Jaime Melissa Benheim

Research

I am currently studying the relationship between language change, social practice, and place identity in Rhode Island. In 2024-2025, this fieldwork is focused on Providence, the state’s largest urban center. Learn more about the project @ https://sites.brown.edu/rilang/

My past work has explored adolescents’ socialization into socially meaningful language use, sound change and identity in Chicago, and place-linked features in politicians’ speech. Below is a list of publications/presentations related to this work. Please feel free to email me for copies of papers/slides – I am happy to share these with you!

Publications

Benheim, Jaime. 2025. “The bad school on the Northwest Side”: Indexical order and high school choice in Chicago. Journal of Sociolinguistics, EarlyView.

Benheim, Jaime & Annette D’Onofrio. 2024. Local features, local meanings: Language ideologies and place-linked vocalic variation among Jewish Chicagoans. Language in Society, 53(1): 129-155.

Benheim, Jaime. 2023. High school choice and the social meanings of sound change in Chicago. PhD Dissertation, Northwestern University.

Benheim, Jaime. 2020. Regional features and the Jewish ethnolinguistic repertoire in Chicago. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 26(2): 1-10.

D’Onofrio, Annette & Jaime Benheim. 2020. Contextualizing reversal: Local dynamics of the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago Community. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 24(4): 469-491.

Presentations

Roughly organized by topic. * = student co-author

Language and place in New England

  • Benheim, Jaime. 2025. “You don’t really hear it much on the East Side”: THOUGHT-lowering and ideologies of place in Providence, Rhode Island. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 53, Ann Arbor, MI.
  • Benheim, Jaime, Luca Iallonardi* & Talia Sherman.* 2025. Representing Rhode Island: Lifespan change in the Senate. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
  • Sherman, Talia* and Jaime Benheim. 2024. Locating class in place: An analysis of Boston and Rhode Island personae performances. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 52, Miami Beach, FL.

Sound change and social meaning in adolescence

  • Benheim, Jaime, Adia Colvin*, & Julia Dubnoff*. 2024. Locat(ING) social meaning: Gender, orientation to place, and local personae in Chicago. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 52, Miami Beach, FL.
  • Benheim, Jaime. 2023. “Like prestigious like whatever”: Attention paid to speech and orientation to elite education in Chicago area high schools. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
  • Benheim, Jaime. 2022. “The bad school on the Northwest Side”: High school choice and the social meaning of sound change in Chicago. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 50, Palo Alto, CA.
  • Benheim, Jaime. 2022. Northern cities and suburbs: TRAP, LOT, and THOUGHT among white Chicagoland adolescents. Poster presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. [Virtual].
  • Benheim, Jaime. 2021. Style in sound change: Chicago adolescents’ class- and age-based evaluations of the NCS. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 49, UT-Austin [Virtual].

The Chicagoland Language Project
P.I.: Annette D’Onofrio; Project Website

  • D’Onofrio, Annette and Jaime Benheim. 2021. Evolving intersections: Shifting identities and Northern Cities Vowels in a Chicago community. Paper presented at Sociolinguistic Symposium 23, The University of Hong Kong [Virtual].
  • D’Onofrio, Annette, Jaime Benheim, & Shawn Foster. 2020. Distinction without distance: Racialized vocalic dynamics in an integrated Chicago community. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting,  New Orleans.
  • D’Onofrio, Annette and Jaime Benheim. 2018. Contextualizing reversal: Sociohistorical dynamics and the Northern Cities Shift in a Chicago neighborhood. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 47, New York, New York.

Jewish English in Chicagoland

  • Benheim, Jaime. 2023. /t/-release and burst duration in the construction of Jewish masculinity. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 51, New York.
  • Benheim, Jaime. 2019. Regional features and the Jewish Ethnolinguistic Repertoire in Chicago. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48 Eugene, Oregon and Poster presented at MidPhon 24, Milwaukee, WI.

Politics and indexicality of Southern U.S. English

  • Stecker, Amelia & Jaime Benheim. 2022. Listeners’ interpretations of mock Southern U.S. English in parody. Paper presented at American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. [Virtual].
  • Benheim, Jaime & Amelia Stecker. 2021. Political ideology, masculinity, and the indexical associations of Southern U.S. English. Poster presented at MidPhon 25, UIUC [Virtual] and New Ways of Analyzing Variation 49, UT-Austin [Virtual].