Urban/suburban contact as stylized social practice

Duncan, D

doi:10.1075/silv.27.03dun

Urban/suburban contact as stylized social practice

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Daniel Duncan ORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by John Benjamins, 2021.

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Abstract

This study highlights the importance of urban/suburban contact to linguistic variation. I explore two case studies of intra-metropolitan contact and their effect on variation in the English of Greater St. Louis, USA. Data comes from 14 white women born 1971–1991 from outer-ring suburbs in St. Charles County who differ in their length of commute, and twelve white women born 1935–1952 from the City of St. Louis who differ in whether they moved to suburbs in adulthood. The results suggest that in contact situations, the city and suburb accommodate to one another: commuting towards the city yields more ʻcity-likeʼ speech, while moving away from the city yields more ʻsuburb-likeʼ speech. However, identity mediates these contact situations through stylized social practice.