A Sociolinguistic Baseline for English in Appalachia

尽管英语是美国最广泛认可的方言之一，但阿巴拉契亚地区的英语却很少受到实证学者的关注。在过去的八年里，Kirk Hazen博士和西弗吉尼亚方言项目的同事们对当地的阿巴拉契亚人进行了151次采访。从这个主题池中创建了西弗吉尼亚阿巴拉契亚英语语料库（WVCEA）。该语料库由67名按年龄、性别和地区平衡的发言者组成，将用于开发阿巴拉契亚地区英语的社会语言学基线。整个项目的主要目标是对西弗吉尼亚州的英语进行定量的社会语言学分析，以确定其现状，包括其区域隶属关系，其相对白话化程度，其社会语言学分支以及当前的变化方向。该提案的另一个目标是在西弗吉尼亚州建立一个更清晰的区域性英语协会。当地的西弗吉尼亚人认为，西弗吉尼亚北部的语言与南部地区的语言大不相同，南部地区的语言与南部的语言更接近。探索这些主张需要社会语言学证据的坚实基础。该项目将研究和教育结合起来，促进大学生的发现和理解，同时通过方言意识项目提高公众和K-12学校教师的语言意识。这项研究将有助于公众理解美国社会的语言多样性，特别是阿巴拉契亚在美国社会中的作用。

English in Appalachia has received little empirical scholarly attention, despite being one of the United State's most widely-recognized vernaculars. Over the last eight years, Dr. Kirk Hazen and associates of the West Virginia Dialect Project have conducted 151 interviews with native Appalachians. From this subject pool the West Virginia Corpus of English in Appalachia (WVCEA) was created. This corpus of 67 speakers balanced by age, sex, and region will be used to develop a sociolinguistic baseline for English in Appalachia. The primary goal for the overall project is to conduct quantitative sociolinguistic analysis on English in West Virginia to determine its current status, including its regional affiliations, its relative degree of vernacularity, its sociolinguistic divisions, and current directions of change. Another goal of this proposal is to develop a clearer regional association for English in West Virginia. Native West Virginians consider the language in the northern half of West Virginia to be far different from language in the southern region, which is aligned more with Southern varieties. A solid foundation of sociolinguistic evidence is needed to explore these claims. This project integrates research and education by advancing discovery and understanding for university students while at the same time promoting better language awareness for the general public and teachers in K-12 schools through Dialect Awareness Programs. This research will contribute to the public understanding of language diversity in American society, especially the role of Appalachia within that society.