Antonio D''Onofrio
Biographic Data
| ID | 204863 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Antonio D''Onofrio |
| GIVEN NAMES | Antonio |
| FAMILY NAME | D''Onofrio |
| SIGNATURE | ONOFRIO A D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5655-7612 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 192 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Demarcating place authenticity in the CHICAGO vowel
This article analyzes variation in and metalinguistic commentary surrounding the primary stressed vowel of the place-name ‘Chicago’. Sociolinguistic interview data with fifty-six lifelong Chicagoans from two adjacent neighborhoods reveal both social variation and apparent time evolution in the phonetic manifestation and phonemic patterning of the CHICAGO vowel. Contrastive metalinguistic ideologies substantiate this variation, as different speake…
Sociolinguistics in Practice
In this interview, Penelope Eckert discusses her life experiences and career as a linguist. Eckert describes a lifelong fascination with language, from her earliest observations of stylistic variation, to her PhD fieldwork in the Pyrenees, to her ethnographic work in US schools in Michigan and Northern California, to her engagement with social theory, which led her to investigate social meaning from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Eckert …
Recognizing Uptalk
Relatively little work has examined how metalinguistic awareness about sociolinguistic features can impact processes of sociolinguistic memory, which are crucial to the formation of cognitive sociolinguistic representations. This article explores how metalinguistic commentary can bias listeners’ memory of a linguistic feature, uptalk , that is ideologically linked with women in popular meta‐discourses. A novel contour‐recognition paradigm tests h…
The influence of raciolinguistic expectations on phoneme categorization in Spanish–English bilinguals
Aims and objectives: This study examines how social information is utilized in processes of bilingual speech perception. Specifically, we investigate whether racialized expectations of native language background trigger language-specific processing strategies in early or simultaneous Spanish–English bilinguals. Methodology: We coupled a visually-primed phoneme categorization task with a social evaluation questionnaire to test whether Spanish–Engl…
Local features, local meanings
Research on Jewish English in the United States has drawn on a set of ideologies linking the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire to New York City English, but less is known about how these ideologies interface with the social meanings of regional features in the communities outside New York in which these speakers live. Through meta-linguistic commentary and acoustic analyses drawn from sociolinguistic interviews with white Jewish and Catholic Chic…
Variation in Evaluations of Gendered Voices
Listeners are sensitive to the frequency at which speakers produce sociolinguistic features in utterances, reflected in their social evaluations of those speakers. Previous work also illustrates that a speaker’s perceived gender can influence how their linguistic production is processed, perceived, and discussed. However, little is known about how speaker gender can shape the effect of variant frequency on social evaluations. Employing the sociol…
The social meaning of stylistic variability
While speakers have been shown to deploy linguistic styles to project socially meaningful personae, less well-understood are the ways that variability or consistency of stylistic practice across and within speech events can itself accumulate to construct a public image. This study examines the use of (ING) and word-final /t/-release across multiple campaign rallies of three US presidential candidates, speakers in heightened contexts of persona co…
An analytical characterization of different gilding techniques on artworks from the Royal Palace (Caserta, Italy)
Affect and iconicity in phonological variation
The study of iconic properties of language has been marginalized in linguistics, with the assumption that iconicity, linked with expressivity, is external to the grammar. Yet iconicity plays an essential role in sociolinguistic variation. At a basic level, repetition and phonetic intensification can intensify the indexicality of variables. Iconicity plays a further role in variation in the form of sound symbolism, linking properties of sounds wit…
Age-based perceptions of a reversing regional sound change
Nisei Style
Research Article| December 01 2020 5. Nisei Style: Vowel Dynamism in a Second-Generation Japanese American Community Annette D'Onofrio; Annette D'Onofrio annette d'onofrio is assistant professor of linguistics at Northwestern University. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2016. Her research explores the ways that linguistic styles are used for processes of social meaning-making in both production and perception, with a particular …
Contextualizing reversal
This paper examines the apparent time evolution of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift among 42 White speakers in one Chicago community. We analyse quantitative patterns of community-wide vocalic change alongside individual speakers' lived experiences and attitudes. We find that some features of the Shift are dramatically reversing at the community level, and that changing demographics and social concerns across the community's history condition whic…
Compression in the California Vowel Shift
This paper investigates the California Vowel Shift, previously characterized as a chain shift, in communities across California's Central Valley. An incremental apparent time analysis of 72 Californians’ vowel spaces provides no clear evidence of a gradual chain shift; that is, changes have not unfolded in an order that reflects an implicational chain in chronological time. Instead, we see contemporaneous movements of vowels that work against the…
Complicating categories
This paper examines how American listeners' expectations of non-native English speech from speakers of East Asian descent can be modulated by the persona invoked by a speaker's visual display. While prior work has typically linked expectations of non-native speaker status with East Asian-ness broadly construed, this study indicates that US listeners' expectations can be tied to more particular manifestations of this racialized identity, themselve…
Controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic marker
This paper explores the relation between controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic variable that yields no metalinguistic commentary—a marker (Labov, 1972). Two experiments examine links between the backed trap vowel and its social meanings. The first, a matched guise task, measures social evaluations of the feature in a relatively controlled, introspective task. In the second, two measures are used that access different points in…
Personae and phonetic detail in sociolinguistic signs
Social meaning-based approaches to linguistic variation treat variation as a semiotic system, in which sociolinguistic signs-indexical links between linguistic forms and social meanings-serve as interactional resources that individuals use to project personae. This article explores the perceptual nature of the links between social personae and linguistic forms, examining how information about a speaker's persona can influence a listener's linguis…
Jaw setting and the California Vowel Shift in parodic performance
This article explores the intertwining semiotics of language and embodiment in performances of Californian personae. We analyze two actors' performances of Californian characters in parodic skits, comparing them to the same actors' performances of non-Californian characters. In portraying their Californian characters, the actors use particularized jaw settings, which we link toembodied stereotypesfrom earlier portrayals of the Valley Girl and Sur…
The Low Vowels in California's Central Valley
Research Article| December 01 2016 2. THE LOW VOWELS IN California's CENTRAL VALLEY Annette D'Onofrio; Annette D'Onofrio Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Penelope Eckert; Penelope Eckert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Robert J. Podesva; Robert J. Podesva Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Teresa Pratt; Teresa Pratt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Goo…
Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift
Addressing the dearth of variation research in nonurban, noncoastal regions of California, this study examines the extent to which speakers in Redding, an inland community just north of the Central Valley, participate in the California Vowel Shift (CVS). We acoustically analyze the fronting of the back vowels boot and boat , the raising of ban and backing of bat , and the merger of bot and bought, in sociolinguistic interviews with 30 white lifel…
Persona-based information shapes linguistic perception
This paper investigates the effect of persona-based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature - the backedtrapvowel.trap-backing is associated both with macro-social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye-tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was fr…
Phonetic Detail and Dimensionality in Sound-shape Correspondences
Sound symbolism is the process by which speakers link phonetic features with meanings non-arbitrarily. For instance, speakers across languages associate non-words with rounded vowels, like bouba, with round shapes, and non-words without rounded vowels, like kiki, with spiky shapes. Researchers have posited that this link results from a cognitive association between sounds and visual or proprioceptive cues made in their production (e.g. sounds of …
Persona-based information shapes linguistic perception
This paper investigates the effect of persona-based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature - the backedtrapvowel.trap-backing is associated both with macro-social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye-tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was fr…
Jaw setting and the California Vowel Shift in parodic performance
This article explores the intertwining semiotics of language and embodiment in performances of Californian personae. We analyze two actors' performances of Californian characters in parodic skits, comparing them to the same actors' performances of non-Californian characters. In portraying their Californian characters, the actors use particularized jaw settings, which we link toembodied stereotypesfrom earlier portrayals of the Valley Girl and Sur…
Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift
Addressing the dearth of variation research in nonurban, noncoastal regions of California, this study examines the extent to which speakers in Redding, an inland community just north of the Central Valley, participate in the California Vowel Shift (CVS). We acoustically analyze the fronting of the back vowels boot and boat , the raising of ban and backing of bat , and the merger of bot and bought, in sociolinguistic interviews with 30 white lifel…
Complicating categories
This paper examines how American listeners' expectations of non-native English speech from speakers of East Asian descent can be modulated by the persona invoked by a speaker's visual display. While prior work has typically linked expectations of non-native speaker status with East Asian-ness broadly construed, this study indicates that US listeners' expectations can be tied to more particular manifestations of this racialized identity, themselve…
Personae and phonetic detail in sociolinguistic signs
Social meaning-based approaches to linguistic variation treat variation as a semiotic system, in which sociolinguistic signs-indexical links between linguistic forms and social meanings-serve as interactional resources that individuals use to project personae. This article explores the perceptual nature of the links between social personae and linguistic forms, examining how information about a speaker's persona can influence a listener's linguis…
Contextualizing reversal
This paper examines the apparent time evolution of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift among 42 White speakers in one Chicago community. We analyse quantitative patterns of community-wide vocalic change alongside individual speakers' lived experiences and attitudes. We find that some features of the Shift are dramatically reversing at the community level, and that changing demographics and social concerns across the community's history condition whic…
Compression in the California Vowel Shift
This paper investigates the California Vowel Shift, previously characterized as a chain shift, in communities across California's Central Valley. An incremental apparent time analysis of 72 Californians’ vowel spaces provides no clear evidence of a gradual chain shift; that is, changes have not unfolded in an order that reflects an implicational chain in chronological time. Instead, we see contemporaneous movements of vowels that work against the…
Controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic marker
This paper explores the relation between controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic variable that yields no metalinguistic commentary—a marker (Labov, 1972). Two experiments examine links between the backed trap vowel and its social meanings. The first, a matched guise task, measures social evaluations of the feature in a relatively controlled, introspective task. In the second, two measures are used that access different points in…
Phonetic Detail and Dimensionality in Sound-shape Correspondences
Sound symbolism is the process by which speakers link phonetic features with meanings non-arbitrarily. For instance, speakers across languages associate non-words with rounded vowels, like bouba, with round shapes, and non-words without rounded vowels, like kiki, with spiky shapes. Researchers have posited that this link results from a cognitive association between sounds and visual or proprioceptive cues made in their production (e.g. sounds of …
The social meaning of stylistic variability
While speakers have been shown to deploy linguistic styles to project socially meaningful personae, less well-understood are the ways that variability or consistency of stylistic practice across and within speech events can itself accumulate to construct a public image. This study examines the use of (ING) and word-final /t/-release across multiple campaign rallies of three US presidential candidates, speakers in heightened contexts of persona co…
Affect and iconicity in phonological variation
The study of iconic properties of language has been marginalized in linguistics, with the assumption that iconicity, linked with expressivity, is external to the grammar. Yet iconicity plays an essential role in sociolinguistic variation. At a basic level, repetition and phonetic intensification can intensify the indexicality of variables. Iconicity plays a further role in variation in the form of sound symbolism, linking properties of sounds wit…
Recognizing Uptalk
Relatively little work has examined how metalinguistic awareness about sociolinguistic features can impact processes of sociolinguistic memory, which are crucial to the formation of cognitive sociolinguistic representations. This article explores how metalinguistic commentary can bias listeners’ memory of a linguistic feature, uptalk , that is ideologically linked with women in popular meta‐discourses. A novel contour‐recognition paradigm tests h…
Local features, local meanings
Research on Jewish English in the United States has drawn on a set of ideologies linking the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire to New York City English, but less is known about how these ideologies interface with the social meanings of regional features in the communities outside New York in which these speakers live. Through meta-linguistic commentary and acoustic analyses drawn from sociolinguistic interviews with white Jewish and Catholic Chic…
Age-based perceptions of a reversing regional sound change
Phonetic Detail and Dimensionality in Sound-shape Correspondences
Sound symbolism is the process by which speakers link phonetic features with meanings non-arbitrarily. For instance, speakers across languages associate non-words with rounded vowels, like bouba, with round shapes, and non-words without rounded vowels, like kiki, with spiky shapes. Researchers have posited that this link results from a cognitive association between sounds and visual or proprioceptive cues made in their production (e.g. sounds of …
Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift
Addressing the dearth of variation research in nonurban, noncoastal regions of California, this study examines the extent to which speakers in Redding, an inland community just north of the Central Valley, participate in the California Vowel Shift (CVS). We acoustically analyze the fronting of the back vowels boot and boat , the raising of ban and backing of bat , and the merger of bot and bought, in sociolinguistic interviews with 30 white lifel…
Persona-based information shapes linguistic perception
This paper investigates the effect of persona-based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature - the backedtrapvowel.trap-backing is associated both with macro-social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye-tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was fr…
The Low Vowels in California's Central Valley
Research Article| December 01 2016 2. THE LOW VOWELS IN California's CENTRAL VALLEY Annette D'Onofrio; Annette D'Onofrio Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Penelope Eckert; Penelope Eckert Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Robert J. Podesva; Robert J. Podesva Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Teresa Pratt; Teresa Pratt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Goo…
Jaw setting and the California Vowel Shift in parodic performance
This article explores the intertwining semiotics of language and embodiment in performances of Californian personae. We analyze two actors' performances of Californian characters in parodic skits, comparing them to the same actors' performances of non-Californian characters. In portraying their Californian characters, the actors use particularized jaw settings, which we link toembodied stereotypesfrom earlier portrayals of the Valley Girl and Sur…
Controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic marker
This paper explores the relation between controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic variable that yields no metalinguistic commentary—a marker (Labov, 1972). Two experiments examine links between the backed trap vowel and its social meanings. The first, a matched guise task, measures social evaluations of the feature in a relatively controlled, introspective task. In the second, two measures are used that access different points in…
Personae and phonetic detail in sociolinguistic signs
Social meaning-based approaches to linguistic variation treat variation as a semiotic system, in which sociolinguistic signs-indexical links between linguistic forms and social meanings-serve as interactional resources that individuals use to project personae. This article explores the perceptual nature of the links between social personae and linguistic forms, examining how information about a speaker's persona can influence a listener's linguis…
