Amador Fieldwork
Talking with people from Amador, there seems to be a significant stay vs leave dynamic. Some people really want to stay in the area while others want to leave; because of economic factors the aspirations of these residents does not always align with the reality of their material circumstances. These dynamics seem to arise early, and may change over a person's life. People who as teenagers want to leave may, after a few years, wish to return to the county. A common story was leaving for college, working outside Amador for a few years, and then returning to raise a family. Not adequately captured in our fieldwork was the alternative: those who want to leave and did so. At best we get people who want to leave but do not have the means to do so.
The StayLeaveDynamic likely aligns with linguistic orientation. Those more advanced in the CaliforniaVowelShift may be trying to align with the large cities where this change is likewise more advanced. Conversely, those who are not advanced in the CVS or who show significant Southern influences may be attempting to align with rurality. The association of linguistic features with localness and non-localness makes them useful tools for speakers to index their aspirations to stay or leave.
Residents also seem to have a mythos of abandonment or forgottenness. The history of the area is one of boom and bust, with the gold rush and the rise and fall of logging. The growth of California's coastal cities and their increasing influence in state politics has further led to feelings of disenfranchisement. Oral histories in the area feature significant motifs of loss but also of resilience and resistance. These feelings are not uniform across the community, and while I do not have a great sense of this opposition in the community, it may coincide with those wishing to stay and leave. Those who aspire to stay may frame their histories in terms of resilience and resistance with a focus on how they and the community have endured in the area despite the boom-bust cycles and growing political divisions in the state. Those who aspire to leave may be more likely to view the history in terms of economic loss and futile struggles against modernity. In this way perhaps the linguistic aspects of the StayLeaveDynamic are fractally recursive with regards to agrarianism, dominant folk motifs, and political ideologies.
Features which may be implicated in this dynamic: * TRAP backing as a marker of extralocal orientation * PIN-PEN merger as a marker of local orientation (Perhaps extralocal orientation to Southernness?)
How
Penny's asked good questions regarding the details of how I would carry out fieldwork and analysis. Specifically how I would operationalize the stay-leave concept but also my plan for actually performing fieldwork. I should look into the rootedness metrics that Paul Reed has used for Southern English and maybe also Betsy Sneller's questionnaires. Kate Geenberg's dissertation has some ideas on how to begin to engage in the community, and my ties with people in Amador from this recent fieldtrip may also be useful places to start.
Maps
I need to email those people about how to collect data. :done -CB