Doctoral Dissertation Research: Variation and marginalization in rural California: What it means to be NorCal Country

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

California is often portrayed as a sunny land of liberalism, urbanity, and opulence, but much of the state is conservative, rural, and poor. There is a strong "country" ethos in California's rural communities that has been bolstered by the in-migration of Southern and Midwestern ranchers, farmers, and timber-fallers during the Gold Rush, Great Depression, and post-WWII timber boom. These laborers also introduced dialect features to rural California that conflict with the state's (inter)national image. Since language variation is one tool people use to express and embody ideology, the dialect of California's coastal cities is heard as iconic of urban ease and fun, while these Southern and Midwestern features evoke all things "country". The continuing marginalization of rural California (and rural communities everywhere) seems to elevate rural-urban differences in ideology and speech into a highly charged, supralocal opposition; city and country people compete to shape California and the country according to their own "authentically American" values. Thus, under the direction of Drs. Penelope Eckert and John Rickford, Katherine Geenberg's dissertation aims to study how "country" dialect features are used stylistically in one rural Northern California community: Trinity County. Studying not only who uses these country features, but how and when people use them, will provide a window into the relation between language, lifestyle, and ideology. The analysis also aims to uncover how local social divisions connect to larger, national divisions. Geenberg will live in Trinity County for three months to complete an ethnography, including 60-100 interviews with a diverse sample of local residents. The dissertation will create a publicly-available corpus of interviews with rural, white and Native American Californians, which will fill a need for cataloguing dialects in the West. But Geenberg also hopes these data will raise awareness about the marginalization of American rurality, and help her and others better understand how people's politics arise from everyday experiences.