About the Project
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The Language and Life Project at NC State University Linguistics and the NC State Linguistics program have partnered together with the Chatham Historical Association to capture the oral histories of Chatham county residents.
Since 2019, our team has conducted over 90 interviews with community-members from across the county to capture the unique history and culture of the area. Read more about the project, our goals, and methods below.
Project Goals
(1) To document the unique history and culture of Chatham County by conducting interviews with long-time residents
(2) To make this history accessible to the public through an online oral history exhibit and a documentary film
(3) To study how language in Chatham is changing over time
What’s an Oral History?
An oral history collects and preserves the memories of a community through audio and video recordings. Through first-hand accounts, oral histories offer a glimpse into the past and breathe life into stories that would have otherwise faded away.
The Voices of Chatham collection consists of audio excerpts and video recordings from interviews that NC State University researchers have conducted with Chatham County residents. These snippets showcase memorable stories from interviewees’ lives, highlighting themes of change, recalling school days, and speaking to Chatham County’s close relationship with its agricultural roots.
In this oral history, you will hear residents’ stories about the construction of the highway, the transformation of the farming community, school integration, the role of church in day-to-day life, the influx of newcomers into Chatham County, and other topics.
Why Chatham?
Chatham County has experienced major economic shifts in the past century which have transformed it from a largely agricultural and factory-based economy into a commuter county. These dramatic changes make Chatham an important site for doing oral histories so that the memories of a quickly-disappearing Chatham and the stories of the county as we know it today may be preserved for future generations.
These developments also make Chatham interesting in terms of language. Scholars have found that social and economic changes often coincide with changes in accent and language, making Chatham a perfect case study for how community change affects language. By carefully examining interviews collected across generations of residents, we can reveal what linguistic changes have taken place over time and investigate what social causes might be behind them.
Our Methods
Since the summer of 2019, our team has been recording interviews with long-time residents of Chatham County. During the interview, participants are encouraged to share stories about their childhood, families, past times, work life, and memories of Chatham. Interviews are made using high fidelity recording equipment that ensures the quality of each recording and accurately captures the seemingly-small differences in the way people speak.
Any person who is at least 16 years old and who has lived in Chatham Country for at least three quarters of their life is eligible to be interviewed. More recent newcomers who are familiar with Chatham culture and life are also welcome to participate. From young adults to great grandparents, every person’s story reveals something significant about life in Chatham County.
Stories of the Past for the Future
This online oral history exhibit of Chatham County allows people to browse through stories revealing the varied and rich history of Chatham County, its residents, and its languages. These stories will provide future generations with perspectives from the past and help newcomers understand the beautiful and varied life of Chatham County.
The interviews will also be used by linguists who analyze the sometimes subtle differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Language change can often reflect social change within a community, creating a linguistic map of an evolving landscape. These analyses will also inform language researchers about how language changes in different kinds of communities.
Who We Are
We are the Language and Life Project (LLP), the outreach arm of the linguistics department at NC State University.
The LLP has made over 15 award-winning documentaries and recorded over 2,000 interviews across the state documenting the dialects and cultures of communities across North Carolina. The LLP's documentaries are available for free on our YouTube channel. You can find out more about the ongoing work of the LLP at our website.
Our team consists of LLP staff – Brody McCurdy and Lydia Elrod – members of the Chatham Historical Association, and the linguistics graduate students at NC State. You can find out more about our team here.
Our Commitment to Privacy
The names of participants are shown only when they have given us explicit permission to do so; otherwise, interviewees' identities have been anonymized for their privacy. If an interviewee wants access to their full interview, or if, for any reason, a participant wants us to remove a particular segment we have included from their interview, they can contact us here.