“Put the Groceries Up”: Comparing Black and White Regional Variation

While recent research has found regional variation within African-American English (AAE), little work has examined this variation on a broad scale: what are the regional dialects of AAE, and how do they compare with those of European-American English? This study examines two lexicosyntactic variables, put up/put away (put the groceries up/away) and test over/test on (test over/on chapter five). Applying machine learning techniques to Twitter data, I find that while put up is a Southern feature for white speakers, black speakers favor put up in the South and Midwest as compared to the West Coast and the Northeast. These results suggest a combined South/Midwest region of AAE, supporting recent findings of Taylor Jones. In contrast, for test over, black and white speakers pattern together in a previously undocumented region comprising parts of the South and Midwest.