The influence of higher education on local phonology

对大多数美国人来说，大学教育几乎已经成为一种必需品：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城市以外的同龄人接触。该项目将从两个方面调查这种接触的语言结果：本地学生在适应非本地同学的过程中所做的语言修改，以及学生在大学期间和毕业后将这些修改带入社区所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，那里有相当多的地方方言特征(例如：‘wooder’表示‘water’)和密歇根州的Lansing，那里的元音系统发生了根本性的变化(例如：“hud”代表“头”)，这些都没有被公众注意到。在每个城市，当地高中的一年级本科生将被当地讲者集中程度不同的机构录取：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访谈，重点关注他们的社交网络，以及他们在大学一年级的语言经历。第二年将进行第二次面试，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家庭中的年轻成员和高中朋友群体。这些录音将追溯受大学影响的费城和兰辛方言随着时间的发展。这项研究更广泛的影响是记录了语言如何影响高等教育的社会环境的成功适应，特别是对少数民族学生来说，他们的方言被认为是不标准的。在两年的项目中，语言适应和学术调整之间的关系将变得明显，并将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.