Upcoming Events

The NCSU Linguistics Program sponsors an ongoing informal lecture series of "brownbag" lectures by scholars from here at NC State and around the world. Click above to view the current schedule, and for a list of lectures in semesters past. View the current Brownbag Schedule.

Recent News

March 12

Walt and Neal on The State of Things

Walt Wolfram and Neal Hutchinson were recently featured on the WUNC 91.5 radio program "The State of Things." The two talked about Core Sounders, the latest NCLLP documentary film, which is premiering this week. To listen to the complete interview, follow this link.

Posted by NCLLP

March 12

Core Sounders Premier

Core Sounders, the latest film documentary from the North Carolina Language and Life Project, is premiering this Thursday March 14th at the North Carolina Museum of History!


While the premier is already sold out, a second screening will take place on Saturday March 16th at Witherspoon Cinema

Posted by NCLLP

February 8

Walt Interviewed in The Atlantic

Walt was interviewed in The Atlantic as part of an article about politicians and dialects. Check out the article, "When Presidents Say 'Y'all': The Strange Story of Dialects in America."

Posted by NCLLP

February 7

George Higgs Tribute

We are sad to say that George Higgs, a piedmont bluesman from Princeville, NC, recently passed away. George had been featured in the NCLLP's This Side of the River as well as other films documenting North Carolina's culture and history such as The Story of North Carolina.

For more information, see a tribute to George by Drew Grimes at Myriad Media

Posted by NCLLP

February 1

Walt Featured on FOX 8 Buckley Report

Walt Wolfram was recently featured on FOX 8's Buckley Report series about changing accents throughout North Carolina. The segment also included a great deal of our favorite NCLLP film-footage. You can watch the video below, or go to MyFox8.com

Posted by NCLLP

November 30

Core Sounders Premiering this Winter

The newest NCLLP documentary Core Sounders will be featured on UNC-TV soon. Stay-tuned for news about scheduling as well as news about the upcoming screenings. Watch the trailer for Core Sounders here:

Posted by NCLLP

November 21

Breaking: Sociolinguists Specialty in the Sociology Graduate Program

The Faculty of the Graduate Program in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Faculty of the Sociolinguistics Program in the Department of English at NC State are pleased to announce the creation of a Sociolinguistics Specialty for PhD students in the Sociology Program. Students select two specialties from the current Sociology Program options, one of which may be Sociolinguistics. More information about the Ph.D. in Sociology can be found at the Sociology Graduate Program website.

If you or anyone you know is interested in applying, applications for admission for the 2013 fall semester are due January 1, 2013. Information about application can be found at the Department of Sociology & Anthropology Application site.

Posted by NCLLP

November 6

Cedars in the Pines on UNC-TV

Cedars in the Pines will be showing on UNC-TV this Thursday November 8th at 10pm. Be sure to check your local listing!

Posted by NCLLP

November 2

Footage of the NCLLP Booth at the NC State Fair

Did you miss the NCLLP booth at last month's North Carolina State Fair? Check out this footage of this year's booth:

Posted by NCLLP

October 12

NCLLP State Fair Exhibit October

The NCLLP (North Carolina Language and Life Project)will again host its exhibit on Tar Heel language and dialect at the North Carolina State Fair October 11-21, 2012. The exhibit will be once again located in the Exposition Center on the fair grounds.


The booth introduces visitors to the rich dialect and language traditions of North Carolina as part of the cultural and historical legacy of the state. The exhibit includes a variety of panels on languages and dialects, interactive monitors, and videos for visitors to learn about language variation in the Old North State.


For more details about this year's booth check out this article on the CHASS website! For more information about the NC State Fair visit ncstatefair.org. View a powerpoint slideshow with pictures and information from last year's exhibit here.

Posted by NCLLP

September 28

Robin Dodsworth Talks "Girl Talk" on WUNC 91.5

Robin Dodsworth was recently a guest on North Carolina Public Radio's WUNC 91.5 to talk about "Girl Talk," a new exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh (CAM). Along with host Frank Stasio and other guests, Robin discussed language and gender in relation to the "Girl Talk" exhibit which explores how "women, specifically girls, are perhaps the most innovative users of speech and they are heavily influential on overall language trends." Listen to the entire interview at WUNC 91.5.

Posted by NCLLP

September 27

Jeff Mielke Presents "Tools from the Phonology Laboratory"

Join us for a Brown Bag Presentation on Friday September 28 at 3pm in Caldwell G111. Jeff Mielke will present "Tools from the Phonology Laboratory":

From Jeff's abstract: "In this talk I will introduce some of the tools available to us at NCSU for studying speech and sound systems, including (1) an ultrasound machine for imaging the tongue, (2) an electroglottograph for measuring larynx activity, and (3) Presentation software and response pads for running perception and other types of experiments. I will demonstrate how these devices are operated and overview some of my recent work using them to study language, leaving time for audience participation."

