For centuries, verbal storytelling has been an important component in documenting the history of the American South. Now, Chatham County residents have an opportunity to have their stories heard.
In the summer of 2019, a group of researchers at North Carolina State University began interviewing people across Chatham County as part of a project called Voices of Chatham: The Changing Language of Chatham County, aimed at preserving and studying the history and language of the county. A year later, the project continues, though interviews have been delayed for the foreseeable future.
Voices of Chatham is a project under the umbrella of N.C. State’s larger program, The Language and Life Project, started by Dr. Walt Wolfram, the William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at N.C. State, in 1993.
“Our goal is to preserve the language as it’s changing and to celebrate it as a part of North Carolina heritage,” said Wolfram. “It’s as North Carolinian as any artifact.”
In the 27 years it’s been active, the Language and Life Project has conducted more than 3,500 interviews in nearly 30 sites across North Carolina, ranging from Robeson County to Ocracoke to Raleigh, and now, to Chatham County.
Wolfram chose to focus on Chatham County because of its reputation as one of the fastest-growing counties in the state as it continues to make a transition from a mostly rural county to what Darien Dixon, a graduate research assistant, refers to as an “urban hybrid.”
With Chatham County presently undergoing rapid development and experiencing an influx of people moving to towns like Pittsboro, Wolfram expects there to be a drastic shift in the language of the county moving forward.
“We’re studying the community of Chatham and the two different (sides of the) project are focusing on different components of that,” said Mia Shang, a graduate research assistant at N.C. State. “But it really is overall about the people, about the community and in a lot of ways, about change.”
Two parts
Voices of Chatham is split into two main parts: oral history and sociolinguistic analysis.
The oral history portion of the project encompasses the stories told by the interviewees, putting a greater focus on the content of their stories.
Participants have to be at least 16 years old and they need to have lived in Chatham County for at least three-fourths of their life. Wolfram and his team have primarily interviewed people who are 40 and older, including two people who were 100 years old at the time of their interviews. Getting younger people to participate is still a challenge.
“It’s not something that every 17-year-old is going to be chomping at the bit to do, to tell us about their childhood that’s still unfolding,” said Dixon. “When it came to setting up the questionnaire for teenagers, we had to talk about things they’ve actually experienced, so we’ve got questions in there about TikTok and Instagram and school bullies, real stuff that kids engage with.”
Once the participant is interviewed, a researcher will transcribe the interview and place it into a category based on its overarching themes, such as integration, farming or school. Snippets of these interviews, along with basic information about the participant (sex, date of birth, race), are uploaded to a website that’s accessible to the public: www.voicesofchatham.org.
Sociolinguistics, or the study of language in a social setting, is analyzed in the second portion of the project, which deals with the interviewee’s lived experiences and their effect on that person’s speech.
Using an application called Praat, which is, among many things, a speech analysis software, Wolfram and his team can intricately break down each syllable, vowel and soundwave that comes from the mouths of their interviewees.
“Why do we care so much about how someone says a particular vowel?” asked Dixon. “Because language drives social interaction, language shapes how we see the world and how we see people. It molds how we function as humans. So studying the minute details of that are just as important as being able to point out somebody’s accent and say ‘Oh, you’re not from here.’”
The project uses this data to track how language in Chatham County has changed over time as the population grows younger and the demographics begin to shift. Wolfram will then work to present this data to the public in more digestible ways.
The Language and Life Project has produced 14 documentaries based on its research, including one — “Talking Black in America” — that won a Midsouth Emmy for Best Cultural Documentary earlier this year.
Wolfram plans to do the same for the Voices of Chatham project, along with possibly writing a small book about their findings.
In the first semester and a half of the project, Wolfram’s team interviewed more than 50 lifelong residents of Chatham County, making progress toward their goal of 100 participants. Then came the coronavirus pandemic.
Voices of Chatham halted the interviewing process in mid-March and four months later, there’s still no answer as to when it’ll be able to resume since their interviewees are often part of vulnerable populations.
“The interest level is always going to be there because what we’re doing is something that’s timeless,” said Dixon. “Everything’s going to ramp back up when it’s appropriate to do so, when it’s safe to do so.”
While it’s been beneficial for community members to tell their stories and be heard, it’s also affected the researchers who have learned more about Chatham County than they ever expected they would.
Dixon has realized just how prominent rabbits have been throughout the county’s history. Shang has discovered a newfound appreciation for rural life. Wolfram has enjoyed finding its similarities and differences with Wake County.
“This has been very educational and interesting to learn first-hand from these people and their lived experiences,” said Shang. “Working on this project has definitely given me a greater appreciation for this community.”