Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Variation and Change in the Geographies of Suburbs

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

More than 50% of Americans live in suburban areas. However, linguists studying language variation and change typically treat cities and suburbs as a uniform metropolitan area. This project takes the position that if we do not understand patterns of language variation and change in suburbs -- whether along geographical, demographic, or ideological lines -- we do not understand patterns of variation and change in the US. It seeks to build on previous sociolinguistic work both in suburbs and larger urban areas, with a research question of how language use and language change in suburban areas relates to patterns found in cities. This project uses the St. Louis metropolitan area, a site well-known for its extensive suburbanization and White flight, as a case study. Eighty-four participants, twenty-eight each from a neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, a suburb that developed in the 1930s, and a suburb that developed through urban sprawl in the 1970-1980s, will complete a questionnaire and engage in a sociolinguistic interview, including a word list and reading passage. Acoustic analysis of several vowels obtained in the interview and elicitations will be used alongside the questionnaire data to ascertain linguistic patterns in suburbs. This project brings the sociolinguistic literature into conversation with current approaches to metropolitan areas in other fields. Additionally, it contributes to understanding the role that federal and local housing policy have played in patterns of suburbanization and residential segregation. The US has only recently begun to grapple with the impacts of these policies (see, for example, the 2014 protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri), and this project extends research on their impacts to the linguistic and cultural realms.