LINGUIS 155AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Noah Webster, Okra, Dialect Levelling
12 Jan 2017
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6. American Regional Dialects:
American English: History and Varieties
Terms to know:
- Convert Prestige: Status accorded to stigmatization languages or language varieties
because they give speakers a sense of their identity and solidarity.
- Overt Prestige: The (high) status openly and consciously awarded a language variety
that is considered the official, standard, or "most correct" in a given location.
American or British England?
- Early debate was over whether the British English or American English should be the
standard of usage
- British English was overtly prestigious, but American English had covert prestige; it was
a symbol of American Independence.
- Growing movement to use American English as the standard of usage.
Noah Webster: (1758-1843)
- grammarian and lexicographer (dictionary-maker) of American English
○ Insisted the variety of English used in America should be known as “American” or
“Federal English”
○ Wanted a uniform American English free from “impurities” (recent French
borrowings, dialect variation)
○ His famous dictionary, published in 1828, only sold 2500 copies - not successful
during his lifetime.
“Colonial Lag”
- English vary from British and other English in vocabulary due to “LAG” and borrowings
from American indigenous languages.
○ Archaic linguistics features that show up in the colonial versions of languages
○ Because of the separation between colonies and colonizing countries, new
features that develop in the colonizing country may not reach the colony.
○ Examples of words in American English that are archaic in British English:
American English
British English
apartment
Flat (18th century)
fall
Autumn (after mid 17th century)
druggist
Chemist (1750)
Borrowing from indigenous languages:
● Recurring pattern in language contact: If a people conquers another people, the
conqueror's language will be dominant but pick up words from indigenous cultures that
were restricted to place names, new flora/fauna , culturally specific items-Manchus, Ch
Borrowings from Native Languages:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
