Neighborhoods, Speech Patterns, and Schooling

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案要求资助启动一项研究计划，以了解不同社区的语言模式如何和为什么不同，以及语言对弱势儿童学业成绩的影响。语言是社会建构的，所以邻里环境可能对方言的使用有一定的影响，比如美国黑人白话英语（AAVE）。先前的研究表明，使用AAVE与学业成绩呈负相关，如果AAVE使阅读和写作标准美国英语（SAE）变得更加困难，或者因为使用AAVE可能会引起教师的歧视，就会出现这种情况。我们已经组建了一个由领先的经济学家和社会语言学家组成的团队，通过利用独特的新语音数据来解决这些问题，这些数据是通过使用可比较的语音测量收集的，这些数据是hud资助的移动机会（MTO）随机流动性实验的一部分，也是主要人口研究的一部分，1997年全国青年纵向调查队列（NLSY97）。我们请求为以下主要目的提供资金：转录来自MTO和NLSY97的语音样本，通过听者对说话者种族的感知对语音进行分类，以及语言分析，包括语音、形态句法、语音和声学特征的测量；2. 记录全国NLSY97样本中存在的跨社区语言差异的数量，并确定这种差异有多少是由家庭背景造成的；3. 利用MTO的实验设计，估计邻里环境对我国一些最弱势少数民族儿童语言模式的因果影响；4. 使用NLSY97来确定在国家语言分布中MTO青年的位置，作为理解语言影响程度和MTO结果的普遍性的一种方式；5. 利用MTO儿童基线年龄的变化来确定语言对环境条件的敏感性如何随年龄变化（这一直是社会语言学领域的一个主要问题）；6. 确定男性和女性青年的语言模式对社区社会环境的反应是否不同，正如社会语言学研究表明的那样，这反过来可能解释先前MTO研究中发现的MTO对青年影响的性别差异；7. 在MTO和NLSY97数据中估计言语与上学结果之间的非实验关联，以及言语是否介导邻里对上学的影响；8. 创建用于二次分析的MTO和NLSY97数据集的版本。成功地解决这些目标将产生新的证据，证明语言在不同社区之间是如何以及为什么会发生变化的，以及这种语言变化对学校教育结果的潜在影响，也将有助于激励和指导未来寻求确定语言与学校教育因果关系的研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests funding to launch a research program to understand how and why speech patterns vary across neighborhoods, as well as the implications of speech for the schooling outcomes of disadvantaged children. Speech is socially constructed, and so neighborhood environments may have some effect on the use of dialects such as African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Previous research suggests use of AAVE is negatively associated with academic achievement, which could occur if AAVE makes it more difficult to read and write standard American English (SAE), or because use of AAVE may engender discrimination from teachers. We have assembled a team of leading economists and socio-linguists to address these questions by exploiting unique new speech data collected using comparable speech measures as part of the HUD-funded Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized mobility experiment, and as part of a major population study, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort (NLSY97). We request funding for the following main aims: 1. Transcribe speech samples from MTO and NLSY97, categorize speech through listener perceptions of the speaker's race, as well as linguistic analysis, which will include measurement of phonological, morphosyntactic, phonetic, and acoustic features; 2. Document the amount of across-neighborhood variation in speech that exists in the national NLSY97 sample, and determine how much of this variation is accounted for by family background; 3. Estimate the causal effects of neighborhood environments on the speech patterns of some of our nation's most disadvantaged minority children by exploiting the experimental design of MTO; 4. Use the NLSY97 to establish where in the national speech distribution MTO youth fall as a way of understanding the magnitude of speech impacts and the generalizability of the MTO results; 5. Exploit variation in MTO children's age at baseline to determine how the sensitivity of speech to environmental conditions varies by age (which has been a major question in the socio-linguistics field); 6. Determine whether the speech patterns of male and female youth respond differently to neighborhood social environments, as research in socio-linguistics suggests could be the case and which in turn could potentially explain gender differences in MTO impacts on youth found in previous MTO research; 7. Estimate non-experimentally the association between speech and schooling outcomes in the MTO and NLSY97 data, and whether speech mediates neighborhood effects on schooling; 8. Create versions of the MTO and NLSY97 datasets to be made available for secondary analysis. Successfully addressing these aims would generate new evidence about how and why speech varies across neighborhoods and the potential implications of this speech variation for schooling outcomes, and would also help motivate and guide future research that seeks to identify the causal speech-schooling link. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This proposal requests funding to launch a research program to understand how and why speech patterns vary across neighborhoods, as well as the implications of speech patterns for the schooling outcomes of children growing up in disadvantaged communities. Our research seeks to shed additional light on the out-of-school factors that contribute to disparities in schooling and related life outcomes across neighborhoods, which may help guide the design of new education and social policy interventions to remediate these disparities.