Posted by NCLLP

September 19

Neal Hutcheson Honored with 2011 Brown-Hudson Folklore Award

Last year Neal Hutchenson was honored by the North Carolina Folklore Society for his an extensive body of work including "important documentaries presenting notable North Carolina folk artists, the folk speech of cultural groups in North Carolina, and the family and community contexts of regional folklife." As a 2011 recipient of the Brown-Hudson Award, which "recognizes individuals who have made significant meaningful contributions to the transmission, appreciation and observance of traditional culture and folklife in North Carolina," Neal was honored in the Fall/Winter issue of the North Carolina Folklore Journal (see page 9).

Congratulations Neal!

Posted by NCLLP

September 14

Spanish Voices Screening at Celebración September 29th

On Saturday, September 29th, from 11-4pm the Museum will host Celebración: a festival with events for all ages. You can catch music and dance performances (and learn some moves), see a cooking demonstration and sample food, view creations by local artists, learn some basic Spanish, and more. You can also see a variety of documentaries and films, the NCLLP's Spanish Voices among them.

Posted by NCLLP

September 13

NCSU Linguistics Brownbag: Cedars in the Pines Brownbag viewing

Our first Brownbag meeting of the Fall 2012 semester kicks off on Friday, September 13 at 3pm in Caldwell room G107. We will be watching Danica Cullinan's film Cedars in the Pines, a documentary that tells the story of the Lebanese community in North Carolina. This film was very well-received at early showings last spring. Screening it at our first meeting will be a great way to celebrate the official release of the film and introduce NCLLP newcomers to our tradition of public education through various media.

Posted by NCLLP

September 10

Cedars in the Pines Screening at Varsity Theater Sep. 12

Cedars in the Pines is having a screening at the Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill on Wednesday September 12 at 7:00pm. For more information about ticket prices and the screening check out the Ackland Film Forum website here.

Posted by NCLLP

September 7

Walt Wolfram on the Kojo Nnamdi Show

Walt Wolfram was recently a guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5 FM at American University. Specifically Walt and Kojo discussed how politicians use regional dialect features in political speech as well as the many dialects of North Carolina.


Listen to the entire interview at The Kojo Nnamdi Show website.

Posted by NCLLP

August 20

NCLLP at Packapalooza

This weekend the NCLLP took part in the NCSU's Packapalooza celebration. Most of Hillsborough Street, from the Bell Tower to Dan Allen Drive, was closed down for the street fair to celebrate NCSU's 125th anniversary! An estimated 30,000 people made it to the event, and it sure seemed like that many perused the NCLLP booth to learn more about language in North Carolina.

Posted by NCLLP

July 23

Walt to Speak at Ocracoke Porch Talk Series

Walt Wolfram will be giving a talk on Tuesday July 24th on Ocracoke Island as part of the Ocracoke Island Preservation Society's Back Porch Talk series. Walt will speak to island residents as well as summer tourists about the unique features and history of the Ocracoke Brogue and the island's linguistic heritage. While there, the crew will also conduct an interview with one of the elder island residents, and finally dine at the newly opened Topless Oyster.

Posted by NCLLP

May 21

"Missing Regional Accents" CBS This Morning Segment Video featuring NCSU

CBS This Morning aired a piece featuring Walt Wolfram talking with Mo Rocca on dialects, called "Missing Regional Accents". A video of the segment can be viewed here. There is also footage and conversations with the stars of the Carolina Brogue and the students of Ocracoke Public School.

Posted by NCLLP

May 12

Congrats to the class of 2012!

Congratulations to the 2012 graduating class from the MA program with concentrations in linguistics:

Melanie Camurati, Hayley Heaton, Channing Johnson, Katey McDonald, and Heather Wright!

Posted by NCLLP

April 16

Ocracoke Spring Break Outreach Trip in the News

Check out the spotlight on the Ocracoke spring break outreach trip from the University homepage in an article about alternative spring break trips called The New Spring Break.

From the article:
"It gave a face to what we do," [Arika] Dean said. "Community interaction and community involvement are big tenets of this program."

Also stay tuned to CBS Sunday Morning for another featured story about Language on Ocracoke with footage from this year's trip to the island.

