Product Description: When did English become American? What distinctive qualities made it American? What role have America's democratizing impulses, and its vibrantly heterogeneous speakers, played in shaping our language and separating it from the mother tongue?A wide-ranging account of American English, Richard Bailey's Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present...read more

Product Description: In Made in America, Bill Bryson demythologizes his native landexplaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasnt won, why Americans say lootenant and Toosday, how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked upas well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr...read more

This lively introduction to the study of language explores American English and its place within contemporary society, highlighting the role of language in our daily lives. Beginning with a definition of language, the text unpacks the basic concepts used in linguistics, placing them in the context of real-life situations. Using examples from popular culture, the authors show how the study of language is relevant to students' experience. Teachers and students will appreciate the book's innovative structure, designed to build an understanding of how different aspects of language work together. A variety of exercises - individual, group, discussion, research - is provided to support every teaching style. Imaginatively organised and fun to use, American English is the ideal guide to language study for students taking the subject as a general education requirement, beginning undergraduates in linguistics, and future teachers of English.

Product Description: How did fears of cultural inadequacy play out in the English language after American independence and the War of 1812? Like many of his nineteenth-century contemporaries, essayist Walter Channing suggests that the country’s perceived deficiency in literature is due to a crucial overlap with England, that is, having “the same language with a nation, totally unlike it in almost every relation...read more

A study of the ways in which language was used in the early American republic to define national character and shape national boundaries focuses on the contributions of seven men who worked with alphabets, codes, and signs--including Noah Webster, William Thornton, Sequoyah, Thomas Gallaudet, Abdul Rahaman, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell. Reprint. 15,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: A collection of essays by one of the premier historians of American English, Milestones in the History of English in America is a remarkable introduction to Allen Walker Read’s work and the ways in which archival materials can illuminate linguistic history...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Much scholarly work assumes that the structure of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) derives from an earlier plantation creole. This volume explores an alternative hypothesis: that the characteristic features were acquired from the varieties of English to which early speakers were exposed...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Offers a chronological history of famous American words and expressions, such as hot dog, bayou, bogus, and cafeteria

Product Description: Jane Austen's English is far different from Virginia Woolf's, but historians of the English language have given scant attention to the ways in which English changed over the course of the nineteenth century. In Nineteenth-Century English, Richard W...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A lively survey of the origins and history of Americans' most colorful words and expressions shows how changes in American culture have affected American English, traces the newest words entering the language, and features 450 photographs and illustrations. UP. (view table of contents)

Traces America's history through the language of the time and discusses words culled from everyday activities in a discussion of American English.

A History of American English provides for the first time a chronological, narrative account of the development of American English. Although it has attracted considerable attention in terms of the social and geographical distribution of the language, the historical implications and influences of American English have been surprisingly neglected. In this impressive and much-needed volume J.L. Dillard tracks the development of American English from its earliest origins through to the present day.This comprehensive survey analyses the way in which American English has developed in a variety of forms, such as "standard", Black and pidgin, and sets this process firmly within its social contexts. It examines the mixing of British dialect groups in the early period; the coastal distribution of most of the English-speaking colonists until after the Revolutionary War; the close relationships with the West Indies; American imperialism; and the general importance of maritime contacts. The significance of the Negro, Dutch, Hawaiian, Spanish, French, Italian and German influences on the development of the language are considered.Mobility has always been a primary characteristic of the American population, and the history of English in the United States has always reflected that mobility. Urbanization, beginning to be an important factor at the end of the nineteenth century, has been joined by suburbanization of the more affluent in the mid-to-late twentieth century, leaving the inner city largely to minority users of highly nonstandard varieties. The author assesses these contributory factors, providing an authoritative, yet accessible account of the development of American English.A History of American English will prove ideal for students and teachers of the history of English, historical linguistics, language acquisition, sociolinguistics, language contact, general linguistics as well as the general reader with an interest in language or American history.

Product Description: Debate over the evolution of Black English Vernacular (BEV) has permeated Afro-American studies, creole linguistics, dialectology, and sociolinguistics for a quarter of a century with little sign of a satisfactory resolution, primarily because evidence that bears directly on the earlier stages of BEV is sparse...read more

An illustrated survey of the origins, evolutions, and meanings of thousands of phrases and expressions unique to American English adds up to an entertaining, reliable history of modern American idioms and speech

Studies the relationship between American culture and the English language from colonial times to present trends in linguistics

Product Description: Book by Partridge, Eric