The Bad School on the Northwest Side
Indexical Order and High School Choice in Chicago1
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7515041 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jaime Benheim (0000-0001-9764-9831, Department of Linguistics Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-14 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/josl.70001 |
| OpenAlex | W4416852285 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 30 |
Research throughout the United States has found that the type of high school a speaker attended can impact linguistic variation. However, this work has largely focused on adult alumni of schools. This paper examines high school students’ reversal of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, an ongoing sound change in Chicago, through a qualitative analysis of interview content and quantitative analysis of vowel production. Results show that students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds who attend “elite” high schools produce more reversed variants of the highly salient TRAP and LOT vowels than those at other schools. This suggests that variants originally associated with class have taken on higher‐order indexical meanings as students use them to reflect their positions in a status‐based hierarchy
Class (philosophy · Indexicality · Salient · Socioeconomic status · Sociolinguistics · Vowel · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Phonetics and Phonology Research
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |