' use of specific lexical items.

a subtle interplay between the content of explicit statements, narrative content, and the use of ... more a subtle interplay between the content of explicit statements, narrative content, and the use of grammatical features associated with Appalachian English (e.g. a-prefixing, nonstandard past tense), and the use of physical artifacts as sources of stance-taking. This article focuses on two speakers' use of (present and not-present) physical artifacts (a placemat, a Civil War era sword, a lock of hair, and a piece of wood with a bullet hole in it) to enact stances that construct individual versions of an Appalachian identity. What this analysis suggests is that it is not just linguistic choices that contribute to stance enactment, but physical objects as well. (Sociolinguistics, stancetaking, Appalachian English, material culture, language and idenity)*

Southern Journal of Linguistcs, 2013

Southern Journal of Linguistics, 2013

American Speech, Feb 2013

The present discussion takes a historical perspective in addressing the relationship between lang... more The present discussion takes a historical perspective in addressing the relationship between language change and language variation, specifically, through an examination of language variation and its connection to the historical development of physical objects. This article will examine responses elicited by the Linguistic Adas of the Middle and South Atlantic States survey for the target item 'parlor', contextualizing these responses within the history of the American parlor. Various home floorplans, including plans from the Historic American Building Survey, will be used to demonstrate how architectural and cultural changes have influenced the pool of American terms for 'parlor'. What we find is that lexical variation is very much an expression of cultural and social movements, and, by looking closely at this variation, we see how language, culture, and history are tied together.

Language in Society, Apr 2013

The present study examines two unprompted versions of the same story, related by a mother and dau... more The present study examines two unprompted versions of the same story, related by a mother and daughter in separate sociolinguistic interviews. Following a quantitative intraspeaker comparison of their use of grammatical features associated with Appalachian English within the entirety of their interviews, this study undertakes a close reading of the narratives (along with additional passages from the daughter) to demonstrate the manner in which the two women construct their identities as "mother" and as "other" through conversational narrative and the use of local dialect features. Specifically, this article addresses the use of regional grammatical variables to enact speaker stances toward mothering, focusing on two women's independent recollections of a single incident and how these narratives dialogically construct the (m)other. (Language variation, Appalachian English, stancetaking, motherhood)*

American Speech, 2011

Under consideration are two databases from the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic ... more Under consideration are two databases from the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States; one contains the responses to the 'cornbread' question, and the other the responses to the 'other bread made of cornmeal' question. Taken together, these databases offer a staggering 336 different terms used for cornbreads. The present work investigates the depth of this variation, looking first at the LAMSAS responses and then at the history of cornbread itself. A historical perspective reveals that represented by these 'cornbread' responses are different preparations, ingredients, shapes, cooking methods, cooking vessels, and varied cultural and linguistics contacts, all of which grow out of the history of cornmeal-based cooking in America. This article demonstrates how the variation found within the cornbread-related databases offers a compelling description of American lifeways and cultureways.

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, Sep 7, 2022

Archaeologists give voice to the past through their writing, creating a series of dialogues betwe... more Archaeologists give voice to the past through their writing, creating a series of dialogues between themselves and the peoples, landscapes and artifacts of the past and also between current ideas about those pasts and how they connect or conflict with previous scholarship (Joyce 2002). Writing is the means by which archaeological knowledge is produced, shared and negotiated, which is why, as part of a wider reflexive archaeology, writing within the discipline has

Exploring Linguistic Science, 2018

American Speech, Jul 11, 2021

<jats:p>This paper discusses the linguistic, social, and geographic distribution of a-prefi... more <jats:p>This paper discusses the linguistic, social, and geographic distribution of a-prefixing data in the Linguistic Atlas Project (LAP) of North America. Over 3800 instances of the a-prefix were extracted for analysis from the LAP interview data of 1527 speakers from across the United States, collected between 1931 and 2006. While the LAP a-prefix data do not generally deviate from patterns observed in the sociolinguistic literature, they do offer a more nuanced picture of infrequent prefixed forms, including uncommon constructions and verbs that appear as a-prefixed forms less frequently. A-prefixers in LAP tended to be white men, although it should be noted that between 30-47% of the female speakers in four of the surveyed LAP projects also used this feature. The geographic distribution of the feature suggests that the a-prefix is not Southern so much as it is Eastern, with pockets of lesser and greater usage as one moves westward across the country. Additionally, this paper casts the a-prefix as a rural phenomenon, rather than as a strictly Southern one, which opens the door to discussions of the feature as a means of indexing participation in (or affinity for) a rural lifestyle. Overall, this paper demonstrates that LAP data are a tremendous resource and a key piece of the puzzle of understanding regional and social variation.</jats:p>

