Synopses & Reviews
This book provides a very readable and up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences. The authors include situations ranging from historically isolated, rural dialects to developing, urban ethnic varieties as they consider the descriptive, theoretical, and applied ramifications of dialects in American society.
The second edition of American Englishincludes new chapters on social and ethnic dialects, including more comprehensive discussions of Latino, Native American, Cajun English, and other varieties, samples from a wider array of US regions, and a separate chapter on African American English. Updated chapters and exercises as well as features such as a phonetic symbols key, and a section on the notion of speech community, combine to make the new edition a valuable resource for students and specialists alike.
Review
“This book has become a staple in the study and instruction of American English… The second edition provides the same balance of detail, clarity, breadth and sophistication offered by the first edition, but with an improved organization and up-to-date information. It is clear that the authors took seriously the task of revising and updating this new edition so that its users could enjoy the maximum benefits of its structure and contents. They will be pleased to know that their efforts were not in vain. The book will undoubtedly continue to be used as one of the key texts in the instruction of American dialects for many years to come.”
Journal of Sociolinguistics"This is an indispensable book, not just for students but for anyone who wants to know how the English language varies in the United States and how this variation has been studied… It is comprehensive, comprehensible and dense with detail." Language in Society (of the previous edition)
"The strengths of the book include its style and the authors’ consideration of how the book might actually be used as a text… the chapters are divided into subsections with helpful headings; exercises calling for creative responses by students are scattered throughout… each chapter ends with a short annotated bibliography for further readings." Language (of the previous edition)
Review
“This book has become a staple in the study and instruction of American English… The second edition provides the same balance of detail, clarity, breadth and sophistication offered by the first edition, but with an improved organization and up-to-date information. It is clear that the authors took seriously the task of revising and updating this new edition so that its users could enjoy the maximum benefits of its structure and contents. They will be pleased to know that their efforts were not in vain. The book will undoubtedly continue to be used as one of the key texts in the instruction of American dialects for many years to come.”
Journal of Sociolinguistics"This is an indispensable book, not just for students but for anyone who wants to know how the English language varies in the United States and how this variation has been studied… It is comprehensive, comprehensible and dense with detail." Language in Society (of the previous edition)
"The strengths of the book include its style and the authors’ consideration of how the book might actually be used as a text… the chapters are divided into subsections with helpful headings; exercises calling for creative responses by students are scattered throughout… each chapter ends with a short annotated bibliography for further readings." Language (of the previous edition)
Review
"
American English is an indispensable tool for studying how literary uses of language pertain to a communicative system which is already inherently variable, and whose variability is in turn deeply bound up with issues of identity, race, gender, power, privilege and prestige. Beyond this, the book demonstrates that focusing more attention on the formal profile of literary works, not less, is our best hope of understanding how literature is iembedded in the culture it both represents and helps shape."
--David Herman, North Carolina State University
"In this exciting revision of Wolfram's classic 'Dialects and American English', Wolfram and Schilling-Estes not only attempt to provide a detailed account of the geographical and sociocultural distribution of certain kinds of American English, through distinct dialects, grammar, and usage, but also attempt to dispel a number of urban (and not-so-urban) myths common amoung native American English speakers.... The work of Schilling-Estes places her in a unique position to comment on language variation and the social issues involved in linguistic minorities." (Linguist)
"The text provides a better delineated yet simple understanding of the real world importance of dialect variation than any other text available.... Anyone who plans to teach an undergraduate course for nonlinguists would be well advised to use this text, and one would be hard pressed to find as good a dialectology text for linguistic majors!"
--Malcah Yaeger-Dror, University of Arizona
"This is an indispensable book, not just for students but for anyone who wants to know how the English language varies in the United States and how this variation has been studied...It is comprehensive, comprehensible and dense with detail.... Just to list the riches of this book would take all the allotted space for this review."
--Allan Metcalf, MacMurray College, Illinois
"The new book covers a lot more territory [than the earlier text by Wolfram], benefiting greatly from the addition of a second author. The book goes far beyond traditional descriptions of American English in the depth of its multicultural approach. Those who have used the earlier version will be pleased at the way the book has been brought up to date with recent research. For classroom use, I have found this book comprehensible and informative, with excellent definitions of terms." (English World Wide)
"This is a very comprehensive account which, in spite of the great amount of detail it contains, never loses sight of the really important data and methods and explains complex facts in clear, succinct and very readable exposition. It was time for such a survey for use in class, and the authors have succeeded in making the subject matter appear both relevant and manageable; this is a book which will be of profit to academic teachers, students and many others interested in the linguistic variation around them." (Anglia)
Synopsis
This book provides an up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences.
Synopsis
"Written by an established scholar who arguably knows as much about the subject as anyone alive and a brilliant, up-and-coming young linguist, the quality and encyclopedic scope of this book will make it a standard reference for years to come."
--Ralph Fasold, Georgetown University
This book provides an up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences. The author describes situations ranging from historically isolated, rural dialects to developing, urban ethnic varieties as they consider the descriptive, theoretical, and applied ramifications of dialects in American society. An appendix of major dialect structures in American English and a glossary of terms for non-specialists are included.
About the Author
Over the past three decades,
Walt Wolfram has pioneered research on a wide range of American vernacular dialects and authored or co-authored 13 books and over 150 articles. After 25 years as the Director of Research at the Center for Applied Linguistics, he was named the first William C. Friday Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University in 1992.
