Rethinking race and place: The role of persona in sound change reversal

While sociolinguists defined the regional sound changes around the linguistic behavior of White speakers, recent work has shown that racialized speakers employ local sound changes in socially meaningful ways. Advocating for an approach which places race and races place, this work views racialized speakers as authentic locals, situating their linguistic behavior in the context of their communities. Using the theoretic model of the persona, I examine how race and place are co‐constituted in Rochester, NY. Specifically, this paper examines how BAT lowering and retraction among younger speakers is led by the Mobile Black Professional, an emergent persona defined by their desire to relocate for work in a post‐industrial economy. This investigation prompts the field to reconsider the a priori exclusion of ‘ethnic’ speakers from studies of local sound change advancement and reversal.