Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Firm-Level Analysis of the Occupational Effects on Southern U.S. English

社会语言学家传统上发现职业和语言变量之间存在很强的相关性。一些方法基于这样的假设，即职业效应是由说话者在不同职业中的不同社会需求和目标引起的。然而，这一观点从未在单个工作场所使用大规模定量数据进行过调查。目前的研究是对一家公司内不同职业的说话者使用的六个南方元音进行分析。目前的研究将解决：1)所需的工作技能是否与南方特征相关；2)个人在工作中与在休闲环境中操纵的特征；3)工作场所中语言歧视的经历。这项工作调查了在一家技术公司工作的工人使用南方特征，提供了职业和语言特征之间关系的更细致的画面。个人可能表现出基于不同工作技能的语言分组，说明工作场所在将个人分类到总体中所见的组中的作用。加上来自休闲、工作和面试环境的文体数据，这项研究可以更准确地指出发言者在工作场合避免使用的南方特征。最后，讲话者对工作场所语言歧视经历的叙述将突出南方讲话者在工作中可能面临的社会后果。这项研究将进一步加深我们对工作场所中语言歧视如何运作的理解，并将具体确定南方元音转移的哪些特征受到最大程度的污名。语言歧视的具体经历将有助于使人们认识到语言在促进潜意识歧视行为方面的重要性，从而允许直接解决这些问题的公共政策。直接证据表明，使用被污名化的方言与负面的社会后果有关，这将为使用非标准方言的工人提供法律保护奠定基础。

Sociolinguists have traditionally found strong correlations between occupation and linguistic variables. Some approaches rest on the assumption that occupational effects arise from the differential social needs and goals that speakers have in different occupations. However, this perspective has never been investigated using large-scale, quantitative data within a single workplace. The current study is an analysis of the use of six Southern vowels by speakers in a range of occupations within a single firm. The current study will address: 1) whether required job skills correlate with Southern features 2) which features individuals manipulate on the job versus in casual settings 3) experiences of linguistic discrimination within the workplace. This work investigates the use of Southern features among workers at a single technology firm, providing a more nuanced picture of the relationship between occupation and linguistic features. Individuals may show linguistic grouping based on different job skills illustrating the role of the workplace in sorting individuals into the groups seen in the aggregate. With the addition of stylistic data from casual, work, and interview settings, this study can more accurately pinpoint which Southern features speakers avoid for workplace situations. Lastly, speakers' recounting of experiences of linguistic discrimination within the workplace will highlight the social consequences that Southern speakers may face on the job. This study will further our understanding of how linguistic discrimination operates within the workplace, and it will specifically identify which features of the Southern Vowel Shift receive the greatest degree of stigma. The specific experiences of linguistic discrimination will help to bring awareness to the importance of language in promoting subconscious discriminatory practices, allowing for public policy that directly addresses these issues. Direct evidence tying the use of stigmatized dialect features with negative social outcomes will provide the foundation for legal protections for workers who speak with non-standard dialects.