Crossing Borders, Making Connections

Crossing Borders, Making Connections

Translation Studies, 2016

This article offers a preliminary comparison of available data from three regional surveys of Eng... more This article offers a preliminary comparison of available data from three regional surveys of English: the Linguistic Atlas Project, the Survey of English Dialects, and the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland, taking as its focus the survey item 'kindling'. Intended as a pilot study, the following discussion highlights the benefits and challenges of combining data from these surveys. This study suggests that a comparison of atlas-style survey data would be productive and that these surveys, in addition to valuable information about variation in language, contain a great deal of cultural information. Finally, this article suggests that the 'kindling' data provide evidence of a "material effect"; in other words, the data suggest that physical surroundings have an influence on the vocabulary of different regions. keywords: language variation, linguistic atlas, language and material culture Kindling, as many readers likely know, refers to the small pieces of wood used to start a fire. The method many of us presently use to start a fire at home consists of flicking the switch that turns on a gas fireplace, though starting a fire (be it in a fireplace, an outdoor fire pit, a grill, or a campfire) is something of an art form, perhaps even one that verges on being lost. Fire-starting vocabulary, however, shows no signs of being lost; the terms kindle and tinder, for example, have been co-opted as brand names for Amazon's series of e-readers and the popular dating app, respectively. 1 In both cases, the adoption of a fire-starting moniker makes sense, given the application of the following definitions from the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED): kindle, v.1 1. With reference to a fire, flame, or flammable substance. a. trans. To start or light (a fire); to set fire to, ignite (something flammable). b. intr. To begin to burn; to catch fire; to burst into flame. 2. trans. fig. a. To arouse, give rise to, or inflame (a feeling, emotion, etc.) b. To incite, inflame, or stir up (a person, mind, thought, etc.); to make ardent or eager. [revised for the OED3 in Sept. 2016]

This paper explores the cultural and historical forces that created variation in terms for " ceme... more This paper explores the cultural and historical forces that created variation in terms for " cemetery " , including links between language and material culture, using cemetery terms found within two Linguistic Atlas data sets to demonstrate how colonial influence, cultural changes, and physical locations contribute to linguistic variation. Speakers' lexical choices in the 1930s still show the effects of the religious and social climates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Northern and southern colonial trends were still influencing regional language use several hundred years later. Furthermore, for the LANE data we find that the physical location of historic cemeteries has an effect on speakers' use of specific lexical items.

a subtle interplay between the content of explicit statements, narrative content, and the use of ... more a subtle interplay between the content of explicit statements, narrative content, and the use of grammatical features associated with Appalachian English (e.g. a-prefixing, nonstandard past tense), and the use of physical artifacts as sources of stance-taking. This article focuses on two speakers' use of (present and not-present) physical artifacts (a placemat, a Civil War era sword, a lock of hair, and a piece of wood with a bullet hole in it) to enact stances that construct individual versions of an Appalachian identity. What this analysis suggests is that it is not just linguistic choices that contribute to stance enactment, but physical objects as well. (Sociolinguistics, stancetaking, Appalachian English, material culture, language and idenity)*

Southern Journal of Linguistcs, 2013

Southern Journal of Linguistics, 2013

American Speech, Feb 2013

The present discussion takes a historical perspective in addressing the relationship between lang... more The present discussion takes a historical perspective in addressing the relationship between language change and language variation, specifically, through an examination of language variation and its connection to the historical development of physical objects. This article will examine responses elicited by the Linguistic Adas of the Middle and South Atlantic States survey for the target item 'parlor', contextualizing these responses within the history of the American parlor. Various home floorplans, including plans from the Historic American Building Survey, will be used to demonstrate how architectural and cultural changes have influenced the pool of American terms for 'parlor'. What we find is that lexical variation is very much an expression of cultural and social movements, and, by looking closely at this variation, we see how language, culture, and history are tied together.

Language in Society, Apr 2013

The present study examines two unprompted versions of the same story, related by a mother and dau... more The present study examines two unprompted versions of the same story, related by a mother and daughter in separate sociolinguistic interviews. Following a quantitative intraspeaker comparison of their use of grammatical features associated with Appalachian English within the entirety of their interviews, this study undertakes a close reading of the narratives (along with additional passages from the daughter) to demonstrate the manner in which the two women construct their identities as "mother" and as "other" through conversational narrative and the use of local dialect features. Specifically, this article addresses the use of regional grammatical variables to enact speaker stances toward mothering, focusing on two women's independent recollections of a single incident and how these narratives dialogically construct the (m)other. (Language variation, Appalachian English, stancetaking, motherhood)*

American Speech, 2011

Under consideration are two databases from the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic ... more Under consideration are two databases from the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States; one contains the responses to the 'cornbread' question, and the other the responses to the 'other bread made of cornmeal' question. Taken together, these databases offer a staggering 336 different terms used for cornbreads. The present work investigates the depth of this variation, looking first at the LAMSAS responses and then at the history of cornbread itself. A historical perspective reveals that represented by these 'cornbread' responses are different preparations, ingredients, shapes, cooking methods, cooking vessels, and varied cultural and linguistics contacts, all of which grow out of the history of cornmeal-based cooking in America. This article demonstrates how the variation found within the cornbread-related databases offers a compelling description of American lifeways and cultureways.

Language and Classification, 2018

This is the introductory chapter of Burkette (Oxford).

Language and Material Culture, 2015

This book explores the scope of interdisciplinary linguistics, including voices from scholars in ... more This book explores the scope of interdisciplinary linguistics, including voices from scholars in the social sciences, humanities and different subdisciplines within linguistics. It offers perspectives on interdisciplinary studies, represents a connection between different disciplines, and demonstrates an application of interdisciplinarity within linguistics. The volume is divided into the sections perspectives, connections, and applications.