About the Project
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In 2019, the Language and Life Project at NC State University and the NC State Linguistics program partnered together with the Chatham County Historical Association to capture the oral histories of Chatham county residents.
Over the course of the next five years, our team conducted over 100 interviews with community members from across the county to capture the unique history and culture of the area. Read more about our project, our goals, and our 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, where you can 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.
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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 examining 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
Our team started recording interviews with long-time residents of Chatham County in the summer of 2019. During these interview, participants were encouraged to share stories about their childhood, families, past times, work life, and memories of Chatham. Interviews were made using high fidelity recording equipment that ensured the quality of each recording and accurately captured the seemingly-small differences in the way people speak.
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Any person who was at least 16 years old and who had lived in Chatham Country for at least three quarters of their life was eligible to be interviewed. More recent newcomers who were familiar with Chatham culture and life also participated. From young adults to great grandparents, every person’s story in our collection 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 language. These stories will provide future generations with perspectives from the past and help newcomers understand the beautiful and varied life of Chatham County.
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These interviews are also being used by linguists who analyze the often 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 16 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 and you can find out more about the ongoing work of the LLP at our website.
Our team consisted of LLP staff, Brody McCurdy and Lydia Elrod, members of the Chatham County 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.