The influence of higher education on local phonology

大学教育已经成为美国大部分人口的必需品：相当于前几代人的高中文凭。因此，越来越多的学生发现自己与来自自己社区和家乡以外的同龄人接触。该项目将从两个方向调查这种接触的语言结果：当地学生适应非本地同龄人的语言修改，以及由于学生在大学期间和大学毕业后将修改带入社区而导致的当地方言的长期变化。主要目标是评估这些结果对当前语言变化模型的影响。这两个社区是宾夕法尼亚州的费城，那里有相当多的本地方言特征的意识（例如“wooder”为“water”）和密歇根州的兰辛，那里的元音系统发生了根本性的变化（例如“hud”为“head”），但公众并没有注意到。在每个城市，当地高中的一年级本科生将被招收到当地演讲者集中度不同的机构：面向全国的研究型大学、地区大学和社区学院。研究小组将使用社会语言学技术对他们进行采访，重点是他们的社交网络，以及他们在大学第一年的语言经验。第二次面试将于次年进行，以评估大学对他们当地方言特征的影响。接受采访的学生将自己学习采访技巧，他们将使用这些技巧来记录他们的家庭和高中朋友的年轻成员。这些录音将追溯大学影响的费城和兰辛方言的发展，随着时间的推移，这项研究的更广泛的影响是语言如何影响成功地适应高等教育的社会环境的文件，特别是对少数民族学生的方言被认为是非标准的特点。经过两年的项目，语言适应和学术调整之间的关系将变得明显，并应有助于了解最终决定高等教育完成率的因素。

A college education has become a near-necessity for much of the U.S. population: the equivalent of a high school diploma for earlier generations. As a result, ever greater numbers of students find themselves in contact with peers from beyond their own neighborhoods and home cities. The project will investigate the linguistic outcomes of this contact in two directions: speech modifications made by local students who have accommodated to non-local peers, and longer term changes in local dialects as a result of students bringing modifications into the community during and after college. The primary goal is to evaluate the effect of these outcomes on current models of language change.The two communities are Philadelphia, PA, where there is considerable awareness of local dialect features (e.g. 'wooder' for 'water') and Lansing, MI, where the vowel system has undergone radical changes (e.g. 'hud' for 'head') that are un-noticed by the public. In each city, first-year undergraduates from local high schools will be recruited in institutions with varying concentrations of local speakers: in nationally oriented research universities, regional universities and community colleges. They will be interviewed by the research team using sociolinguistic techniques which focus on their social networks, as well as their linguistic experience in their first college year. A second interview will take place the following year to assess the impact of college on their local dialect features. The students interviewed will themselves learn interviewing techniques, which they will use to record younger members of their families and groups of high school friends. These recordings will trace the development of the college-influenced Philadelphia and Lansing dialects over time.The broader impact of this study is the documentation of how language affects successful adjustment to the social environment of higher education, particularly for minority students whose dialects are marked by features considered non-standard. Over the two years of the project the relation between language adaptation and academic adjustment will become evident and should contribute to an understanding of the factors that ultimately determine completion rates in higher education.