Research Interests
I'm broadly interested in how phonetic features play into the ways that we understand and create the social world around us. I am particularly interested in how we use social information to understand spoken language, and how we use linguistic styles to form ideas about who other people are, both consciously and automatically.
In my research, I aim to connect a) what we know about the use of linguistic variation as a socially meaningful resource in interactions with b) what we know about how speech is perceived at automatic and controlled levels. This allows me to think about how linguistic styles are represented cognitively, and how they're connected with social constructs like personae.
To address these questions, much of my work has focused on vowels involved in regional variation in the U.S. I explore these features from as many angles as I can: how they pattern macro-socially and how they shift over time, how they're used in ideological performances like parodies, and how they're perceived by listeners at different levels of awareness. Bringing together these perspectives, I think about what, exactly, it means for someone sound like a "Chicagoan," or a "Californian," or a "Valley Girl," and how we use these associations when listening and speaking.
The Chicagoland Language Project
Through the Chicagoland Language Project, my students and I are conducting ongoing fieldwork in the city of Chicago and surrounding areas to better understand how Chicagoans use language, and how language use is connected to the diversity of lived experiences in the area.
In 2017 and 2018, we focused on the neighborhoods of Beverly and Morgan Park on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Check out local coverage of the project in the Villager, the Beverly Area Planning Association's monthly publication!
Learn more at the project website, check us out on Facebook.
Papers
If you'd like to see a paper but can't access it via the link below, shoot me an e-mail - I'm happy to send you a copy.
Forthcoming
- D'Onofrio, Annette. In press. Sociolinguistic signs as cognitive representations. In Hall-Lew, Podesva & Moore, eds. Social Meaning in Linguistic Variation: Theorizing the Third Wave.
- D'Onofrio, Annette & Janneke Van Hofwegen. Forthcoming. Nisei style: Vowel dynamism in a second-generation Japanese-American community. Publication of the American Dialect Society: Speech in the Western States Volume 3: Understudied Dialects.
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
Presentations
Selected presentations/posters on studies not included in papers above, roughly organized by topic. Feel free to e-mail me for a pdf of slides or posters.
Sociolinguistic perceptions and evaluations
- 2019. Experimental evidence for iconicity in variation. With Penelope Eckert. (Paper presented with at NWAV 45, Eugene.)
- 2016. Persona-based information and memory of a sociolinguistic variable. (Presented at LSA Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.).
- 2013. Social perceptions of /o/-raising in Seoul Korean. (Presented at NWAV 42, Pittsburgh.)
- 2012. Linguistic and social effects on perceptions of voice onset time in Korean stops. With Robert J. Podesva, Eric Acton, Sam Bowman, Jeremy Calder, Hsin-Chang Chen, Benjamin Lokshin and Janneke Van Hofwegen.(Poster presented at the 164th meeting of the ASA, Kansas City.)
Variation and change in Chicago
- 2020. Distinction without distance: Racialized vocalic dynamics in an integrated Chicago community. With Jaime Benheim and Shawn Foster. (Presented at LSA Annual Meeting, New Orleans)
- 2019. Age-based dynamics of the perception-production link. (Presented at UKLVC, London)
- 2019. Local dynamics of the perception-production link: Age-based patterns in a Chicago community. (Presented at LSA Annual Meeting, NYC)
Vocalic variation and change in California
- 2015. Nisei style: Vowel dynamism in a second-generation Japanese-American community. With Janneke Van Hofwegen. (Presented at NWAV 44, Toronto.)
Politicians' speech
- 2018. D'Onofrio, Annette & Amelia Stecker. The social meaning of stylistic variability: Sociophonetic (in)variance in presidential candidates' campaign rallies. (Presented at NWAV 74, NYC).
- 2018. Redbird, Beth & Annette D'Onofrio. Politics speaks: What politicians say about
the economy, and how they say it. Northwestern University Institute for Policy
Research Colloquium Series. 21 May.
Personae in sentence processing
- 2019. D'Onofrio, Annette, June Choe & Masaya Yoshida. Personae in syntactic processing: Socially-specified agents bias expectations of verb transitivity. (Poster presented at LSA Annual Meeting, NYC)
Processing of careful versus casual speech
- 2015. Casual speech is more sensitive to top-down information than careful speech. With Meghan Sumner, Kevin McGowan and Teresa Pratt. (Presented at LSA Annual Meeting, Portland.)
Creak in discourse
- 2013. Creaky voice across discourse contexts: Identifying the locus of style for creak. With Katherine Hilton and Teresa Pratt. (Presented at NWAV 42 as part of Jocks and Burnouts Revisited panel, Pittsburgh.)