Contextualizing reversal: Local dynamics of the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago community

Annette D'Onofrio; Jaime Benheim

doi:10.1111/josl.12398

Contextualizing reversal: Local dynamics of the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago community

Annette D'Onofrio^*, Jaime Benheim

^*Corresponding author for this work

Linguistics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper examines the apparent time evolution of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift among 42 White speakers in one Chicago community. We analyse quantitative patterns of community-wide vocalic change alongside individual speakers’ lived experiences and attitudes. We find that some features of the Shift are dramatically reversing at the community level, and that changing demographics and social concerns across the community’s history condition which speakers are likely to advance or reverse the Shift. Although some have argued that regionalized sound change reversals reflect speakers’ increasing extra-local orientations, in this community, we suggest that reversal reflects shifting definitions of racialized localness, including younger speakers’ orientation away from particular emblematic local personae that have become linked with the Shift. We argue that sound changes must be understood in their evolving local contexts, as they can be driven by shifts in the social meanings attached to place-linked features and in definitions of localness.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	469-491
Number of pages	23
Journal	Journal of Sociolinguistics
Volume	24
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12398
State	Published - Sep 1 2020

Funding

We would like to thank Sharese King and Teresa Pratt for helpful comments on this work, as well as Erez Levon, Monica Heller, Barbara Johnstone, and an anonymous reviewer for feedback that greatly improved this article. We are very grateful to our undergraduate research assistants, especially Emily Thayer, Ryan Wagner, Rita Hirami, Krysten Jackson, Elizabeth Dunn, and Grace Sunken, for their work on various stages of the project?s data collection processes. We are grateful to Northwestern?s Sociogroup, Phonatics members, Linguistic Anthropology community, and the audience at the 2018 New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference for feedback at earlier stages of the project. Finally, we are most thankful to our participants for sharing their stories and voices with us.

Keywords

Northern Cities Shift
personae
place
race
sociohistorical context
sound change

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics
Sociology and Political Science
Philosophy
Linguistics and Language
History and Philosophy of Science

Access to Document

10.1111/josl.12398

Cite this

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title = "Contextualizing reversal: Local dynamics of the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago community",

abstract = "This paper examines the apparent time evolution of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift among 42 White speakers in one Chicago community. We analyse quantitative patterns of community-wide vocalic change alongside individual speakers{\textquoteright} lived experiences and attitudes. We find that some features of the Shift are dramatically reversing at the community level, and that changing demographics and social concerns across the community{\textquoteright}s history condition which speakers are likely to advance or reverse the Shift. Although some have argued that regionalized sound change reversals reflect speakers{\textquoteright} increasing extra-local orientations, in this community, we suggest that reversal reflects shifting definitions of racialized localness, including younger speakers{\textquoteright} orientation away from particular emblematic local personae that have become linked with the Shift. We argue that sound changes must be understood in their evolving local contexts, as they can be driven by shifts in the social meanings attached to place-linked features and in definitions of localness.",

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Contextualizing reversal: Local dynamics of the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago community

Abstract

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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