The Social Networks of Ethnic Minority Group Speakers in Washington State

本研究探讨了社会网络构成、种族和语言结构之间的联系。口语的使用反映了许多因素，包括对声音产生和感知的认知限制、语言社区成员和文化习俗等。本研究模拟了这些因素与参与区域声音变化或抵制变化，主流英语的双语使用以及当地语言社区使用的传统语言多样性，或民族英语的单分子使用之间的相互关系。研究地点在华盛顿州。与美国许多地方不同的是，在美国的许多地方，少数民族聚居在相对孤立的社会网络中（导致了著名的东海岸和内陆北部的少数民族飞地），太平洋西北地区长期以来一直以区域和社会流动性为特征。“社区”的概念本身很复杂，但随着非白人、流动人群在美国人口中占比越来越大，我们需要更好地理解这一概念。这项研究还使用基于实践的方法，而不是基于作业的方法来确定族群成员。北美语言科学的一般做法是主要从语言社区的多数种族群体中取样。人们的假设是，非白人说话者不参与区域声音变化，而是被嵌入到由共同的种族身份定义的单独的语言社区中。虽然这一假设部分正确，但已被证明过于简单化了。有学术研究表明，说话者使用的民族形式与其说是由种族决定的，不如说是由社会网络构成决定的。但复杂的社会模型需要更好地融入语言研究。首先，种族（Race）一直与民族（ethnicity）混为一谈。种族（身体外貌或遗传），而不是种族（文化遗产、实践和感知的隶属关系）已被用作构建研究样本的初始工具，从而导致对语言社区成员的先验确定。本项目利用社会网络测量的情感网络的局部性，同质性（基于相似性的隶属关系），网络范围，和参考网络。语言数据是从元音系统记录和语音产生的声学线索的测量中提取的，重点关注与主流方言和地方方言相关的一系列已知特征。口语数据为跨方言测试听者对细粒度的、随时间变化的声音差异的敏感性提供了刺激。结果是一个参与语言变化的模型，与太平洋西北地区的流动非白人使用者有关，有助于方言演变和种族间接触的社会语言学理论，以及听者在感知语音变化时使用社会信息。这项研究涉及华盛顿大学和传统大学的研究人员之间的合作，传统大学位于华盛顿州托佩尼什的雅卡马第一民族土地上。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。

This research investigates the linkages between social network composition, ethnicity and linguistic structure. Spoken language use reflects many factors, including cognitive constraints on production and perception of sound, speech community membership, and cultural practices, among others. This study models the interrelationships between these factors and participation in regional sound changes or resistance to change, bilectal use of mainstream English together with a heritage language variety used in the local speech community, or monolectal use of an ethnic variety of English. The study site is Washington state. Unlike many places in the United States where ethnic groups settled into small communities with relatively insular social networks (resulting in the famous ethnic enclaves of the East coast and Inland North), the Pacific Northwest has long been characterized by regional and social mobility. The notion of "community" itself is complex, but requires better understanding as non-white, mobile individuals become a larger part of the US population. This study also uses practice-based, rather than assignment-based methods for determining ethnic group membership. General practice in the language sciences in North America has been to sample primarily from majority-ethnicity groups in a speech community. The assumption taken has been that non-white speakers do not participate in regional sound changes, but are embedded in separate speech communities defined by shared ethnic identity. While partly true, this assumption has been shown to be a vast oversimplification. There is scholarship showing that speakers' use of ethnolectal forms is not predicted by race as much as by social network composition. But complex social models need to be better-integrated into linguistic research. Race has been conflated with ethnicity, for one thing. Race (physical appearance or genetic heritage), rather than ethnicity (cultural heritage, practice, and perceived affiliation) has been used as an initial tool for constructing research samples, leading to a priori determinations about speech community membership. This project utilizes social network measures of localness of affective network, homophily (similarity-based affiliation), network range, and referential network. Linguistic data are drawn from vowel system recordings and measures of the acoustic cues to phonetic production, focusing on sets of features known to be associated with mainstream as well as local dialects. Spoken data provide the stimuli for cross-dialect testing of listener sensitivity to fine-grained, time-varying differences in sound. The result is a model of participation in linguistic change relevant for mobile, non-white Pacific Northwest speakers, contributing to sociolinguistic theorization of dialect evolution and interethnic contact, as well as listeners' use of social information in the perception of phonetic variation. The study involves collaboration between researchers at the University of Washington, and Heritage University, located on Yakama First Nation lands in Toppenish, Washington.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.