Ever wonder why people pronounce "sauna" differently across the Upper Midwest region of the United States?

The present on-line survey is your opportunity to contribute to the debate and help us better understand how and why people pronounce this term the way that they do.

Ever wonder why people from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.) use certain words or pronounce them differently compared to others across the Upper Midwest region of the United States?

The present on-line survey is your opportunity to contribute to the debate and help us better understand how and why people use and pronounce certain U.P. words the way that they do.

"What is a Yooper? For some this is a lifestyle, while for others, it is a birthright. What does it mean to you?

The present on-line survey is your opportunity to contribute to the debate and help us better understand how and why people conceptualize the term "Yooper" differently.

This study investigates the sociophonetic data of a 130-speaker corpus of Finnish- and Italian-American residents from Michigan's Marquette County. All data was collected during the summers of 2007 and 2008, and the corpus is stratified by language-dominance, age, sex, and educational attainment.

This corpus was published in the dissertation entitled "The Sociophonetic and Acoustic Vowel Dynamics of Michigan's Upper Peninsula English" (Rankinen, 2014); for further details, please refer to this document.

This large-scale project was financially supported by MSU's Undergraduate Research Grant for 2007-2008. IRB Protocol: GVSU-17-021-H.

The study is no longer interviewing participants. Thank you for your interest!

The "How Michiganders Talk in the UP" study (or just "The UP Talk") is a UP-wide project, focusing on the northern regions of the peninsula, to quantitatively investigate an array of linguistic features related to pronunciation (i.e., sociophonetic study). The corpus included a 130-participant sample stratified by location of long-standing residency, age, and sex. All data was collected during the summers of 2017 and 2018.

The study is interested in understanding the similarities and differences (i.e., if they exist) in how native long-standing UP residents produce, perceive and think about the various UP speech patterns.

This large-scale project was financially supported by GVSU's CSCE Catalyst Grant for 2017-2018. IRB Protocol: GVSU-17-165-H.

The study is no longer interviewing participants. Thank you for your interest!

Learn More about the U.P. Talk Study...

The present study examined whether the vowels of Dutch and non-Dutch ethnic-heritage communities (n=45) in Michigan’s Kent County show signs of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift or its reversal. This study examined a set of sociophonetic characteristics of key vowels as a factor of ethnic-heritage, age, and sex. The guiding study's research question poses to what extent (if any) are the younger-aged groups’ speech productions of the NCVS vowels patterning differently from their middle- and older-aged counterparts among Dutch and non-Dutch ethnic-heritage communities in Kent County; furthermore, if such patterns exist, can either males or females be shown to be leading the observed linguistic change or its reversal (i.e., following principles of sociolinguistic change)?

In collaboration with Taylor Neuhaus, former GVSU undergraduate, and graduate SLP student at Bowling Green University (2018-2020). IRB Protocol: GVSU-18-068-H.

The study is no longer interviewing participants. Thank you for your interest!

The "How Michiganders Talk in Western and Eastern Lower Penisula" study (or just "The W/E LP Talk study") is a sociolinguistic project focusing on the eastern and western regions of the lower peninsula, to quantitatively investigate an array of linguistic features. The corpus included a 60-participant sample stratified by location of long-standing residency, age, and sex. All data was collected from either Muskegon or St. Claire county during the summer of 2019.

The study is interested in understanding the similarities and differences (i.e., if they exist) in how native long-standing LP residents produce, perceive and think about the various speech patterns unique to the region.

This project was completed in collaboration with Lauren Browning, undergraduate research assistant (2019-20) and Sarah Cullimore, undergraduate research assistant. Furthermore, this project was financially supported by GVSU's CSCE Catalyst Grant for 2019-2020. IRB Protocol: GVSU-19-310-H.

The study is no longer interviewing participants. Thank you for your interest!