A Study on the Folk-Linguistic Attitudes in Eastern Massachusetts

Folk linguistics attempts to study people’s beliefs and attitudes about language through their
metalinguistic statements, usually collected in a naturalistic setting. Data was collected in a semistructured
focus group setting with 11 white, middle- and working-class participants from Eastern
Massachusetts. Participants spoke freely about linguistic topics. Participants were prompted with
questions such as, “Do people from New Hampshire talk differently?” which provided a springboard
for conversation topics. The results showed that the group focused their discussion on the speech of
politicians (former Boston Mayor Tom Menino to be exact), linguistic status markers, specific features
(r- and g-dropping, broad /a/), regions (local Massachusetts regions and Tennessee), and ethnicity
(Black and Hispanic). All topics were introduced by the participants, rather than by the researcher.