Synopses & Reviews
The third installment in the landmark LAVIS (Language Variety in the South) series,
New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches brings together essays devoted to the careful examination and elucidation of the rich linguistic diversity of the American South, updating and broadening the work of the earlier volumes by more fully capturing the multifaceted configuration of languages and dialects in the South.
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Beginning with an introduction to American Indian languages of the Southeast, five fascinating essays discuss indigenous languages, including Caddo, Ofo, and Timucua, and evidence for the connection between the Pre-Columbian Southeast and the Caribbean.
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Five essays explore the earlier Englishes of the South, covering topics such as the eighteenth century as the key period in the differentiation of Southern American English and the use of new quantitative methods to trace the transfer of linguistic features from England to America. They examine a range of linguistic resources, such as plantation overseersand#8217; writings, modern blues lyrics, linguistic databases, and lexical and locutional compilations that reveal the regionand#8217;s distinctive dialectal traditions.
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New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches widens the scope of inquiry into the linguistic influences of the African diaspora as evidenced in primary sources and records. A comprehensive essay redefines the varieties of French in Louisiana, tracing the pathway from Colonial Louisiana to the emergence of Plantation Society French in a diglossic relationship with Louisiana Creole. A further essay maps the shift from French to English in family documents.
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An assortment of essays on English in the contemporary South touch on an array of compelling topics from discourse strategies to dialectal emblems of identity to stereotypes in popular perception.
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Essays about recent Latino immigrants to the South bring the collection into the twenty-first century, taking into account the dramatic increase in the population of Spanish speakers and illuminating the purported role of and#147;Spanglish,and#8221; the bilingual lives of Spanish-speaking Latinos in Mississippi, and the existence of regional Spanish dialectal diversity.
Review
and#147;This collection of essays represents both an original and a significant contribution to the field. The most valuable aspect of the collection is the breadth of its enquiry, which encompasses the evolving picture of language in the South. Far more complicated than many realize, the language of the South merits intense scrutiny by linguists, since the South is in many ways and#145;definedand#8217; by its speech. Thanks to the scope and depth of the research presented in this book, which is supported by solid facts from geographic communities as well as from communities of practice, this collection of essays challenges major theoretical approaches in the field of linguistics itself.and#8221;
and#151;Patricia Causey Nichols, author of Voices of our Ancestors: Language Contact in Early South Carolina
Review
and#147;This is an outstanding collection of essaysand#151;comprehensive in scope and containing work by the best scholars now writing. Of particular note are essays devoted to Amerindian languages and Spanish. Until recently, the South has been less influenced than other parts of the country by languages other than English. This linguistic isolationism is no longer the case, and the volume will introduce many readers to that fact.and#8221;
and#151;Richard W. Bailey, author of Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language
Synopsis
An outgrowth of the LAVIS III symposium (2004),
New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches comprises forty-five original essays (revised and reviewed) on a range of topics regarding the languages and dialects of the American South.
About the Author
Michael D. Picone is a professor and former chair of the department of Modern Languages and Classics at the University of Alabama, author of
Anglicisms, Neologisms, and Dynamic French, and coeditor of the
Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities.
Catherine Evans Davies is a professor and former chair of the department of English at the University of Alabama and coeditor of
English and Ethnicity.