Compression in the California Vowel Shift
This paper investigates the California Vowel Shift, previously characterized as a chain shift, in communities across California's Central Valley. An incremental apparent time analysis of 72 Californians’ vowel spaces provides no clear evidence of a gradual chain shift; that is, changes have not unfolded in an order that reflects an implicational chain in chronological time. Instead, we see contemporaneous movements of vowels that work against the…
Complicating categories
This paper examines how American listeners' expectations of non-native English speech from speakers of East Asian descent can be modulated by the persona invoked by a speaker's visual display. While prior work has typically linked expectations of non-native speaker status with East Asian-ness broadly construed, this study indicates that US listeners' expectations can be tied to more particular manifestations of this racialized identity, themselve…
Nisei Style
Research Article| December 01 2020 5. Nisei Style: Vowel Dynamism in a Second-Generation Japanese American Community Annette D'Onofrio; Annette D'Onofrio annette d'onofrio is assistant professor of linguistics at Northwestern University. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2016. Her research explores the ways that linguistic styles are used for processes of social meaning-making in both production and perception, with a particular …
Contextualizing reversal
This paper examines the apparent time evolution of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift among 42 White speakers in one Chicago community. We analyse quantitative patterns of community-wide vocalic change alongside individual speakers' lived experiences and attitudes. We find that some features of the Shift are dramatically reversing at the community level, and that changing demographics and social concerns across the community's history condition whic…
Affect and iconicity in phonological variation
The study of iconic properties of language has been marginalized in linguistics, with the assumption that iconicity, linked with expressivity, is external to the grammar. Yet iconicity plays an essential role in sociolinguistic variation. At a basic level, repetition and phonetic intensification can intensify the indexicality of variables. Iconicity plays a further role in variation in the form of sound symbolism, linking properties of sounds wit…
Age-based perceptions of a reversing regional sound change
Variation in Evaluations of Gendered Voices
Listeners are sensitive to the frequency at which speakers produce sociolinguistic features in utterances, reflected in their social evaluations of those speakers. Previous work also illustrates that a speaker’s perceived gender can influence how their linguistic production is processed, perceived, and discussed. However, little is known about how speaker gender can shape the effect of variant frequency on social evaluations. Employing the sociol…
The social meaning of stylistic variability
While speakers have been shown to deploy linguistic styles to project socially meaningful personae, less well-understood are the ways that variability or consistency of stylistic practice across and within speech events can itself accumulate to construct a public image. This study examines the use of (ING) and word-final /t/-release across multiple campaign rallies of three US presidential candidates, speakers in heightened contexts of persona co…
An analytical characterization of different gilding techniques on artworks from the Royal Palace (Caserta, Italy)
The influence of raciolinguistic expectations on phoneme categorization in Spanish–English bilinguals
Aims and objectives: This study examines how social information is utilized in processes of bilingual speech perception. Specifically, we investigate whether racialized expectations of native language background trigger language-specific processing strategies in early or simultaneous Spanish–English bilinguals. Methodology: We coupled a visually-primed phoneme categorization task with a social evaluation questionnaire to test whether Spanish–Engl…
Local features, local meanings
Research on Jewish English in the United States has drawn on a set of ideologies linking the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire to New York City English, but less is known about how these ideologies interface with the social meanings of regional features in the communities outside New York in which these speakers live. Through meta-linguistic commentary and acoustic analyses drawn from sociolinguistic interviews with white Jewish and Catholic Chic…
Recognizing Uptalk
Relatively little work has examined how metalinguistic awareness about sociolinguistic features can impact processes of sociolinguistic memory, which are crucial to the formation of cognitive sociolinguistic representations. This article explores how metalinguistic commentary can bias listeners’ memory of a linguistic feature, uptalk , that is ideologically linked with women in popular meta‐discourses. A novel contour‐recognition paradigm tests h…
Demarcating place authenticity in the CHICAGO vowel
This article analyzes variation in and metalinguistic commentary surrounding the primary stressed vowel of the place-name ‘Chicago’. Sociolinguistic interview data with fifty-six lifelong Chicagoans from two adjacent neighborhoods reveal both social variation and apparent time evolution in the phonetic manifestation and phonemic patterning of the CHICAGO vowel. Contrastive metalinguistic ideologies substantiate this variation, as different speake…
Sociolinguistics in Practice
In this interview, Penelope Eckert discusses her life experiences and career as a linguist. Eckert describes a lifelong fascination with language, from her earliest observations of stylistic variation, to her PhD fieldwork in the Pyrenees, to her ethnographic work in US schools in Michigan and Northern California, to her engagement with social theory, which led her to investigate social meaning from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Eckert …
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (19 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (12 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Vowel (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Perception (7 works)