PI Annette D’Onofrio and graduate students Amelia Stecker and Jaime Benheim present collaborative research projects at NWAV 47 (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) on October 18-21, 2018 at New York University. Check out the following abstracts, and feel free to reach to ask for a copy of the slides or for more information!
Contextualizing reversal: Sociohistorical dynamics and the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago neighborhood
Despite Chicago’s status as the largest urban center in the Inland North, recent dynamics of the region’s Northern Cities Vowel Shift have remained relatively understudied in this city. This study examines the vowel systems of 40 speakers from one Chicago neighborhood area. Results reveal a reversal of the NCS in apparent time, paralleling findings in other NCS locales. However, while results indicate a robust community-wide trend, not all speakers engage with the shift in the same way. Through a qualitative examination of individual speakers’ vowel spaces, we find that shifting demographics and ideological concerns across the neighborhood’s history help explain which community members are likely to use NCS-shifted vowels at different points in apparent time. More broadly, we suggest that reversals of local sound changes are not always indicators of increased supralocal orientation or contact, but instead can be driven by shifts in what it means to index local identity.
The social meaning of stylistic variability: Sociophonetic (in)variance in presidential candidates’ campaign rallies
While work on sociolinguistic style has shown that speakers use packages of linguistic features to project personae, less commonly examined are the ways that an individual’s overall variability or consistency in the use of features across contexts can construct a socially-meaningful image. This study explores how two well-studied variables — ING and t-release — are recruited by three presidential candidates in campaign rallies. We quantify the variability a given candidate shows in deploying these features across eight campaign rallies in different locations. Differences emerged in the degree and nature of variance a given candidate exhibited in the use of these features across rally locales and topics discussed. We argue that the degree of linguistic variability a candidate exhibits across speech events can itself contribute to an ideological public image of flexibility or consistency, suggesting that the amount of variability a speaker exhibits across contexts is itself a dimension of sociolinguistic style.
Comments