Posted by NCLLP

April 16

Congrats to all SECOL 79 Presenters

SECOL 2012 was a great success! Congrats to all the presenters and their excellent presentations. Below is an alphabetical list of all the NCSU presentations from the conference, held April 12-14 in Lexington, KY:

1. Melanie Camurati “Linguistic Variation and ESL: A New Curriculum”

2. Arika Dean “The Performance Register in Appalachian Storytelling”

3. Amanda Eads “The Emergence of Lebanese English in the American South: The Configuration of Substrate and Dialect Accommodation”

4. Charlie Farrington “A Class-less Variable in AAE: Word-Final Devoicing”

5. Jon Forrest “(Standard) English Only: English-Only Movements and Dialects of Power”

6. Michael J. Fox “Caught in the Act of Merger: Transition and Undershoot in the Low Back Vowel Merger”

7. Hayley Heaton “Southern Dialect in the Portrayal of Fictional Television Characters”

8. Channing Johnson “Metalinguistic Awareness and African American English Use among Long-Term Research Subjects”

9. Katherine McDonald “Researching Voice Quality in Sociolinguistics: Incorporating Acoustic Measurement Techniques in the Study of Stylistic Variation”

10. Jason McLarty “The Role of Accentual Phrases in Distinguishing African American English Intonation”

11. Caroline Myrick “Prosodic Rhythm in Bahamian English: Comparative Evidence from Socioethnic Varieties on Abaco Island, the Bahamas”

12. Caroline Myrick and Agnes Bolonyai “Mondom, “every jail’s got a phone”: Code-Switching for Reported Speech in Bilingual Narrative”

13. Jeffrey Reaser “Increasing Teachers’ Linguistic Knowledge through Professional Development Webinars”

14. Christina Schwaller “Construction of Affect in an Online Support Group: An Appraisal Theory Analysis”

15. Walt Wolfram “Sociolinguistic Myths in the Study of Appalachian English”

16. Heather Wright “Language Shift and Maintenance in the Filipino Community of the Virginia Beach Area”

17. Liang Zhang “She Thinks Vivian Had Fun with the Green Light: Study on Negative Transfer of Sichuan Dialect to English Pronunciation”

18. Liang Zhang “Biased News in Political Discourse”

Please contact the webmaster at klmcdona at ncsu dot edu if you would like a copy of any of the presentations.

Posted by NCLLP

April 16

NCSU Linguistics Brownbag: Ralph Fasold

We are excited to welcome Ralph Fasold to speak about "What they've never told you about Ebonics uninflected be and remote-time been". This final Spring 2012 brownbag will be held this Thursday, April 19th, in Caldwell M8 at 3:00pm.

Posted by NCLLP

April 3

NCSU Linguistics Brownbag: Joe Salmons, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Join us for a NCSU linguistics brownbag Tuesday, April 3rd at 3pm in Caldwell M8. Joe Salmons from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will present his paper entitled: "Final laryngeal distinctions in Wisconsin: Incipient obstruent merger?"

Posted by NCLLP

February 21

Linguistics Brownbag on February 24th: Cala Zubair of UNC-Wilmington

Join us for a brownbag presentation by Cala Zubair of UNC-Wilmington at 3pm in Tompkins 131b this Friday, February 24th. She will be preseting “Sexual Slang, Violent Behavior, and the Reappropriation of the Female Body through Verbal Taboo”.

To join the Sinhalese Raggers at the University of Peradeniya (Kandy, Sri Lanka), students undergo mixed-gender, ritual hazing (“ragging”) such that senior males rag junior females via forced sexual acts (e.g., rape and sexual assault). Male Raggers use esoteric, in-group terminology that masks their behavior from university authorities and wider public scrutiny. This talk explores how female Raggers resist physical violence by rejecting esoteric slang in favor of taboo language that is less localized, exhibits online circulation, and is more widespread in universities and among youth.

Posted by NCLLP

February 15

Linguistics Brownbag on February 17th: Film Screening of "Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese in North Carolina"

Come join us for a brownbag screening of Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese in North Carolina, a film by Danica Cullinan. This event will be held on Friday, February 17th at 3pm in Caldwell G111.

Since 1890, more than 16,000 Lebanese immigrants have made North Carolina their home. This film looks at the factors that resulted in each of two main waves of immigration as well as what the Lebanese community in North Carolina looks like today. First, second, and third generation speakers consider how their identity has been shaped by their Lebanese heritage as well as direct or distant connections to the land. This documentary is a joint project of The North Carolina Language and Life Project and The Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies at NCSU.

Posted by NCLLP

February 7

Linguistics Brownbag: Film Screening of "Atlantic"

Come see Atlantic, A film by Neal Hutcheson, at 3pm in Caldwell G111 this Friday, February 10.

Atlantic is a portrait of the small fishing villages along Core Sound, the area between Harkers Island and Cedar Island known simply as Down East. Many of the same families have lived there since the earliest English land grants, farming the land as well as the water. The area is distinguished by a bleak and beautiful landscape, the people by a rich heritage and thick dialect, all of which is currently endangered.

Posted by NCLLP

January 26

Riverkeeper Film Festival Screening of "Atlantic" by Neal Hutcheson

Tonight (January 26th) is the first public screening of Neal Hutcheson's latest film: Atlantic. It is being shown as a part of the Riverkeeper Film Festival for two nights at two venues. More information and times for both showings (in Raleigh and New Bern) are available here.

