The Linguistic State of Hockey: Minnesotan English and an Emerging Hockey-Based Persona

In this talk, I present an analysis of acoustic data taken from sociolinguistic interviews conducted with 20 American-born professional ice hockey players to establish if their speech has been significantly influenced by either Canadian English (CanE) or Minnesotan English (MinnE). Those familiar with hockey are keenly aware of the historical importance of Canada to the sport’s identity. More recently, however, Minnesota has designated itself the “State of Hockey” due to the overabundance of American-born players who call the state home. To assess the impact of Canadian and or Minnesotan influences on the players’ speech, I evaluate the adoption of vowel variants commonly attested in both dialects which are often absent in other American dialects, with special attention paid to Canadian raising, raising of the tongue in tight and house before voiceless consonants, and the more monophthongal status of bait and boat. The results demonstrate that the players produce variants which are often inexplicable based on their regional dialects alone and are more consistent with MinnE variants than CanE variants. Utilizing the framework of indexicality, I argue that the presence of these variants suggests that they have gained indexical value tied to playing the sport. MinnE provides variants which can gain hockey-based indexes that are not necessarily co-indexed with CanE, allowing American-born players the opportunity to construct a uniquely American persona in a historically Canadian sport.

Presenter

Dr. Andrew Bray, Visiting Assistant,  Professor Linguistics Department, Carleton College