Collaborative Research: The Chicagoland Language Project

美国的各个地区都有自己独特的语言方言。然而，最近在五大湖周围地区的研究表明，随着新的语言规范的出现，地区特有的口音正在消失。在语言学中，地方化的声音变化改变方向的过程需要对发生这种变化的地方的历史变化的理解，以及对个体说话者对正在发生变化的特征的意识、评价和意识形态的检查。本研究详细分析了与移民历史、当前和过去的种族动态相关的社会历史进程如何影响该地区主要城市中心芝加哥的语言变化传播。除了促进对美国这一重要地区的语言、文化和历史的理解以及推进有关语言变化的理论之外，该项目还提供了培训代表性不足的学生进行科学研究的机会，并建立了一个公开可用的口述历史数据库，突出了重要的社区问题。研究人员将收集来自芝加哥三个社区的终身社区成员的人种志访谈，对数据进行声学分析，并通过一系列感知实验实验评估特定地点相关语言特征的社会评价。这些数据和分析将深入了解芝加哥声音变化逆转的现状，更广泛地说，声音变化如何以及为什么在社区内和社区内传播。这项工作的结果直接说明了当前关于声音变化的本质以及美国英语当前和未来发展轨迹的争论。该项目创建了芝加哥语言语料库，可供其他学者进行更广泛的分析，也将导致美国社会语言学研究的长期进步。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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Regions of the United States have been shown to have their own distinct language dialects. However, recent research in the region around the Great Lakes has shown movement away from a regionally specific accent, with new linguistic norms emerging. In linguistics, the processes through which regionalized sound changes alter course requires an understanding of historical changes in places where such changes occur, as well as an examination of individual speakers’ awareness, evaluations, and ideologies about the features undergoing change. This study engages in a detailed analysis of how sociohistorical processes, relating to migration histories and current and past racial dynamics, affect the spread of language change in Chicago, a major urban center in this region. In addition to advancing the understanding of language, culture, and history in this important region of the U.S. and advancing theories regarding language change, this project provides opportunities to train underrepresented students in conducting scientific research and produces a publicly-available database of oral histories highlighting important community issues.The investigators will collect ethnographic interviews from lifelong community members in three neighborhoods of Chicago, perform acoustic analyses of the data, and experimentally assess social evaluations of specific place-linked linguistic features through a series of perception experiments. These data and analyses will provide insight into the current status of sound change reversals in Chicago and, more generally, how and why sound changes propagate across and within communities. The outcomes of this work speak directly to current debates about the nature of sound change and the current and future trajectory of American English. The project’s creation of a Chicago speech corpus, accessible to other scholars for broader analyses, will also lead to long term advances in sociolinguistic research in the U.S.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.