Posted by NCLLP

January 19

Upcoming Events: Spring NCSU Linguistics Brown bag Schedule

The spring 2012 brown bag schedule for linguistic talks is here! There are many great scheduled visiting presenters: Ralph Fasold (Georgetown University), Joe Salmons (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Cala Zubair (UNC-Wilmington) as well as several films: We Still Live Here (Anne Makepeace), Atlantic (Neal Hutcheson), and Lebanese in North Carolina (Danica Cullinan) and dissertation presentations by NCSU alumnae Mary Kohn (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Erin Callahan-Price (Duke Univeristy).

Please come join us for these exciting events throughout the semester. More information will be posted about these events soon! The official schedule is posted here.

Posted by NCLLP

January 19

Linguistics Brown bag January 27th: "We Still Live Here"--A Film by Anne Makepeace

The film We Still Live Here by Anne Makepeace will be shown at 3:30 pm in Tompkins 131b on Friday, January 27th.

We Still Live Here tells a remarkable story of cultural revival by the Wampanoag Indians of Southeastern Massachusetts. Their ancestors ensured the survival of the Pilgrims in New England, the 'Pilgrims,' and lived to regret it. Spurred on by their intrepid linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, they are now saying loud and clear, and in their Native tongue, "Âs Nutayuneân," – "We Still Live Here."

Posted by NCLLP

January 10

Congrats to all LSA 2012 Presenters!

Congrats to all the NCSU affiliated presenters at the 86th annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America that took place January 5-8 in Portland, Oregon:

Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University): "Composite dialect models in assessing African American English"


Janneke Van Hofwegen (Stanford University/NCSU): "Personal- and peer-level factors affecting AAE vernacularity in peer dyads"


Mary Kohn (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Charlie Farrington (North Carolina State University): "African American English: Longitudinal trajectories of vowel development"


Janneke Van Hofwegen (Stanford University/NCSU), Reuben Stob (Duke University): "The gender gap: How dialect usage affects reading outcomes in African American youth"


Kirk Hazen (West Virginia University), Robin Dodsworth (North Carolina State University): "Going to L in Appalachia: Language change for L-vocalization in the Mountain State"

Posted by NCLLP

November 28

Linguistics Brownbag: Film Screening of South Park East Raleigh

This Friday we will be having our final brownbag meeting of the semester in Tompkins 131b at 3pm. We'll be watching South Park East Raleigh, a film by Meredith Caccamo and Robin Dodsworth with Danica Cullinan.

South Park East Raleigh: An Oral History comprises interviews with residents who describe their experiences growing up in the mid-20th century South in what was once a cohesive, thriving, downtown community. Residents convey the importance of the community in terms of the traditions, values, and institutions that influenced their personal development, as well as in terms of its broader role in the social and political history of Raleigh.

Posted by NCLLP

November 21

Walt Wolfram Announced as Commencement Speaker at Concordia University

Walt Wolfram will be receiving an honorary doctor of letters at Concordia University-Chicago on Dec. 17, 2011, and giving the commencement address.

Posted by NCLLP

November 21

2012 Presidential Honorary Membership to the American Dialect Society (ADS) goes to Mary Kohn!

Congratulations to Mary Kohn for being awarded a 2012 Presidential Honorary Membership from the American Dialect Society! This entitles her to four years of complimentary membership in ADS. You can look up more information about the ADS by visiting their website.

Posted by NCLLP

November 15

Linguistics Brown Bag: Dr. Sali Tagliamonte from the University of Toronto

We welcome Dr. Sali Tagliamonte from the University of Toronto this Wednesday, November 16th for a Brown Bag. We will be meeting in Caldwell M8 at 3:00pm (the mezzanine floor conference room). Sali will be discussing "Canadian dialects: Tracking linguistic change in the north country":

In this presentation I synthesize the results arising from a research program studying Canadian dialects in Ontario, Canada’s largest province. Two contrasting linguistic features, each from distinct levels of grammar encapsulate the emerging findings: (1) stative possession and (2) quotatives.

(1) He has a fishing boat but it’s got music in it.

(2) And he said, "What are you insane?" I’m like, "What does insane mean?"

The trajectories of change for these variables in Toronto, the largest city in Canada (Tagliamonte &D’Arcy 2007; Tagliamonte, D’Arcy and Jankowski 2010) provide a base-line. Although Canadian English is often thought to be one large dialect from sea to sea (Labov,Ash, & Boberg 2006); this homogeneity is an urban phenomenon (Chambers 1991:93). In recent years,fieldwork in cities and towns outlying the city are beginning to unearth a more nuanced picture of these developments (e.g. Tagliamonte & Denis 2008).

