230646 Accents and Dialects in North America (S) (WiSe 2015/2016)

This seminar serves the purpose of exploring variation in the English spoken in North America. Consequently, the class will look at present-day varieties according to region, ethnicity, and education / social class, sometimes with a look at historical developments.

In a first set of sessions the origins and development of the forms of English in the U.S.A. This will begin with a general comparison of American and British English and then proceed to the major regional varieties. In the United States this will include the South (coastal and highlands), the Mid-Atlantic region and its extension westward, New England, and the North; in Canada it will be divided between the Maritimes, Newfoundland, and Canada west of Quebec.

In a second set of sessions we will look at what are sometimes viewed as ethnolects, concentrating on African-American English, but briefly touching on Chicano and Spanish-influenced English as well as American Indian English.

A final series of sessions will be devoted to studies of social differences in the use of English, concentrating especially on differences between Standard American English and non-standard features of General English in America.

This exploration of variety in American English is based on a very extensive approach to the topic. Nevertheless, key sets of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and usage features will be selected which, it is hoped, will make both the motivation and the mechanisms of language change more understandable while also providing useful thumbnail sketches of the varieties selected.

In order to get full credit (3 points), the following is expected of you:
1. that you attend class regularly,
2. that you do the assigned reading,
3. that you present a short oral report and submit a written version of it.

This class may also count for How to Handle Speech. If you are doing this, there will be a final exam concentrating on the accent side of this seminar.

Bibliography

To be added.