Race and the Rise of Standard American

Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9783110171907
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110851991
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This study examines the effect of race-consciousness upon the pronunciation of American English and upon the ideology of standardization in the twentieth century. It shows how the discourses of prescriptivist pronunciation, the xenophobic reaction against immigration to the eastern metropolises - especially New York - and the closing of the western frontier together constructed an image of the American West and Midwest as the locus of proper speech and ethnicity. This study is of interest to scholars and students in linguistics, American studies, cultural studies, Jewish studies, and studies in race, class, and gender.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The legitimation of accent
• 1.1. Power, pronunciation, and the symbolic
• 1.2. Standard ideology
• 1.3. The story of r
• 1.4. Heartland rules
• 2. Pronunciations of race
• 2.1. Saxons and swarthy Swedes: race and alterity in Benjamin Franklin
• 2.2. From Noah to Noah: Webster's ideology of American race and language
• 2.3. Class and race in the nineteenth century
• 2.4. Boston's last stand: the prescriptions of Henry James
• 2.5. Of tides and tongues: race, language, and immigration
• 2.6. Teutonic struggles: Mencken and Matthews
• 2.7. Vizetelly and the birth of network standard
• 3. Occident, orient, and alien
• 3.1. Harvard looks west
• 3.2. Resonances of the post-frontier
• 3.3. Splitting the apple: schizoglossia in New York
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• References
• Index