Paralleling and reflecting the many recent changes in national life have been corresponding developments in the American language. As new concerns and problems have arisen, new vocabularies have come into being. Countless new words and novel expressions as well as new meanings and uses for established words have been created. This collection…

This book examines dialect variations in the United States. Chapter topics include an introduction to dialect study, colonial English, eastern settlement, eastern words, eastern pronunciation, eastern grammar, the westward movement, sectional atlas studies (the Great Lakes, the Upper Middle West, Texas, Colorado and other Rocky Mountain areas,…

This book is a talking tour of American English. Short easy-to-read essays explicate the key features that make American speech so expressive and distinct. The tour begins in the South, home of the most easily recognized of American dialects, travels north the New England, then west to the Midwest, and on to the far west and Alaska and Hawaii. In…

Many black students speak a nonprestige dialect called black English, which places them at a disadvantage academically and socially. This monograph describes the features of black English, defines its use, discusses several theories of its origin, and offers some methods for teaching black students standard spoken usage as another style of speech.…

Although some educators have advocated eradication of Black American English and other non-standard American English dialects in formal school training, it is recognized that many dialects are effectively used to a great degree by many Americans. Black American English, like other dialects, is a legitimate linguistic system that has logic,…

In recent years a considerable amount of interest has developed in language variability and in the educational problems connected with it. This volume is a report of linguistic research on the variable language behavior in a community of American English speakers, specifically on some aspects of tense marking in Black English. The following topics…

This description of Appalachian speech, derived from one part of the final report of a research project on Appalachian Dialects, is intended as a reference work for educators, particularly reading specialists, English teachers, language arts specialists, and speech pathologists. Chapters deal with the following main topics: (1) a sociolinguistic…

The following are included in this collection of essays on patterns of rules of speaking, and sociolinguistics and second language learning and teaching: "How to Tell When Someone Is Saying 'No' Revisited" (Joan Rubin); "Apology: A Speech-Act Set" (Elite Olshtain and Andrew Cohen); "Interpreting and Performing Speech Acts in a Second Language: A…