A Sociolinguistic Baseline for English in Appalachia

阿巴拉契亚地区的英语虽然是美国最广为人知的语言之一，但却鲜有受到实证性的学术关注。在过去的八年里，柯克·哈森博士和西弗吉尼亚方言项目的同事们对阿巴拉契亚人进行了151次访谈。从这个主题库中创建了西弗吉尼亚阿巴拉契亚英语语料库(WVCEA)。这个语料库由67名说话者组成，按年龄、性别和地区进行平衡，将被用来制定阿巴拉契亚地区英语的社会语言学基线。整个项目的主要目标是对西弗吉尼亚州的英语进行定量的社会语言学分析，以确定其现状，包括它的地区从属关系、它的相对白话化程度、它的社会语言学划分以及当前的变化方向。这项提议的另一个目标是在西弗吉尼亚州发展一个更明确的地区性英语协会。西弗吉尼亚州原住民认为，西弗吉尼亚州北部的语言与南部地区的语言有很大不同，南部地区的语言更符合南方的语言变体。要探索这些说法，需要坚实的社会语言学证据基础。该项目通过促进大学生的发现和理解，将研究和教育结合在一起，同时通过方言意识项目促进普通公众和K-12学校教师更好的语言意识。这项研究将有助于公众了解美国社会的语言多样性，特别是阿巴拉契亚地区在美国社会中的作用。

English in Appalachia has received little empirical scholarly attention, despite being one of the United State's most widely-recognized vernaculars. Over the last eight years, Dr. Kirk Hazen and associates of the West Virginia Dialect Project have conducted 151 interviews with native Appalachians. From this subject pool the West Virginia Corpus of English in Appalachia (WVCEA) was created. This corpus of 67 speakers balanced by age, sex, and region will be used to develop a sociolinguistic baseline for English in Appalachia. The primary goal for the overall project is to conduct quantitative sociolinguistic analysis on English in West Virginia to determine its current status, including its regional affiliations, its relative degree of vernacularity, its sociolinguistic divisions, and current directions of change. Another goal of this proposal is to develop a clearer regional association for English in West Virginia. Native West Virginians consider the language in the northern half of West Virginia to be far different from language in the southern region, which is aligned more with Southern varieties. A solid foundation of sociolinguistic evidence is needed to explore these claims. This project integrates research and education by advancing discovery and understanding for university students while at the same time promoting better language awareness for the general public and teachers in K-12 schools through Dialect Awareness Programs. This research will contribute to the public understanding of language diversity in American society, especially the role of Appalachia within that society.