Surveying Oklahoma Perceptual Dialectology Map Labels

This study investigates Oklahomans’ attitudes towards English language varieties in their own state. It combines the methods of perceptual dialectology, by looking at the labels that respondents used in a typical map-drawing task, with those of a content-analysis on post-task interviews. Examination of the map-drawing data told us that there were three distinct areas in this group of respondents’ mental maps, namely the “southeast” part, the “western” part, and the “southern” part of Oklahoma. By using content analysis on the immediate follow-up map drawing discussion, the three areas in respondents’ mental maps and their dialectological profile were reconstructed. The current study also looked into how such common dialectological labels as “southern”, “country”, “drawl” and “twang”, were used to describe the English variation in Oklahoma by the target group of respondents.