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Local features, local meanings: Language ideologies and place-linked vocalic variation among Jewish Chicagoans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

Jaime Benheim Open the ORCID record for Jaime Benheim [Opens in a new window]  and
Annette D'Onofrio Open the ORCID record for Annette D'Onofrio [Opens in a new window]
Jaime Benheim*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, USA
Annette D'Onofrio
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Jaime Benheim Northwestern University 2016 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60208 [email protected]
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Abstract

Research on Jewish English in the United States has drawn on a set of ideologies linking the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire to New York City English, but less is known about how these ideologies interface with the social meanings of regional features in the communities outside New York in which these speakers live. Through meta-linguistic commentary and acoustic analyses drawn from sociolinguistic interviews with white Jewish and Catholic Chicagoans, we find that meta-linguistic ideologies associate Jewish speakers with New York City English and white Catholic speakers with ‘local’ Chicago features. However, in actual production, these linguistic differences appear to be driven by neighborhood rather than ethnoreligious identity alone. We argue that while meta-linguistic commentary may re-circulate broader linguistic ideologies, the uptake of elements of the ethnolinguistic repertoire may depend on the social meanings of those features in the local community more broadly, including class- and place-linked variation. (Ethnolinguistic repertoire, place, Northern Cities Shift, Jewish English)*

Type
Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 129 - 155
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Susan Ehrlich, Tommaso Milani, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback that greatly improved this article, as well as Ann Bradlow for providing helpful comments on earlier stages of this work. We are also grateful to our undergraduate research assistants Krysten Jackson, Emily Thayer, and Ryan Wagner for help with interview transcription. Thanks as well to audiences at the 2019 New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference, MidPhon 24, and Northwestern's SocioGroup for helpful feedback. Finally, we are immensely thankful for our participants, who took the time to share their experiences and voices with us.

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