Josh Brown, a doctoral candidate in German linguistics, won second place in the Arts and Humanities category at the 2009 Graduate Research Exhibition with his poster entitled "Patterns of Linguistic and Religious Change among Central Pennsylvania's Anabaptists."  Josh's dissertation project is focused on the Amish-Mennonite congregations in Kishacoquillas "Big" Valley in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania.  Since the original Amish settlement in the eighteenth century, various divisions within the churches have created one of the most diversely concentrated Anabaptist settlements with groups ranging from the most conservative Amish in the world to assimilated Mennonites.  Concomitant with the religious change and differing interpretations of separation from the world is a change in language behavior, namely the shift from using archaic German in worship services and Pennsylvania Dutch at home to English monolingualism.  Building on work from an oral history project started in 2005, the methods used for this project include questionnaires, interviews, and participant observation.  The project will be couched within a framework of ethnolinguistic vitality, seeking to incorporate social and individual motivations for language shift.  This project will not only better inform current work on language maintenance and shift, but also challenge previous notions on language shift in the United States and display the complex interaction of language, society, culture, and religion.