Language in Maine
Language in Maine
This project, conducted by Ben Jones from the University of Washington Linguistics Department, is part of the Spatiality of Perceptual Dialectology program. The goal is to have a better understanding of people's perceptions of how English is spoken within Maine is connected to their ideas of space. While the questions I am asking may seem odd, we can learn a lot about language when we ask people who aren’t linguists questions about their language. This sort of research falls in a category of linguistics called ‘folk linguistics’. Similar research on speakers’ perceptions about regional differences of their language has been conducted in many different places within the USA (Michigan, Hawai`i, Ohio, Washington, Kentucky, and one earlier study in Boston) and in several other countries (the UK, France, Japan, the Netherlands, and Germany). This research has provided valuable insight into people’s beliefs about language and space, and at times demonstrated ways in which non-linguists are aware of variation in language that has not yet been identified by linguists.
Ben is from Midcoast Maine and has studied linguistics at the University of Southern Maine and the University of Kentucky. He is in the final year of the doctoral program of the University of Washington Linguistics Department. His areas of research are sociolinguistics, language ideology (how/what people think about language), and variation in language.