Western Carolina University

From left, researchers Janaye Houghton, Robert Fox and Ewa Jacewicz record a speaker at WCU as part of a dialect study.

This article features an event that occurred in the past.

Researchers conducting a dialect study at Western Carolina University are seeking lifelong residents of Western North Carolina between the ages of 9 and 13, and age 50 and older to volunteer to participate.

Volunteers will be asked to listen to different words through a headset and record their responses on a computer.

The dialect study, led by The Ohio State University and taking place in part at WCU, was designed to compare dialects in Western North Carolina, Central Ohio and Wisconsin, and changes in dialect from generation to generation.

WCU recently received a $15,000 grant to continue with the perception phase of the study, which was initially funded by a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

“One of the goals is to see whether language is changing here, and language development processes in general,” said Robert Fox, professor and chair of speech and hearing science at Ohio State.

The results of the research project could help improve standardized tests for speech and hearing or improve voice recognition systems that understand spoken commands. Another benefit is simply the historical preservation of how people speak in a region, the researchers said.

“We’ve constructed a corpus of spoken utterances – the largest corpus of spoken American English to date,” said Ewa Jacewicz, principal investigator and research scientist at Ohio State. “The collection can be used worldwide for speech research, speech-language pathology, dialectologists and linguists.”

More than 200 participants ranging in age from 8 to 93 came to Western Carolina’s speech and hearing center to participate in the first phase of the study.

What researchers also found interesting, in addition to analyzing the different sound waves, were the topics participants chose to talk about when invited to tell a story. While many child participants native to Ohio and Wisconsin chose to talk about school or sports, participants in Western North Carolina talked about their grandparents or church.

“I heard about a lot of hound dogs, hunting and fishing, and family,” said Janaye Houghton, a research associate who also is a speech-language pathologist “Some talked about instruments or music – the banjo, bass fiddle or guitar. They were asked to talk for three to five minutes, but frankly there were times I just couldn’t turn the recording off and just kept listening.”

Participants have been very interested in the results of the study, she said. In fact, one who is a student at Smoky Mountain High School, Jessica Masters, approached Houghton about working with her on a dialect study for her senior project.

“I always loved to listen to my grandparents and their dialect, and I noticed it when I volunteered at a nursing home, too,” said Masters, who is considering attending WCU next year. “I’m fascinated.”

Hear examples of speakers from each region by clicking on “Vowel Corner” on the left side of the Web site http://www.spalabs.org.

If you or your child was born and raised in Western North Carolina, contact Houghton by phone at (828) 506-8276 or by e-mail at janayeh@hotmail.com to find out how you could participate.

Maintained by the Office of Public Relations
Last Modified: Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2008