A general survey of Massachusetts speakers in 2003 found that most people hear and pronounce the words LOT and THOUGHT the same; this is what we call a merger. Rhyming LOT and THOUGHT is common in Eastern New England English (Labov, et al., 2006; Kim et al. 2019). However, AAL speakers tend to pronounce these words differently (using an “aw” sound for the vowel in THOUGHT), even in dialect regions which historically rhyme LOT and THOUGHT (Jones, 2020). Black speakers in Boston were also found to not rhyme LOT and THOUGHT (Browne & Stanford, 2018).

Given the prior findings, we would expect our sample of Black Bostonian speakers to pronounce LOT and THOUGHT differently. However, 58.33% of our speakers actually show the merger (they rhyme LOT and THOUGHT). Meanwhile, only 1.19% of our respondents don’t rhyme LOT and THOUGHT). This surprising result highlights the diversity within and among regional varieties of AAL.

- Browne & Stanford (2018:23)
- Harvard Dialect Survey (2003: Massachusetts Results)
- Jones (2020:165, 225)
- Kim et al. (2019:168)
- Labov, et al. (2006)