Philadelphia

The speech of Philadelphia has not attracted the kind of public awareness (outside the local area) that New York City has. Among linguists, however, Philadelphia is known for a number of intriguing speech features. Much of the city’s linguistic notoriety is due to the work of William Labov, who, with the help of his students at the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying the great diversity of Philadelphia speech over the last three decades. Indeed, it is fair to say that Philadelphia is the most richly documented and thoroughly studied speech community certainly in the U.S. and probably in the world. The discussion here presents an overview of several important aspects of the Philadelphia accent; interested readers can find much more complete accounts in the specialist literature (Labov 2001; Tucker 1944).