The data come from a small city and a smaller town in the southeast, one 2 and the other 4 hours away from the city (Belleville and Lakefield); and two small cities due north, one 300 and theother 800 kilometers away (Porcupine and North Bay). How are the changes in Toronto in (1-2) proceeding in these communities?

According to the wave model,linguistic change should spread outward from an originating centre while the cascade model predicts that change should diffuse to larger centers before small ones (Trudgill 1974). Thus, we might hypothesize that those distant from the city will provide a view of an earlier stage in the history of the changes in (1-2) and that the larger communities will be furthest ahead while the smaller, remote towns will lag behind. However, the progression of change also depends on how the change is diffused and by whom as well as its linguistic complexity (Kerswill 1996; Labov 2007). Longitudinal grammatical changes such as the development of possessive have can expected to exhibit parallel developments in core vs. peripheral contexts through normal processes of transmission in each locale. However, a recent innovation such as quotative be like can be expected to be the product of diffusion.

Early results from southern Ontario (Tagliamonte & Denis 2008) revealed remarkable constancy across core and peripheral areas for both these features; however, with the addition of the two northern cities a more nuanced picture is emerging. The frequency of incoming forms,whether have or be like, are progressing in tandem regardless of local; however the constraints within each system are differentiated by community. In southern Ontario where British ancestry is predominant, the full gamut of older constraints is present. Far afield in the north, however, where there were mixed ethnic founders from the outset and a distinct economic, social and cultural base, these same constraints have been lost or weakened. The results show that both the system of the language as well as its socio-cultural embedding are crucial for interpreting and understanding linguistic change across Canadian dialects.

In order to fully understand andinterpret these differences the changes must be interpreted within the historical and socio-cultural context in which the change has developed.

Posted by NCLLP

November 15

Linguistics Brown Bag: Sali Tagliamonte from University of Toronto

Sali Tagliamonte from the University of Toronto this Wednesday November 16th for a Brown Bag. We will be meeting in Caldwell M8 at 3:00 (the mezzanine floor conference room). Sali will be discussing "Canadian dialects: Trackinglinguistic change in the north country":

Posted by NCLLP

November 3

Linguistics Brownbag: Dr. Lauren Squires from UNC-Wilmington

On Thursday, November 10th, at 3:00pm in Tompkins 131b, Dr. Lauren Squires from UNC-Wilmington will be presenting "Syntactic priming for socio-syntactic perception: a (good?) method for a (difficult?) problem".

She says: "I will discuss an experimental method that I have been using to explore the perception of subject-verb agreement variation in American English. Syntactic priming attempts to activate speakers' knowledge of language. I apply this technique to sociolinguistic variants, incorporating social manipulations to explore participants' processing of both social and linguistic information when encountering morphosyntactic variation. I will give an overview of this research, discuss some challenges and pose some questions."

Posted by NCLLP

November 2

Congrats to all NWAV 40 Paper Presenters

Congratulations to all the presenters at NWAV 40! Here is an alphabetical listing of all the papers associated with NCSU linguistics that were presented at Georgetown University, between October 27-30th, 2011:

1. Erin Callahan-Price(Duke)"Generalized acquisition constraints and dialect-specific norms in child AAE copula development"

2. Robin Dodsworth (NCSU)"The interaction between network and class"

3. Robin Dodsworth (NCSU) and Kirk Hazen(WVU) "Following L over hill and dale: Changes in L-vocalization through space, time, and methods"

4. Mary Kohn (UNC) and Charlie Farrington (NCSU)"The socio-regional distribution of African American vowel systems in Piedmont, North Carolina"

5. Jason McClarty "AAE and EAE pitch accent types and frequencies: An apparent time perspective"

6. Katey McDonald and Erik Thomas (NCSU)"Cepstral Peak Prominence(CPP) as method for gauging ethnic differences in phonation"

7. Betsy Newman, Hayley Heaton, and Channing Johnson (NCSU)"Fine in the world: Constructing a Lumbee English DDM"

8. Janneke Van Hofwegen and Reuben Stob (Stanford)"A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between reading and AAE vernacularity"

9. Walt Wolfram (NCSU)"The sociolinguistic construction of homeplace: A comparative perspective"

10. Walt Wolfram (NCSU)"All-Star Plenary Panel: The Origins, Development, and Future of NWAV and Variation Analysis"

11. Walt Wolfram (NCSU)discussant for "Substrate Effects: Linguistic Resources for Indicating Ethnic Orientation"

Contact the webmaster at klmcdona at ncsu dot edu if you would like a copy of any of the presentations.

