How dialects reveal America's history and hint at what's next
Across the United States, the way you speak is filled with cultural authenticity and central to identity.
You can tell where Emily Sweeney is from the minute she says "coffee."
If you want to imagine her speaking, picture her saying the following words like Ben Affleck: "Park the car in Harvard Yard."
The prevalence of certain dialects is thanks to people like Sweeney, and the changes, according to linguists, usually happen once teenage girls say so.
"Consistently across every dialect that we have ever studied, it is adolescent girls who are half a generation to a full generation ahead of the curve," said Betsy Sneller, an associate professor of linguistics at Michigan State University. "What they're doing is where language is gonna go."
Sneller, who studies sociolinguistic change in the U.S., said teenage girls have the most power to determine where vernacular goes during the "adolescent peak."