Old and New Ethnic Dialect Configuration in the American South

在国家科学基金会的支持下，沃尔特·沃尔夫勒姆博士和埃里克·托马斯博士将对美国南部两种不同语言环境下的语言变化进行为期三年的研究。一个涉及一种已经存在了几个世纪的孤立的语言变体，另一个涉及一种与最近的移民群体有关的新语言变体的形成。第一项研究集中在北卡罗来纳州的奥克拉科克岛，这里是独特的英语方言传统的发源地。在过去的十年中，一个广泛的正式和非正式的方言意识计划已经在奥克拉科克建立，这是语言学家有史以来最集中和最持续的努力之一，旨在向一个小的语言社区介绍其语言遗产。这项研究旨在解决语言意识项目对语言变化的作用，包括濒临消亡的方言是否可以复兴的问题。第二项研究的重点是在中大西洋南部与最近出现的新的城市和农村西班牙裔社区，在南大西洋国家最近最引人注目的人口变化之一的英语的初期品种。这一阶段的研究旨在解决如何形成新的民族方言的问题，通过检查早期阶段的西班牙裔英语在不同的区域情况下，在北卡罗来纳州。将在每个地点进行基于人种学的实地考察，包括一系列社会语言学访谈。为了研究奥克拉科克的语言变化，将重新采访十多年前采访过的受试者，并采访新一代的青少年和青少年，以比较真实的和表观时间的语言变化。在新兴的西班牙裔社区居民的采访将代表农村和城市的接触情况与英美和非洲裔美国人的语言社区，以确定这些新兴的西班牙裔品种的地方方言的影响。这些研究旨在促进我们对语言接触、语言变化和新方言形成的基本原则的理解，有助于公众理解美国社会的语言多样性，并为与语言差异状况相关的国家语言争议提供重要视角。有关双语和民族语言多样性的全国性辩论表明，必须了解语言变异在社会中的作用。迫切需要对教育工作者、决策者和公众进行关于语言差异与文化和种族关系的正规和非正规教育。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Walt Wolfram and Dr. Erik Thomas will conduct three years of research on language change in two distinct language situations in the American South. One involves an isolated language variety that has existed for several centuries and one involves the formation of a new language variety associated with a recent immigrant group. The first study focuses on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, the home of a unique English dialect tradition. During the last decade, an extensive formal and informal dialect awareness program has been instituted on Ocracoke in one of the most concentrated and sustained efforts ever undertaken by linguists to inform a small speech community about its language heritage. The study seeks to address the role of language awareness programs on language change, including the question of whether dying dialects can be revitalized. The second study focuses on an incipient variety of English in the Mid-Atlantic South related to the recent emergence of new urban and rural Hispanic communities, one of the most dramatic recent demographic changes in the South Atlantic states. This phase of the study seeks to address the question of how new ethnic dialects are formed by examining the early stages of Hispanic English in different regional situations in North Carolina. Ethnographically based fieldwork will be conducted in each site, including a series of sociolinguistic interviews. For the study of language change in Ocracoke, subjects interviewed more than a decade ago will be re-interviewed and the new generation of adolescents and teenagers will be interviewed to compare language change in real and apparent time. Interviews with residents in emergent Hispanic communities will represent both rural and urban contact situations with Anglo American and African American speech communities to determine the effect of local dialects on these emergent Hispanic varieties. These studies seek to advance our understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie language contact, language change, and new dialect formation.This research will contribute to the public understanding of language diversity in American society and offer an important perspective on national language controversies associated with the status of language differences. National debates related to bilingualism and to ethnic language varieties indicate the essential need to understand the role of language variation in society. There is an urgent need for formal and informal education about the relation of language differences to culture and ethnicity--for educators, policy makers, and the general public.