Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

46° Evanston, IL
Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Class to present discoveries at conference

Everyone knows the freshman refrain: “You say ‘pop’? Wow, I say ‘soda.'”

But most freshmen don’t say: “You just said, ‘I might ought to go there’? Funny thing, I say, ‘I had ought to go there.'”

Fifteen students started that very conversation Fall Quarter during Prof. Mike Dickey’s freshman seminar — a conversation that has resulted in a linguistics field breakthrough.

Dickey and his students will present today at the Chicago Linguistic Society’s international conference their findings that connect certain Midwestern and Southern sentence and verb constructions.

Their research details a previously undiscovered connection that shows how regional dialects actually are more similar than they seem.

“The way we experience a given phrase in a given dialect can have the same meaning but very different structure,” Dickey said.

For example, he said, Southerners might say, “I might could do that” and “Could you might do that?”

But they wouldn’t say, “I ought could do that” or “Could you ought do that?”

So although “could” and “ought” have the same meaning in some contexts, the students found that they have different usages in others.

The discussion in the class, American Englishes, was sparked when students from Iowa City, Iowa and Cleveland compared habits with a student from Tennessee.

Weinberg freshman Mary Gurry said she has begun noticing the quirks of her Cleveland accent after taking the class.

“I’m very much more aware of it now,” Gurry said.

Gurry said the class also brought up social issues revolving around the way a person’s dialect, whether Chicano or Ozarkan, can cause other people to discriminate against them.

“It’s the first label that you have on a person, so you can’t really hide that,” she said.

Dickey said the presentation should elicit considerable interest at the conference, both because the findings are new and because the 19-year-old researchers will be presenting their findings alongside veterans of the field.

After the conference Dickey and his students will collaborate on a formal paper detailing their research, which will be published in the conference proceedings.

“Showing you can take a given meaning and use it in a very different structure is something people haven’t talked about as much,” he said. “It’s interesting and surprising that you can find similar variety within dialects within the same country.”

Dickey said dialects are more than just quirks in usage from region to region. They are also important identifications, especially for freshmen who come to a new campus with students from around the nation.

“It’s something unique you bring from the place you come from,” Dickey said. “It’s part of your heritage. It’s a knowledge of how (the dialect) works, an inherent knowledge of what you can and can’t say. Taking a look at that can be a very empowering experience.”

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Class to present discoveries at conference