Conversational Maxims
A Scholar to Know: Robin Tolmach Lakoff (1942-)
Conversational Implicature
A Question to Discuss: Entailment and Implicature
Relevance
Politeness and Face: Negotiating Relationships in Speaking
Positive and Negative Politeness and Face
Face-Threatening Acts
A Question: A Question to Discuss: How Do Compliments Work?
Discourse Markers: Signaling Discourse Organization and Authority
Function of Discourse Markers
Language Change at Work: Discourse Markers rom Beowulf to Dude
Types of Discourse Markers
Language Change at Work: Like, I Was Like, What Is Going On with the Word Like?
Conversation Analysis: Taking Turns and the Conversational Floor
Structure of Conversation
Turn-Taking
Turn-Taking Violations
Maintenance and Repair
Style Shifting: Negotiating Social Meaning
Indexical Meaning
Style and Creativity
Special Focus: Do Men and Women Speak Differently?
Performing Gender
Early Language and Gender Research
Different Models for Gender Difference
Language, Sexuality, and Desire
Language and Identity
Summary
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 9 Stylistics
Stylistics
Systematicity and Choice
The World of Texts: Genres and Registers
Variation among Text Types
Which Comes First?
Textual Unity: Cohesion
Elements of Cohesion
Cohesion at Work
Telling Stories: The Structure of Narratives
The Components of a Narrative
Literature and Speech Acts
Speech Acts and Narrative Perspecitives
Speech Acts in Literature
Investigating Dialogue
Conversational Structure and Politeness
Reporting Speech: Direct and Indirect
Investigating Word Choice
Diction
Metaphor
Modality
Language Variation at Work: Literary Forensics
Linguistics into Poetics
Reading like Alice, Humpty Dumpty, and Michael Toolan
Poeticity and Its Axes
A Scholar to Know: Roman Jakobson (1896—1982)
Meter, Rhythm, and Scansion
Prosody and Verse Structure
Sound, Meaning, and Poetic Technique
Language Change at Work: Hip Hop Rhymes
Special Focus: What Makes “Good Writing”?
Summary
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 10 Language Acquisition
Theories about Children’s Language Acquisition
Imitation versus Instinct
Noam Chomsky and Universal Grammar
Debates about Language “Hard Wiring”
Language and the Brain
Children Learning Sounds
Language Acquisition Tests
Acquisition of Phonemic Differences
Children Learning Words
Babbling and First Words
Language Acquisition at Work: Imitating Faces
Language Acquisition at Work: Deaf Children Learning ASL
Acquisition of Words and Word Meaning
A Question to Discuss: Why Do We Talk with Our Hands?
Aquistion of Words and Word Meaning
Children Learning Grammar
Patterns of Children’s Errors
Acquisition of Complex Grammatical Constructions
The Role of Parents in Language Acquisition
Features of Parentese
Role of Parentese
Language Acquisition in Special Circumstances
Pidgins and Creoles
Nicaraguan Sign Language
Critical Age Hypothesis
Critical Periods
A Case Study: Genie
Acquisition of Languages Later in Life
When Things Go Wrong
Broca’s Aphasia
Language Variation at Work: Verbal Slips
Wernicke’s Aphasia
Dyslexia
Special Focus: Children and Bilingualism
Children Learning Two Languages
Bilingual Education Programs
Summary
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 11 Language Variation
Dialect
Dialects versus Languages
Standard and Nonstandard Dialects
A Question to Discuss: Is American English a Dialect or a Language?
Dialectology
Variationist Sociolinguistics
Language Change at Work: Pop versus Soda
William Labov’s Research
A Methodological Issue
Analyzing Variation
Sociolinguistics versus Generative Grammar
A Scholar to Know: William Labov (1927— )
Speech Communities and Communities of Practice
A Question to Discuss: Should We Preserve Dialects?
Major Factors in Language Variation within Speech Communities
Age
Gender
Class
Race and Ethnicity
Social Networks
Effects of Language Contact
Dialect Contact
Language Contact
Pidgins and Creoles
Speaker Attitudes and Language Variation
A Question to Discuss: What Does “Linguistic Equality” Mean?
Summary
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 12 American Dialects
The Politics of American Dialects
Speakers Who Control Multiple Dialects
Judgments and Humor about Dialects
Dialect Diversity and National Unity
Language Change at Work: The Inconsistency of Language Attitudes
Regional Variation
A Sample Walk
Language Change at Work: Why Does Unless Mean 'in case' in Pennsylvania?
Defining Regions
The Emergence of Regional Dialects
Retention
Naturally Occurring Internal Language Change
Language Change at Work: Regional Food Terms
Language Contact
Coining
Language Change at Work: A Dragonfly by Any Other Name
Social Factors
The History of Regional Dialects in the United States
The Beginnings of American English
The Northern Dialect Region
The Southern Dialect Region
The Midland Dialect Region
The Western Dialect Region
Dialects within Dialect Regions
Two Case Studies of Regional Variation
Appalachian English
Language Change at Work: Jack, Will, and Jenny in the Swamp
California English
Social Variation
Slang and Jargon versus Dialects
Social Dialects
Two Case Studies of Social Variation
Chicano English
African American English
Special Focus: The Ebonics Controversy
A Scholar to Know: Geneva Smitherman (1940-)
Summary
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 13 History of English: Old to Early Modern English
Old English (449—1066): History of Its Speakers
When Did English Begin?
Which Germanic Dialect Is “Old English”?
Language Change at Work: How English Was Written Down
Where Do the Names English and England Originate?
Old English Lexicon
Latin Borrowing
Old Norse Borrowing
Native English Word Formation
Old English Grammar
The Origins of Modern English Noun Inflections
The Gender of Things
The Familiarity of Personal Pronouns
The Many Faces of Modifiers
The Origins of Some Modern English Irregular Verbs
Variation in Word Order
Middle English (1066—1476): History of Its Speakers
The Norman Conquest
A Scholar to Know: J. R. R. Tolkien the Philologist
The Renewal of English
The Emergence of a Standard
Middle English Dialects
The Middle English Lexicon
French Borrowing
Latin Borrowing
Other Borrowing
Word Formation Processes
Middle English Grammar
The Loss of Inflections and Its Effects
The Inflections That Survive
Early Modern English (1476—1776): History of Its Speakers
The Printing Press
Attitudes about English
The Study of English
A Question to Discuss: How Do We Preserve the Evidence of a Language?
Early Modern English Lexicon
Greek and Latin Borrowing
Romance Borrowing
Semantic Change in the Native Lexicon
Affixation
Early Modern English Grammar
Older Grammatical Retentions
Developments in Morphosyntax
Language Change at Work: The Invention of pea
The Fate of Final-e
Language Change at Work: The Great Vowel Shift
Looking Ahead
Suggested Reading
Exercises
Chapter 14 History of English: Modern and Future English
Modern English (1776—Present): Social Forces at Work
Prescription and the Standard Variety
The Media
Imperialism
Globalization
Language Change at Work: The Debated Origins of O.K.
Modern English: Language Change in Progress
Word Formation
Lexical Borrowing
Phonological Changes
Grammatical Changes
A Question to Discuss: “Hey, You Guys, Is This Grammaticalization?”
The Status of English in the United States
Language Variation at Work: The Myth of the “German Vote” in 1776
A Question to Discuss: Official State Languages
The Status of English around the World
The Meaning of a “Global Language”
English as a Global Language
World Englishes
The Future of English as a Global Language
What Happens after Modern English?
Language Change at Work: Retronymy and Reduplication
English and Electronically-Mediated Communication
Suggested Readings
Exercises
Glossary
Bibliography
Credits
Index