About The Project

At its core, our project asks the basic question: “What is English like in Illinois?”  Currently, we are learning about the nature of English dialect variation in southwestern Illinois (in particular, as spoken by people who were born and/or raised in the counties of Madison, St. Clair, Macoupin, Jersey, Clinton and Bond).

In the future, we hope to expand our survey to include more areas of Illinois, as well as compare our observations about Illinois to similar observations about English usage in St. Louis city and county, and in more northern parts of the state, including Chicago.

Our project is generously supported by a Seed, Transition and Exploratory Projects grant from SIUE, and some of our student assistants are supported by the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities program.