Posted by NCLLP

October 19

Pre-NWAV Presentations: Session 2

The next Brown Bag is on Friday, October 21th at 3:00 in Tompkins 131b. We have three NWAV pre-presentations scheduled, including:

1. Katey McDonald & Erik Thomas (NCSU) "Cepstral Peak Prominence as a Method for Gauging Ethnic Differences in Phonation"

2. Betsy Newman, Hayley Heaton, Channing Johnson (NCSU) “Fine in the World: Constructing a Lumbee DDM”

3. Erin Callahan-Price (Duke) “Generalized Acquisition Constraints and Dialect-Specific Norms in Child AAE Copula Development”

We're all going to be looking for comments and feedback about the presentations. You can read the abstracts here.

Posted by NCLLP

October 13

NCLLP State Fair Exhibit 2011

Come visit the NCLLP at the fair! Our booth is located in the Exposition Building and will be open from 9am-10pm daily. The fair runs from October 13-23, 2011. The exhibit is located in the Exposition Center on the fair grounds.


The booth introduces visitors to the rich dialect and language traditions of North Carolina as part of the cultural and historical legacy of the state. The exhibit includes a variety of panels on languages and dialects, interactive monitors, and videos for visitors to learn about language variation in the Old North State. View a picture of the current booth here.


For more information about the NC State Fair visit ncstatefair.org.

Posted by NCLLP

October 10

Pre-NWAV Presentations: Session 1

The next Brown Bag is on Friday, October 14th at 3:00 in Tompkins 131b. We have three NWAV pre-presentations scheduled, including:



1. Mary Kohn & Charlie Farrington (NCSU) “The Socio-Regional Distribution of African American Vowel Systems in Piedmont North Carolina”

2. Jason McLarty (NCSU) “AAE and EAE Pitch Accent Types and Frequencies: An Apparent Time Perspective”

3. Becky Roeder (UNC-Charlotte) "Geolinguistic Diffusion of the Canadian Shift near Toronto"


We're all going to be looking for comments and feedback about the presentations. You can read the abstracts here. .

Posted by NCLLP

October 3

Brownbag: Pre-NWAV Practice Presentations

Two sessions of pre-NWAV presentations are scheduled for Friday October 14th and Friday October 21st at 3pm in Tompkins 131B. A schedule of the presentations along with the abstracts is available here.

Posted by NCLLP

September 20

NCSU Linguistics Brownbag: Elliott Moreton from UNC

Elliott Moreton from UNC-Chapel Hill will be presenting "Complexity in phonological learning and typology" this Thursday, September 22nd at 3:30 in Tompkins 131b.

Posted by NCLLP

September 13

Spanish Voices screening during SPARKCon on September 17

The Spanish Voices extra, Spanglish, will screen this weekend at Raleigh's 6th annual SPARKCon. There are SPARKCon events running Thursday through Sunday, check out the schedule here.
Spanglish will screen along with other short films as part of the filmSPARK Shorts Screening Extravaganza on Saturday, September 17th at City Plaza on Fayetteville Street. For more information, see: http://www.sparkcon.com/sparks/filmspark/

Posted by NCLLP

September 2

NCSU Linguistics Brownbag: Viewing of Neal Hutcheson's ATLANTIC

Linguistics brownbags start this semester with a viewing of Neal Hutcheson's ATLANTIC. The film will be shown at 3pm in Caldwell G111 Friday September 9th.

ATLANTIC is a portrait of the small fishing villages along Core Sound, the area between Harkers Island and Cedar Island known simply as Down East. Many of the same families have lived there since the earliest English land grants, farming the land as well as the water. The area is distinguished by a bleak and beautiful landscape, the people by a rich heritage and thick dialect, all of which is currently endangered.

Posted by NCLLP

July 20

Upcoming NCLLP State Fair Exhibit 2011

The NCLLP (North Carolina Language and Life Project)will again host its exhibit on Tar Heel language and dialect at the North Carolina State Fair October 13-23, 2011. The exhibit will be once again located in the Exposition Center on the fair grounds.

The booth introduces visitors to the rich dialect and language traditions of North Carolina as part of the cultural and historical legacy of the state. The exhibit includes a variety of panels on languages and dialects, interactive monitors, and videos for visitors to learn about language variation in the Old North State.

More details about this year's booth will be posted soon! For more information about the NC State Fair visit ncstatefair.org. View a powerpoint slideshow with pictures and information from last year's exhibit here.

Posted by NCLLP

July 20

Carolina Brogue airs on South Carolina ETV

The Carolina Brogue airs on South Carolina Educational Television HD (SCETV-HD) channel Thursday, July 21st at 9:00pm. It is a featured film on SCTV's independent film series "Southern Lens". To find out more about "Southern Lens" visit their website. Find out more about scheduling and programming on SCETV by visiting http://www.scetv.org/.

Posted by NCLLP

July 11

Walt Wolfram Appears on the History Channel's "How the States Got Their Shape"

Watch "How the States Got their Shape" on the History Channel at 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 12, to hear Walt Wolfram in the "Mouthing Off" episode. The episode looks at dialects across the country and answers such questions as why the southern accent didn't exist until after the Civil War, and whether one particularly strong accent could cause New York to break up and create a 51st state.
You can view more about this program at the History Channel's "How the States Got their Shape" page.

