The geolinguistic landscape of culturally relevant words in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Keywords: linguistic geography, social identity, Midwest U.S.-Michigan Upper Peninsula
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 59

Abstract

This geolinguistic study examines the connection between perceived frequency of use of specific local words and their connection to social identity among native residents of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.). An online Qualtrics survey was designed to elicit demographic and Likert response data from participants. An 860-participant corpus stratified by age, reported gender and geographic location (zipcode of home-town) were examined. Participants must have been raised in the U.P., spoke English as their native language, and be 18 years or older. All participants evaluated the following 7 U.P. words: camp, chook, choppers, cudighi, pank, sisu, and swampers. For each word, participants provided evaluations based upon a five-level Likert rating for each of the following scales: 1) frequency of use in casual conversation, 2) frequency of being heard, 3) willingness to correct someone, 4) willingness to correct a group, and 5) importance to one’s identity. However, the present study examines only the response data elicited from the frequency of use and importance to one’s identity rating scales, in order to determine if vocabulary’s use and connection to identity were correlated within geographic regions of the U.P., reported gender, or age. Home-town zipcodes were aggregated together in ArcMap 10.4 to calculate the mean of all respondents’ survey values by rating scale and vocabulary. For county-level analyses, each Zipcode’s Centroid was associated with each U.P. county. Results reveal that these U.P. words are geographically distinct from one another in terms of both use and connection to identity and the patterns differed by county.