Doctoral Dissertation Research: Changing Language Ideologies

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。语言意识形态，或被认为是理所当然的语言信仰体系，往往隐含在话语中。什么是“标准语言”、“正确”或“合适”是当前时代和社会力量的产物，但也可能受到质疑。本论文项目研究了个人和社区组织中关于性别标签、代词和其他被理解为对不同身份群体具有重要影响的语言实践的语言意识形态。它考察了个人如何复制和挑战在美国广泛流传的语言意识形态。本研究包括对社区组织进行为期一年的参与者观察，并对选定数量的访谈进行分析。这些方法使研究人员能够确定社区成员合理化语言选择的策略，包括诉诸语言意识形态。此外，该项目还分析了Twitter数据的语料库，以便深入了解本地讨论与在社交媒体上广泛传播的讨论之间的关系。这个项目产生的语言描述揭示了个人如何通过他们的语言选择来协商他们的身份，他们如何理解这些选择，以及新的语言实践如何塑造和被更广泛的文化变革所塑造。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知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Language ideologies, or taken-for-granted systems of belief about language, are often implicit in discourse. What is considered "standard language", "correct" or "appropriate" is a product of the current time and societal forces at work, yet can also be contested. This dissertation project examines language ideologies among individuals and community organizations regarding gender labels, pronouns, and other linguistic practices that are understood as having important implications for different identity groups. It examines how individuals both reproduce and challenge broadly circulating ideologies about language in the United States. This study consists of a year of participant-observation among community organizations along with the analysis of a select number of interviews. These methods allow the investigators to identify community members' strategies of rationalizing language choices, including appeals to language ideologies. Additionally, this project analyzes a corpus of Twitter data in order to offer insight on how local discussions relate to those that circulate broadly on social media. The linguistic description that results from this project sheds light on how individuals negotiate their identities through their language choices, how they make sense of these choices, and how novel language practices may shape and become shaped by broader cultural 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.