Natalie Schilling-Estes has coordinated field research for the North Carolina Language and Life Project at North Carolina State University since 1993. She has conducted research on historically isolated coastal dialects of American English, focusing on phonological variation and style shifting.
Table of Contents
List of Figures.
List of Tables.
Series Editor’s Preface.
Preface.
Phonetic Symbols.
1 Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars.
1.1 Defining Dialect.
1.2 Dialect: The Popular Viewpoint.
1.3 Dialect Myths and Reality.
1.4 Standards and Vernaculars.
1.5 Vernacular Dialects.
1.6 Labeling Vernacular Dialects.
1.7 Why Study Dialects?.
1.8 A Tradition of Study.
1.9 Further Reading.
2 Why Dialects?.
2.1 Sociohistorical Explanation.
2.1.1 Settlement.
2.1.2 Migration.
2.1.3 Geographical factors.
2.1.4 Language contact.
2.1.5 Economic ecology.
2.1.6 Social stratification.
2.1.7 Social interaction, social practices, and speech communities.
2.1.8 Group and individual identity.
2.2 Linguistic Explanation.
2.2.1 Rule extension.
2.2.2 Analogy.
2.2.3 Transparency and grammaticalization.
2.2.4 Pronunciation phenomena.
2.2.5 Words and word meanings.
2.3 The Final Product.
2.4 Further Reading.
3 Levels of Dialect.
3.1 Lexical Differences.
3.2 Slang.
3.3 Phonological Differences.
3.4 Grammatical Differences.
3.5 Language Use and Pragmatics.
3.6 Further Reading.
4 Dialects in the United States: Past, Present, and Future.
4.1 The First English(es) in America.
4.2 Earlier American English: The Colonial Period.
4.3 American English Extended.
4.4 The Westward Expansion of English.
4.5 The Present and Future State of American English.
4.6 Further Reading.
5 Regional Dialects.
5.1 Eliciting Regional Dialect Forms.
5.2 Mapping Regional Variants.
5.3 The Distribution of Dialect Forms.
5.4 Dialect Diffusion.
5.5 Perceptual Dialectology.
5.6 Region and Place.
5.7 Further Reading.
6 Social and Ethnic Dialects.
6.1 Defining Class.
6.2 Beyond Social Class.
6.3 The Patterning of Social Differences in Language.
6.4 Linguistic Constraints on Variability.
6.5 The Social Evaluation of Linguistic Features.
6.6 Social Class and Language Change.
6.7 Ethnicity.
6.8 Latino English.
6.8.1. Chicano English.
6.8.2 The range of Latino English.
6.9 Cajun English.
6.10 Lumbee English.
6.11 Further Reading.
7 African American English.
7.1 The Status of European American and African American Vernaculars.
7.2 The Origin and Early Development of AAE.
7.3 The Contemporary Development of AAE.
7.4 Conclusion.
7.5 Further Reading.
8 Gender and Language Variation (Was Chapter 7 in first edn).
8.1 Gender-Based Patterns of Variation as Reported in Dialect Surveys.
8.2 Explaining General Patterns.
8.3 Localized Expressions of Gender Relations.
8.4 Communities of Practice: Linking the Local and the Global.
8.5 Language-Use-based Approaches: The “Female Deficit” Approach.
8.6 The “Cultural Difference” Approach.
8.7 The “Dominance” Approach.
8.8 Further Implications.
8.9 Talking About Men and Women.
8.9.1 Generic he and man.
8.9.2 Family names and addresses.
8.9.3 Relationships of association.
8.9.4 Labeling.
8.10 The Question of Language Reform.
8.11 Further Reading.
9 Dialects and Style (Was Chapter 8 in first edn).
9.1 Types of Style Shifting.
9.2 Attention to Speech.
9.2.1 The Patterning of Stylistic Variation across Social Groups.
9.2.2 Limitations of the Attention to Speech Approach.
9.3 Audience Design.
9.3.1 The Effects of Audience on Speech Style.
9.3.2 Limitations of the Audience Design Approach.
9.3.3 Newer Approaches to Audience Design.
9.4 Speaker Design Approaches.
9.5 Further Considerations.
9.6 Further Reading.
10 On the Applications of Dialect Study.
10.1 Applied Dialectology.
10.2 Dialects and Testing.
10.2.1 Language achievement.
10.2.2 Speech and language development tests.
10.2.3 Predicting dialect interference.
10.3 Testing Language.
10.3.1 Using language to access information.
10.3.2 The testing situation.
10.3.3 The language diagnostician.
10.4 Teaching Standard English.
10.4.1 What standard?.
10.4.2 Approaches to standard English.
10.4.3 Can Standard English be taught?.
10.5 Further Reading.
11 Dialect Awareness: Extending Applications.
11.1 Dialects and Reading.
11.1.1 Dialect readers.
11.2 Dialect Influence in Written Language.
11.3 Written Dialect.
11.4 Proactive Dialect Awareness Programs.
11.5 A Curriculum on Dialects.
11.6 Community-based Dialect Awareness Programs.
11.7 Scrutinizing Community Partnerships.
11.8 Further Reading.
Appendix: An Inventory of Socially Diagnostic Structures.
Glossary.
References.
Index.