Collaborative Research: Language Change, Dialect Awareness, and Place Identity in Pittsburgh

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With National Science Foundation support, Professors Barbara Johnstone of Carnegie Mellon University and Scott F. Kiesling of the University of Pittsburgh will study the dialect of western Pennsylvania and the roles it plays in local life. The region is differentiated from some other dialect areas in its close association of regional identity with what is locally known as "Pittsburghese," features of which appear frequently in vernacular dictionaries and on postcards and t-shirts. The Pittsburgh Speech and Society Project (PSSP) seeks to understand the relationship between local identity and the path of change in the dialect by exploring the social conditions under which dialect awareness arises and spreads, and the linguistic consequences of that awareness. It is hypothesized that dialect features that Pittsburghers identify with being a "true" Pittsburgher will pattern differently from those that Pittsburghers do not use to symbolize local identity. NSF-funding will be used for the third in a series of sociolinguistic/ethnographic neighborhood studies documenting local speech, dialect awareness, and place identity in three contrasting Pittsburgh-area neighborhoods, and for a community-of-practice study involving intensive participant observation, recording, and playback and perception procedures. As the first large-scale study of urban speech in the trans-Appalachiannortheast to focus on pronunciation as well as words and structures, thisproject will make an important contribution to the study of regional andsocial variation in American speech. The primary theoretical outcome of theproject will be a deeper understanding of the processes by which awarenessof regional and social dialects arises and spreads, and of the roles of suchawareness in language change. Because language is so important toPittsburgh's local identity, local archivists, scholars, designers, andothers have been recruited in the attempt to legitimize local speech as arecognized aspect of local heritage and local cultural distinctiveness. Thiswork includes the archiving of interview data for historic preservation andscholarship, workshops and lectures for community organizations, the designand publication of a website for the general public, and consultation witheducators and media outlets.