What’s the Chicagoland Language Project?
The Chicagoland Language Project is researching the diversity of language and life in the Chicago area. In our ongoing work, we are interviewing Chicagoans born and raised in various communities within and around the city. We began with Chicagoans who grew up in and/or currently live in Beverly and Morgan Park in 2017-18, and we are currently interviewing folks on the Far Northwest Side of Chicago (specifically in Jefferson Park, Norwood Park, Portage Park, Oriole Park, and Edison Park) and the Bronzeville area in 2021-2024.
Chicagoland Language Project researchers plan to visit a variety of Chicago neighborhoods, suburbs, or community areas, one at a time. We want to hear about life in Chicago in Chicagoans’ own words. In particular, we’re interested in people’s experiences in the communities they grew up and live in, and their thoughts about the rest of Chicago. And as the name of our project suggests, we’re trying to learn whether there are particularly “Chicago” ways of speaking English, whether these are changing over time, and how language is connected to people’s life experiences, histories, and perspectives in the area. To learn more about our interviews, click here.
Who are we?
We’re a team of researchers from the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, led by Professor Annette D’Onofrio, and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, led by Professor Sharese King. As linguists, we’re interested in the scientific study of language — how it’s structured, how it can vary, and how it’s used in social practice. We’re involved in the Chicagoland Language Project because we’re particularly interested in how differences in how people speak (their “accents”) correspond to what social groups they belong to, the ways they view the world, and their identities. If you’d like to learn more about us, or about the project, you can e-mail Annette at donofrio@northwestern.edu or Sharese at sharesek@uchicago.edu.
Why these neighborhoods?
We choose our neighborhood areas because we want to talk to Chicagoans from a variety of walks of life. To begin, we are focusing on Chicagoans who have lived almost all their lives in the Chicagoland area, and we’ve chosen neighborhoods that have strong community bonds, lasting generational roots, and rich histories.
As of 2022, we have been interested in learning about the experiences of native Chicagoans who grew up in and/or currently live on the Far Northwest Side (Jefferson Park, Norwood Park, Portage Park, Oriole Park, or Edison Park), or Bronzeville, especially those who are life-long residents of these neighborhoods.
In 2017 and 2018, we interviewed over 80 participants from Beverly and Morgan Park, and our collected data has resulted in academic presentations and publications on the topic of language variation and change, and how these are connected to social and historical differences among people.
What’s next for the project?
We received funding from the National Science Foundation in 2020, which allows us to expand the areas we can research, as well as the ways we can become involved in the communities. In addition to conducting interviews to learn more about life and language in these neighborhood areas, we will also be organizing and hosting public outreach events to spread the word on our linguistic findings. Stay tuned for updates!