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CHAPTER 12
American Dialects
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
It makes sense to follow Chapter 11, which considers theory and analysis
of variation, with a chapter on American dialects specifically. Study of
dialectology both extends and complements material on variation
presented in the earlier chapter; study of dialects is also partly historical,
so in Chapter 12 the book begins to move into the fully historical
treatment of English in Chapters 13 and 14.
We intend Chapter 12 to complement Chapter 2, however, as much as to
complement Chapter 11. Exercise of authority in and over language is
nowhere more problematic than in attitudes toward regional and social
dialects and how those attitudes are enacted in social behavior and even
social policy. The latter is considered particularly in our discussion of the
status of English in the United States in Chapter 14.
Like other chapters in the book, Chapter 12 is far from exhaustive: whole
books are written about particular dialectal features and relatively small
dialect regions, as well as about regional and social variation across the
continent. There is more than one multi-volume linguistic atlas project
ongoing in the United States at this writing; the Dictionary of American
Regional English is also ongoing and constantly supplemented by other
dictionaries of regional speech, such as Montgomery and Hall’s
Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (University of Tennessee Press,
2004). The bad news is that no textbook chapter could ever adequately
cover American dialects; the good news is that these resources and others
named in the chapter are easily found and used, and you can draw on them
to supplement the chapter and shape it to your own syllabus and your
department’s curricular expectations.
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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:
• Discuss the relationships among dialect and other categories of social
behavior, such as humor, discrimination, patriotism, etc.
• Explain and illustrate the processes by which dialectal features
(phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical) are formed.
• Summarize the major dialect regions of the United States, including
sample features that distinguish the dialects from one another.
• Explain the differences between regional and social dialects.
• Summarize distinguishing features of California, Appalachian,
Chicano, and African American English.
• Account for their regional dialects on the model of our “Sample Walk”
and the discussion of California English and Appalachian English later
in the chapter.
• Account for their social dialects (and participation in social variation
broadly) on the model of our discussions of Chicano English and
African American English in this chapter and Standard American
English in Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8.
NEW VOCABULARY TERMS
borrowing
coining
language contact
naturally occurring internal
language change
retention
social factors
structural influence
WHERE STUDENTS ARE
• Because this chapter depends in part on students’ personal experiences
and awareness of dialect, for which they are likely to account in
personal ways, as well as discussion of the social construction and
consequences of dialects, students are likely, at least initially, to put
aside some of the linguistics they have spent the term learning. It is
important that you continually reintroduce the linguistic details that
underlie variation, either by reinterpreting student comments in
linguistic terms or prompting them to reformulate their accounts of
dialect in linguistic terms.
• It’s perfectly natural to respond to dialectal differences with a thought
like, “Wow, that’s odd.” Students have every right to notice
differences, but then sometimes they treat the differences dismissively,
viewing others’ dialects, regional or social, as substandard. In large
classes at big universities with nationally representative student bodies,
this tendency is actually an opportunity, because it can lead to candid
discussion of variation, the standard variety’s role in American English,
and issues of language authority raised in Chapter 2.
• This chapter depends on some knowledge of American history.
Experience has taught us that this knowledge cannot be assumed.
Many students won’t know in which century English speakers first
settled in America or at what places, nor will they remember that there
was such a thing as New Amsterdam, etc. You will have to fill some of
this in, and some of it certainly deserves reiteration in class, on quizzes
and exams, and in assignments.
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
Settlement History
Students love to talk about food. Settlement history and the development
of the American culinary lexicon are closely connected; so discussion of
food terms from across the country is one way to map the history of
settlement. This discussion coordinates well with material in Chapter 14,
since many conditions of modern life (advertising and marketing, mass
production, national political identity, etc.) conspire against regional
cuisine—everybody eats everything. Well, almost. In fact, Americans
across the map know jambalaya, but not as many know beignet—why this
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should be so is an interesting topic for speculation. So is the issue of
“regionalism by survival,” that is, food terms that are regionalized now,
but once were common, regardless of region, such as chittlin. You can use
the Language Change at Work box, “Regional Food Terms,” to jumpstart
discussion, asking students, for example, if they think bialy or pho are still
regionally restricted.
Regional Dialects
Ask the class to describe the local dialect, the one that surrounds the
college or university, and which may or may not be any given student’s
dialect. This activity works very well with a geographically mixed class,
since local ears hear one thing and foreign ears hear another. Naturally, as
an ongoing review of preceding chapters, the class should be able to
identify phonological, morphological, syntactic, morphosyntactic,
semantic, and perhaps even discourse features relevant to the description.
Similarly, the class can compile a local lexicon. Again, while it engages
students in describing what is dialectically relevant to the region,
separating phonetic respellings from real words and figuring out how to
represent morphosyntactic and syntactic features in a glossary also helps
students to review and clarify material from earlier chapters.
