Our digital historical archive of Texas speech recordings contains over 1,000 interviews with Texans, collected since the 1930s. In a podcast from August 2020, Tina Tobey Mack presents the archive.
TELL is the recipient of a sub-award ($38,000) as part of a larger project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation entitled "Language as a complex adaptive system" (summary). The TELL team will produce time-aligned transcripts of digitized audio recordings of Texas English speech.
I am a regular guest on Austin's NPR station KUT 90.5 for a monthly segment called "Texan Translation". In it, host David Brown and I listen to the voices of prominent Texans and discuss what makes their speech styles unique. All the episodes that we've done so far are collected on this page.
The Texas English Linguistics Lab studies different varieties of English in Texas. We are particularly interested in finding out what 'Texas English' is with respect to different ages and ethnic groups, and how it is changing. We are currently conducting fieldwork among Austin-born speakers of Texas English. Here is some of our research:
Lars Hinrichs, Axel Bohmann and Erica Brozovsky. "Vowel Power: Local Accents and Stylistic Versatility in the 2014 Race for Texas Governor." Linguistics Research Blog, 10 October 2014.
Lars Hinrichs, Axel Bohmann & Kyle Gorman. 2013. "Real-time trends in the Texas English vowel system: F2 trajectory in GOOSE as an index of a variety’s ongoing delocalization." Rice Working Papers in Linguistics 4(1). 1–19.
Kimberly Dahl, Jennifer Lang, and Shawn Warner. 2008. "Bilingualism in Bayside." Short documentary video (link)
Patrick Schultz and Arturo Nevarez. 2010. "Latino English in Austin, TX." Short documentary video (link)
A lot more info about TELL is available at www.texasenglish.org.
"Okay, What's the Right Way to Pronounce Mueller?" Interview with Kate McGee, Morning Edition on KUT, 19 February 2016 (link)
"Hillary Clinton and her Amazing, Evolving Southern Accent." Texas Standard on KUT Radio, 06 August 2015 (link)
"Who Sounds More Texan: Greg Abbott or Wendy Davis?" KUT 90.5, 27 October 2014 (link)
"Texas Twang," segment on Good Day Austin, Fox 7 Austin TV, 19 February 2013 (link)
"University of Texas Researchers Say Lone Star Twang is Fading." Dallas Morning News, 25 September 2012 (link)
"Do you speak Texan?" Know Magazine, University of Texas at Austin, 05 May 2012 (link)
"Are Texans losing their distinctive twang?" Seattle Times, 11 February 2012.
"Is the Texas twang history?" Austin American Statesman, 28 January 2012.
"Texas twang: Does Perry sound like Bush?" Star-Telegram, 20 June 2011.