Posted by NCLLP

June 21

CD Release: Ocracoke Still Speaks

Ocracoke Still Speaks: Reflections Past and Present (2011) captures the stories and music of O’cockers as they recount tales of the past and reflect on changes underway—in their own voices and from their unique perspectives.More than 20 notable Ocracoke personalities tell stories, offer reflections, and perform music in the sequel to the highly successful CD, Ocracoke Speaks (2001).

The CD is accompanied by an attractive booklet with texts of the narratives and 16 photo images from archival collections and contemporary Ocracoke. The compilation is a cooperative effort of the North Carolina Language and Life Project (Jeff Reaser, Paula Dickerson Boddie, Walt Wolfram) and the Ocracoke Preservation Society (DeAnna Locke, Chester Lynn, Philip Howard).

Cost for CD and booklet $15.

Posted by NCLLP

June 20

NCSU Linguistics Presentations at 2011 ASA Conference

Betsy Newman and Hayley Heaton presented a paper at the Acoustical Society of America Conference held this year in Seattle, WA. They presented "Final Stop Accommodation in Married Couples" which is a study of two couples that investigates final stops in the speech of these married couples. The purpose of the study is to determine if there are patterns of convergence in their final stop accommodation and if that convergence can be attributed to social indexing or speaker accommodation.

You can view the abstract in full on the Acoustical Society of America website where all the abstracts for the 2011 conference are listed.

Posted by NCLLP

May 16

Congratulations to Graduates!

Congratulations to the 2011 graduating class from the MA program:
Kelly Abrams, Elizabeth Daw, David Ethier, Charlie Farrington, Nicolette Filson, Darya Kostina, Jason McLarty, Betsy Newman, and Mario Piergallini!

Posted by NCLLP

April 12

Spanish Voices released on DVD!

Spanish speakers drawn to the southeastern United States over the past couple of decades have had a notable impact on the identity of many urban and rural communities. Spanish Voices reveals some of the social and personal issues that are part of language contact situations worldwide- and many that are unique to the Southeast. Students and teachers, musicians and dancers, recent immigrants and long-term residents share their experiences regarding the difficulty in maintaining a home language, the challenge in learning a new language, and the varieties of both Spanish and English that have become part of their Southern experience.

Spanish Voices has been broadcast on South Carolina's ETV as well as the CRC Education Channel 18 in Raleigh.

The Spanish Voices DVD includes 5 extras; Spanglish, Music and Dance, Hispanic American Identity, Maintaining Spanish, and Quinceañera. Total DVD media: 55 minutes. Produced & Directed by Danica Cullinan, Executive Producer Walt Wolfram. The DVD may be purchased online at http://talkingnc.com or by phone at 919-515-4151 for $20.

Posted by NCLLP

March 4

Walt Wolfram and Gregory Guy on The Leonard Lopate Show

Walt Wolfram and Gregory Guy are featured on the Leonard Lopate Show of WNYC. The segment is called Please Explain: Accents and Dialects.

Today's Please Explain is all about accents in the English speaking world--how did Australians come to sound different than New Zealanders? Why do some people lose their accents quickly...while others can hold on to them for decades? NYU Professor of Linguistics Gregory Guy and North Carolina State University Distinguished Professor of English Walt Wolfram will discuss the various accents in the English-speaking world and even analyze some samples from volunteers!


Click on the link to listen to this segment on WNYC: The Leonard Lopate Show:Please Explain:Accents and Dialects

Posted by NCLLP

February 24

NCSU Press Release: Language Patterns Are Roller-Coaster Ride During Childhood Development

Two papers are forthcoming from researchers in the linguistics program stemming from data out of the ongoing longitudinal study that is collected by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute in Chapel Hill. The following comes from the press release through the NCSU newsroom:

“One of the papers, “Trajectories of Development in AAE: The First 17 Years,” is forthcoming from the Proceedings of the Conference on African American Language In Popular Culture. The paper was co-authored by Wolfram; Van Hofwegen; Mary E. Kohn, a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Dr. Jennifer Renn, who worked on the paper while a Ph.D. student at UNC-Chapel Hill. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.



Another paper, “Coming of age in African American English: A longitudinal study,” was co-authored by Wolfram and Van Hofwegen and was published in September 2010 in the Journal of Sociolinguistics.””



Read the full release through the NCSU newsroom website:"Language Patterns Are Roller-Coaster Ride During Childhood Development".

Posted by NCLLP

February 22

Wake County Spelling Bee

Saturday, February 26

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Witherspoon Auditorium


For the first time in 14 years, Wake County students are able to participate in a countywide spelling bee. The winner will go on to compete as a finalist in the National Scripps Spelling Bee held in Washington D.C. CHASS has partnered with the College of Education to co-sponsor the Bee along with the News and Observer. Come support the young Wake County competitors! Students from the linguistics program at NCSU will be volunteering for the event!

