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So Long, Drawl

wolfram

Brody McCurdy, Walt Wolfram and Lydia Elrod stand together and laugh outside Tompkins Hall in the Court of North Carolina.

Jun 5, 2023

Linguistic Research Team Preserves Local Dialects and Culture

Linguists at NC State are studying language evolution in Chatham County, a historically rural area that's on the fast track for significant growth. 
Danica Cullinan speaks with a subject as part of a shoot for Talking Black in America.

Mar 17, 2017

Talking Black in America

African American language is central to American life, yet it continues to be misunderstood and marginalized. A new documentary from the Language and Life Project at NC State draws on decades of research to remedy our understanding. 
Walt Wolfram interviews a subject for his documentary Talking Black in America.

Mar 17, 2017

Reflection of a Legacy

Renowned linguist Walt Wolfram, the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at NC State University, and other leading scholars have studied African-American speech across the nation as a distinct dialect of American English for five decades. 

Nov 12, 2015

Cherokee Language Film Wins Awards

The documentary about the Cherokee language made by NC State linguistics professor Walt Wolfram and his colleagues in the North Carolina Language and Life Project recently won awards at three film festivals. 
A woman listens in on a conversation between two merchants at the North Carolina famers market.

Jul 27, 2015

So Long, Drawl

For more than half a century, the familiar Southern accent has been fading in Raleigh. Its disappearance has been so slow that locals may not even have noticed. But for Robin Dodsworth, associate professor in sociolinguistics at NC State, the decline tells the story of rapid social change across the urban South.