James Grama, Ph.D
Research foci
Below is a snapshot of what I research.
For all full papers, see my CV with downloadable links.
LaVaLi Project
Language Change across the Lifespan: LaVaLi
I am a member of the LaVaLi team in the Sociolinguistics Lab at the University of Duisburg-Essen, which is a project that investigates how people's speech changes over the course of their lifetimes, especially in post-adolescence. Our data features recordings at between two and three time points from speakers from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. For more, visit the LaVaLi website, and be sure to check out the LaVaLi blog, which highlights recent work from our team members.
Sydney Rooftops
Variation and change in a diverse society: Sydney Speaks
I'm affiliated with the Sydney Speaks project which aims to capture the influence of migrant groups in Australia's largest and most ethnically and linguistically diverse city, Sydney. Using a unique and highly regimented corpus of recorded conversational interviews, we investigate how Sydney English has changed, who has been instrumental in those changes, and how social factors and social networks play a role in those changes. For more, visit the Sydney Speaks website, and see our papers and talks below.
Radar plot showing boundary displacement for MFA, FAVE, LaBB-CAT and MAUS
(from Gonzalez, Grama & Travis 2018)
Assessing forced alignment efficacy
One of my interests is gauging how good the tools are that sociophoneticians use. At the moment, this interest has largely been focused on the accuracy of forced alignment, especially as it pertains to doing research on minority languages. See our papers below for more.
View of Nā Mokulua ("The Mokes") from the top of the Pillboxes trail off the windward coast of O‘ahu
Creoles and Englishes: Variation in Hawai‘i
I work on language varieties spoken in Hawai‘i. This includes the local creole (known to linguists as Hawai‘i Creole, and to Locals as Pidgin). By comparing recordings with Pidgin speakers recorded in the 1970s with speakers recorded in the 2000s, my work has demonstrated that Pidgin has undergone radical phonetic changes. What's more, these changes appear to be linked with the use of Pidgin morpho-syntactic forms, such that speakers who speak "heavier" Pidgin produce more canonically Pidgin-like vowels. For more, check out my dissertation, and watch this space for upcoming articles.
My work also focuses on the varieties of English spoken in Hawai‘i. I'm part of a broader team of researchers whose research is focused on how sounds vary systematically throughout the islands. To find out more about the project, check out our publications below!
And below is a preprint of a book chapter to appear ca. 2024 in the New Cambridge History of the English Language (eds. Ray Hickey and Kate Burridge) discussing changes (both parallel and divergent) in the vowels (among other things) of both Pidgin and Hawai‘i English.
Of course, knowing what people do with language is only half the story. I've also done work that investigates how people's perception of language variation is distributed in physical space. Read about that here.
Some California vowels
Chain shifting: Variation in California
I also work on my native dialect, California English. Together with Bob Kennedy, we have investigated what's called the California Vowel Shift (CVS) or, more recently, the Low Back Merger Shift (LBMS). This is the shift in which vowels we call TRAP (as in bad and cat), DRESS (as in set and rest), and KIT (as in sit and kid) lower and retract in California. Of particular interest to us is the role played by LOT and THOUGHT; we find that complete neutralization of contrast between these two sets is not a necessary precursor to the initiation of the LBMS. More can be found below.