Most courses for which How English Works is a plausible text would not
allow time for both these activities, but either one coordinates well with
the chapter. Choice of one over the other depends on the level of the
class—the first is perhaps more challenging than the second.
Social Dialects
Several episodes of MADtv include sketches about African American
English—any of these works as an excellent prompt to a discussion of
attitudes toward social dialects, why African Americans might be entitled
to use speech among themselves but exclude others from legitimate use of
such speech, etc. These sketches also allow discussion of dialect humor,
but from unexpected angles.
The Ebonics controversy still works in classroom debate, though many
students no longer remember it firsthand. It can be powerful to have
students look at editorials written during the height of the controversy; one
effective one for spurring discussion was written by Brent Staples in the
New York Times, entitled “The Last Train from Oakland” (January 24,
1997). Both the original and revised versions of the Oakland School Board
Resolution on Ebonics are available at: http://linguistlist.org/topics/
ebonics/. The video Do You Speak American? has a good segment on the
code-switching curriculum being tried in the Los Angeles school district,
which can help students see what it can look like to affirm students’ home
dialects in the classroom while teaching the standard variety. An effective
alternative or supplement is to debate the presence of local dialects in
schools: should students and teachers be required to use only Standard
American English in all school settings? Is the local dialect ever
appropriate pedagogically? This sort of debate works particularly well at a
college or university that enrolls mostly local students or students from the
school’s immediate region.
INTEGRATING THE HOMEWORK
Homework Progression
The exercises are probably best assigned in sequence with the relevant
sections of the chapter. For instance, it’s hard to write about African
American English and Appalachian English in Exercise 12.5 before
reading about the dialects and discussing them in class. In a course that
can devote relatively little time to the chapter, any one from among
Exercises 12.3, 12.4, and 12.5 would support a student’s experience of the
chapter well and would make use of and recapitulate knowledge learned in
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In-Class Activities Based on Homework
Exercises 12.3 (any or all of the questions) and 12.5, #1 are particularly
useful in class discussion, and Exercise 12.2, on perceptual dialectology,
can set up an excellent discussion (especially if the students are mostly
local) once students have conducted map surveys on their own. Exercise
12.4 coordinates particularly well with certain in-class activities, as
described above.
EXTRA RESOURCES
The volume American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast
(Blackwell, 2006) contains concise, accessible, and often lively essays
about many American dialects. The best account of popular language
attitudes not mentioned in the textbook is Nancy A. Niedzielski and
Dennis R. Preston’s Folk Linguistics (Mouton de Gruyter, 2003). Chapter
titles suggest how, in pursuing its subject, it integrates many aspects of our
book:
• “Regionalism” is divided into sections on map evidence from Preston
and others following his method (see our Chapters 2 and 11) and on
conversational evidence of language attitudes (relevant to the same
chapters, but also to our Chapter 8). Obviously, this chapter is relevant
to our Chapter 12.
• “Social Factors” considers ethnicity, status, gender, and “style, slang,
register, and taboo” (which bears significantly on our Chapter 11, but
also on Chapter 8 and to a small degree Chapter 9).
• “Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics” considers folk
linguistic issues relevant to first and second language acquisition, as
well as the role of acquisition in education, thus coordinating well with
our Chapter 10, but also with parts of Chapters 3, 5, 6, and 12.
You may want to illustrate the chapter by recourse to the regional dialect
that surrounds your college or university. Wherever you work, you are
likely to have three resources for such illustration at hand: glossaries and
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histories of the dialect compiled under the aegis of a local historical
society; folk dictionaries or locally published books about the local dialect;
and Web sites devoted to regional dialects. Of course, the quality of theses
resources is uneven, but when it comes to language perceptions and
attitudes, “fact” isn’t always central to the discussion. If your college or
university library holds them, the journal American Speech and the series
Publication of the American Dialect Society have published many
glossaries of American slang, occupational jargons, social varieties, and
regional varieties over the last eight decades—one or more of them might
be relevant to your class discussion.
The video Do You Speak American? provides a wealth of material for a
unit on American dialects, including examples of speakers’ using various
American dialects, well-known linguists talking about dialects, and native
speakers of various dialects talking about language attitudes. It is also
supported by an extensive Web site: http://www.pbs.org/speak/. The video
American Tongues provides a sometimes edgier take on some of these
same issues, but at least a few students will find certain material in
American Tongues dated. The full citations for both videos are provided
below.
Do You Speak American? Produced and directed by William Cran. 180
min. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2005.
American Tongues. Produced and directed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew
Kolker. 57 min. New York: The Center, 1987.