Posted by NCLLP

February 18

Update: Raleigh Study of Vowels

Since 2008, Robin Dodsworth has been studying variation and change in
the Raleigh vowel system. Beginning around 1960, the establishment of
a tech industry hub near Raleigh has resulted in a long-term
population surge, and many of the people who came to work in Raleigh
are from the Northern U.S. As in some other dialect-contact
situations, a new dialect is emerging in Raleigh that lacks most
iconic Southern features but also lacks iconic Northern features -- in
other words, a dialect that sounds aregional or unmarked. The
project's major goals are to investigate the process of new dialect
formation and to address existing questions about the role of
socioeconomic class in language variation and change. The Raleigh
corpus currently consists of over 150 hour-long conversational
interviews with native Raleighites. Early in 2011, this project was
featured in 2 articles in the News & Observer, the Raleigh newspaper.
Linguistics students working on the project include Mary Kohn, Hayley
Heaton, and Melanie Camurati.


The study of Raleigh vowels includes the study of vowel systems in the
local African American community, which is centered in the southeast
quadrant of the city. During 2010, we were fortunate to collaborate
with Kofi Boone, Kermit Bailey, and Celen Pasalar (NC State College of
Design) in working to support a community preservation and
documentation effort. Rather than making only audio recordings of
southeast Raleigh speakers, we made video recordings and subsequently
produced a 30-minute video documentary consisting of oral histories
about the neighborhood. Meredith Caccamo and Danica Cullinan, both
former linguistics students who now work in film, were our
videographers. The documentary is currently airing on 2 local
television channels.

The Raleigh study has been covered by the News and Observer and the article, "Southern accent in danger?" is available online.

There was also a segment of the local NPR station WUNC. The program The State of Things featured an interview with Robin Dodsworth as a part of the story called "It Took a Neighborhood", which is available for downloading or listening to online.

Posted by NCLLP

February 15

Hutcheson Wins NC Folklore Prize

Neal Hutcheson has been awarded the Brown Hudson Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society for 2011. The announcement notes:


'Neal Hutcheson is a documantary film-maker who has done extensive work on traditional culture in North Carolina. He has worked on films with N.C. State Professor Walt Wolfram for the North Carolina Language and Life Project. The NCLLP seeks to document North Carolina’s linguistic diversity and make the material available to a wide audience, including a curricula in the NC public schools. His films on language include Mountain Talk, Indian by Birth: the Lumbee Dialect, and The Carolina Brogue. He has also produced the Queen Family: Back Porch Music and Appalachian Tradition, which includes NEA Heritage Award Winner Mary Jane Queen. The Last One was an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the late moonshiner "Popcorn" Sutton.'

Posted by NCLLP

February 11

SECOL 2011

Congratulations to all graduate students and faculty in linguistics who are presenting at this year's South Eastern Conference on Linguistics! This year's SECOL is being held at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain Georgia the 13-15 of April. The theme of this year's conference is 'Sustainable Language' and includes the topics:'"Ecology of Language" (language in its structural and cultural settings and uses), "Endangered Languages," "Language Maintenance and Change," and "Language Archives and Collections."'

Posted by NCLLP

February 3

Webinar for Teachers on Language Diversity

Beginning February 1, 2011, NC State linguists Jeff Reaser and Walt Wolfram, in conjunction with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, will be hosting three hour-long webinars investigating the dialect and language diversity in North Carolina. The webinars are designed specifically for 8th grade social studies teachers, but are open to any interested teachers. Teachers who complete all three webinars and the assigned homework will receive 1 CEU.

The first webinar, on February 1, will examine “The reality of Dialects,” including debunking popular myths about language and building tools for linguistic analysis.

The second webinar, on March 1, will focus on regional dialects, including the dialects spoken on the Outer Banks and in the Mountains.

The third webinar, on April 5, will investigate social dialects, including Lumbee and African American English.
More information about this series can be found at: NC Public Schools

Posted by NCLLP

February 3

Sociophonetics: An Introduction is Published

Sociophonetics: An Introduction, by Erik R. Thomas, has just been published by Palgrave. This book provides a thorough explanation of methods for sociophonetic analysis, including those for many previously unexplored variables. A wide variety of techniques for examining variation in consonants, vowels, different aspects of prosody, and voice quality, both in production and in perception, is described. It also includes several chapters on the theory behind sociophonetics: an introduction that contextualizes sociophonetics within linguistics and other chapters on mixing different variables, what production and perception say about cognition, sound change, social analyses, and the importance of relating variation to cognition. The book is available at Palgrave.com.

Posted by NCLLP