Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Change, Stylistic Resources, and Verbal Performance

个人迁移的原因多种多样，包括经济压力、自然灾害和政治冲突。在某些情况下，他们能够在驱使他们迁移的因素消退后返回家园。然而，在其他情况下，他们不能返回。逃离政治冲突并在东道国重新定居的难民代表了一个群体，他们的返回可能具有挑战性，或者最终不可能。难民在移徙后往往也缺乏可以利用的经济或社会资源，导致他们的生活充满不稳定和不确定。虽然他们可能无法获得某些资源，但语言是难民在东道国生活时可以创造性地使用的资源。这个语言学和人类学项目旨在通过研究难民如何在无数的社会背景下使用语言来了解人类如何适应长期的不稳定和不确定性：保持与家园的联系，融入东道国社会，表达他们的需求或愿望。除了提供经费培训一名人类学研究生学习经验、科学数据收集和分析方法外，该项目还将广泛传播其研究结果，并创新更有效的方法来保存与语言文献有关的历史和科学记录。此外，它将扩大在科学领域代表性不足的群体的参与，并通过国际科学合作建设能力和科学基础设施。在亚利桑那大学的Natasha Warner博士的指导下，William Cotter将探索在长期流离失所的背景下，语言、表现和身份和记忆的构建/保留之间的关系。本项目采用语言学和人类学的方法，通过对约旦首都安曼的巴勒斯坦难民进行实地调查，调查难民的语言使用情况。这是一个合适的研究背景，因为巴勒斯坦难民社区自1948年以来一直生活在约旦，而且许多人已经获得了约旦公民的正式权利。通过半结构化访谈，研究人员将首先调查这些难民所说的阿拉伯语方言是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。当个人或社区迁移并与讲不同语言或方言的人接触时，语言变化是很常见的。这些访谈的音频数据将进行统计分析，以确定他们的阿拉伯语方言如何随着时间的推移而变化。研究人员将把这部分项目的结果与这些难民在表演（如诗歌、歌曲、讲故事）中如何使用语言进行比较。考察这些表现将使研究人员了解阿拉伯方言是如何在不同的语境中使用的，以及语言的文体使用如何使难民将自己定位为巴勒斯坦社区的成员，同时又能驾驭他们与他们目前居住的国家的关系。这项研究的结果将有助于深入了解难民如何体验散居生活，以及他们如何使用语言作为工具来阐明自己在社区中的地位，并融入东道国。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Individuals migrate for a wide variety of reasons, including economic pressures, natural disasters, and political conflict. In some cases, they are able to return home after the factors which drove them to migrate have receded. However, in other cases they cannot return. Refugees who have fled political conflict and resettled in host countries represent one group for which return may be challenging, or ultimately impossible. Refugees also often lack economic or social resources that they can utilize after migrating, resulting in lives marked by precarity and uncertainty. While they may lack access to certain resources, language is a resource that refugees can creatively use as they navigate life in their host countries. This linguistic and anthropological project aims to understand how human beings adapt to long periods of precarity and uncertainty by examining how refugees use language in myriad social contexts: to maintain connections to their homes, assimilate themselves into their host societies, and articulate their needs or desires. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project would broadly disseminating its findings, and innovate more effective methods for preserving historical and scientific records related to language documentation. Further, it would broaden the participation of groups underrepresented in science, and build capacity and scientific infrastructure through international scientific cooperation. William Cotter, under the supervision of Dr. Natasha Warner of the University of Arizona, will explore the relationship between language, performance, and the construction/retention of identity and memory in contexts of long-term displacement. Using methods drawn from linguistics and anthropology, this project investigates refugee language use through field research conducted with Palestinian refugees in the Jordanian capital of Amman. This is an apt research setting both because Palestinian refugee communities have lived in Jordan since 1948 and because many have acquired formal rights as Jordanian citizens. Through semi-structured interviews, researchers will first investigate how Arabic dialects spoken by these refugees have changed over time. Language change is common when individuals or communities migrate and come into contact with speakers of different languages or dialects. The audio data from these interviews will be subjected to statistical analysis to determine how their Arabic dialects have changed over time. Researchers will compare the results from this portion of the project to how these refugees use language in the context of performance (e.g. poetry, songs, telling stories). Examining performance will allow the researchers to see how Arabic dialects are used across contexts, and how the stylistic use of language allows refugees to situate themselves as members of the Palestinian community, while simultaneously navigating their relationship to the country in which they currently live. Findings from this research will provide insight into how refugees experience life in the diaspora and how they use language as a tool to articulate their place in their communities and integrate themselves into their host country.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.