American English

Dialects and Variation

Walt Wolfram, Natalie Schilling

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118391433
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistique

The new edition of this classic text chronicles recent breakthrough developments in the field of American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences.

• Now accompanied by a companion website with an extensive array of sound files, video clips, and other online materials to enhance and illustrate discussions in the text
• Features brand new chapters that cover the very latest topics, such as Levels of Dialect, Regional Varieties of English, Gender and Language Variation, The Application of Dialect Study, and Dialect Awareness: Extending Application, as well as new exercises with online answers
• Updated to contain dialect samples from a wider array of US regions
• Written for students taking courses in dialect studies, variationist sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, and requires no pre-knowledge of linguistics
• Includes a glossary and extensive appendix of the pronunciation, grammatical, and lexical features of American English dialects

1
Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars

Most of us have had the experience of sitting in a public place and eavesdropping on conversations taking place around us. We pretend to be preoccupied, but we can’t help listening. And we form impressions of speakers based not only on the topic of conversation but on how people are discussing it. In fact, there’s a good chance that the most critical part of our impression comes from how people talk rather than what they are talking about. We judge people’s regional background, social status, ethnicity, and a host of other social and personal traits based simply on the kind of language they are using. We may have similar kinds of reactions in telephone conversations, as we try to associate a set of characteristics with an unidentified speaker in order to make claims such as, “It sounds like a salesperson of some type” or “It sounds like the auto mechanic.” In fact, it is surprising how little conversation it takes to draw conclusions about a speaker’s background – a sentence, a phrase, or even a word is often enough to trigger a regional, social, or ethnic classification.

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Link 1.1:

Visit http://americanenglishwiley.com/ to hear linguist Boyd Davis discuss the complex characteristics that are associated with an accent.

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Assessments of a complex set of social characteristics and personality traits based on language differences are as inevitable as the kinds of judgments we make when we find out where people live, what their occupations are, where they went to school, and who their friends are. Language differences, in fact, may serve as the single most reliable indicator of social position in our society. When we live a certain way, we are expected to match that lifestyle with our talk. And when we don’t match people’s expectations of how we should talk, the incongruity between words and behavior also becomes a topic for conversation.

Language differences are unavoidable in a society composed of a variety of social groups. They are a “fact of life.” And, like other facts of life in our society, they have been passed down with a peculiar mixture of fact and fantasy.

1.1 Defining Dialect

Given the widespread awareness of language differences in our society, just about everyone has some understanding of the term DIALECT. However, the technical use of the term in linguistics is different from its popular definition in some important but subtle ways. Professional students of language typically use the term “dialect” as a neutral label to refer to any variety of a language that is shared by a group of speakers. Languages are invariably manifested through their dialects, and to speak a language is to speak some dialect of that language. In this technical usage, there are no particular social or evaluative connotations to the term – that is, there are no inherently “good” or “bad” dialects; dialect is simply how we refer to any language variety that typifies a group of speakers within a language. The particular social factors that correlate with dialect diversity may range from geographic location to complex notions of cultural identity. Furthermore, it is important to understand that socially favored, or “standard,” varieties constitute dialects every bit as much as those varieties spoken by socially disfavored groups whose language differences are socially stigmatized. The technical definition of dialect as a variety of a language typical of a given group of speakers is not rigorous or precise, but it is a sufficient starting point in discussing language variation.

1.2 Dialect: The Popular Viewpoint

At first glance, the differences between popular and technical uses of the term “dialect” seem inconsequential, but closer inspection reveals that its popular uses often carry assumptions that conflict with its technical meaning. At the same time, its popular use gives insight into how language variation is perceived in our society. Consider some commonly held beliefs about dialects conveyed in the following quotes:

1. “We went to Boston for a vacation and the people there sure do speak a dialect.”
2. “I know we speak a dialect in the mountains, but it’s a very colorful way of speaking.”
3. “The kids in that neighborhood don’t really speak English; they speak a dialect.”
4. “The kids in this school all seem to speak the dialect.”

In one popular use, the term “dialect” refers simply to those who speak differently from oneself (Quote 1 above). When the authors of this book were children, growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, respectively, they didn’t necessarily realize that they spoke dialects; they presumed they spoke “normal” English and that dialects were spoken by people from other areas. Of course, we came to realize that this perception could be a two-way street when we attended universities in different states, and classmates pointed out how different our dialects were to them.

The perception that only other people speak dialects is obviously shaped by personal experience, as one group’s customary way of speaking often turns out to be another group’s language peculiarity. Southerners’ use of might could in sentences such as I might could do it sounds strange to people from the North, but a sentence like The house needs washed sounds just as strange to people from the South even though it is perfectly “normal” to people in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Most people are surprised when they go to a different region and are told that they speak a dialect, since they take for granted that it is other people who speak dialects. But we all routinely speak dialects whether we recognize it or not. It is impossible, for example, to say a word like caught or bought without choosing a vowel pronunciation associated with some variety of English. Some people might pronounce the THOUGHT vowel in caught the same as the LOT vowel in cot; others might use a glided pronunciation like cawt closer to the MOUTH vowel, common in the rural South; and still others might use more of a stereotypical New York City pronunciation, as in something like cowt for caught or cowffee for coffee. No matter what, it is impossible to pronounce this word without selecting a vowel production associated with a dialect. Or, we may order a soda, pop, coke, co-cola, tonic, or soft drink along with our submarine sandwich, sub, hoagie, grinder, torpedo, or hero, but we won’t eat or drink unless we make a dialect choice in ordering our sandwich and carbonated drink. Dialects are inevitable and natural, and we all speak them.

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Exercise 1.1

Link 1.2:

Visit http://americanenglishwiley.com/ to hear a clip of speakers pronouncing words with the THOUGHT vowel (i.e. bought and talk) in different ways.

Based on each speaker’s pronunciation of the THOUGHT vowel, where do you think each speaker is from? Which speaker’s pronunciation is closest to your own pronunciation of the THOUGHT vowel?

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In another common use, the term “dialect” refers to those varieties of English whose features have, for one reason or another, become widely recognized – and usually stereotyped (“We speak a dialect”). In the United States – and beyond – people widely recognize a “Southern drawl,” a “Boston accent,” or a “New York City accent.” If a language variety contains some features that are generally acknowledged and commented upon, then it may be recognized as a dialect even by the speakers themselves. If someone keeps telling you that you speak a dialect, after a while you start to realize that you do. Thus, native New Yorkers often know that they speak a dialect, because their dialect has become a topic of widespread public comment in American society. Similarly, speakers of an Appalachian dialect, or “Mountain Talk,” might recognize that they speak a dialect because of the caricatures and comments that so often appear in the media. On the other hand, the same perception does not hold true of middle-class residents of Ohio or Oregon whose speech does not receive popular attention. For a variety of historical and social reasons, some dialects have become much more marked than others in American society, and speakers of those varieties may therefore accept the dialect label assigned to their speech.

In the most extreme case (“[They] don’t really speak English; they speak a dialect”), dialect is used to refer to a kind of deficient or “corrupted” English. In this case, dialect is perceived as an imperfect attempt to speak “correct” or “proper” English. If, for example, members of a socially disfavor...