Collaborative Research: Sociolinguistic variation in post-Katrina New Orleans

迁移和迁移对语言有什么影响？世界范围内的人口流动正处于历史最高水平，预测表明，随着时间的推移，这一数字只会增加。提高我们对人口流动的社会后果的理解可以产生更好的政策来解决其影响。地点不仅作为物理位置存在，而且作为我们头脑中关于真正的本地意味着什么的想法而存在；特别是语言是关于地点和身份的概念中的一个主要因素。新奥尔良拥有独特的历史发展和人口分布，此外还具有独特的语言实践。自2005年卡特里娜飓风以来，新奥尔良一直在经历重大的人口结构变化，这座城市有着悠久的移民历史和多样性。飓风过后的恢复进程导致当地人流离失所，外来者涌入，以及一些社会政治事态发展，加速了整个城市正在进行的士绅化进程。因此，新奥尔良非常适合在灾后背景下研究流离失所和身份认同的语言影响。这项研究是在新奥尔良进行的第一次大规模、系统的社会语言学变异研究。调查人员将对来自不同种族背景和社区出身的终身居民进行200多次访谈，以创建一个语言数据语料库，其中包括该市有史以来收集的最大、最多样化的样本。然后，他们将分析这些说话者使用当地显著的社会语言学变量(3个语音变量，10个句法变量和4个词汇变量)。研究人员将研究这些特征的使用如何与种族认同和地方归属相关。他们将根据卡特里娜飓风后的社会政治和人口结构变化来解释结果，并就这些因素如何影响语言变异和变化提出进一步的假设。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

What are the effects of displacement and migration on language? Population movement world-wide is at an all time high, and projections suggest that it will only increase over time. Improving our understanding of the social consequences of population movements can result in better policies for addressing their impacts. Places exist not just as physical locations, but as ideas in our minds about what it means to be authentically local; language in particular is a major factor in conceptions about locality and identity. New Orleans boasts a unique historic development and demographic distribution, in addition to featuring distinctive linguistic practices. A city with a long history of in-migration and diversity, since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 New Orleans has been undergoing a major demographic shift. The recovery process following the hurricane resulted in the displacement of locals, an influx of outsiders, and a number of sociopolitical developments that have accelerated ongoing processes of gentrification throughout the city. New Orleans is thus ideally situated for an examination of the linguistic effects of displacement and identity in a post-disaster context. This study represents the first large-scale, systematic study of sociolinguistic variation conducted in New Orleans. The investigators will conduct over two hundred interviews with lifelong residents of different ethnic backgrounds and neighborhood origins to create a corpus of linguistic data comprising the largest and most diverse sample ever collected in the city. They will then analyze the use of locally significant sociolinguistic variables (3 phonological, 10 syntactic, and 4 lexical) across these speakers. The researchers will examine how the use of these features correlates with ethnic identification and place affiliation. They will situate their interpretation of the results in terms of the sociopolitical and demographic shifts following Hurricane Katrina, proposing further hypotheses for how these factors influence language variation and change.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.