English in the Southern United States PDF
Preview English in the Southern United States
English in the Southern United States Editedby STEPHEN J. NAGLE CoastalCarolinaUniversity and SARA L. SANDERS CoastalCarolinaUniversity Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521822640 © Cambridge University Press 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-06203-2 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-10 0-511-06203-6 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-13 978-0-521-82264-0 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-82264-5 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This book is dedicated to Michael Montgomery, a linguist’s linguist and a true southern gentleman, whose work continues to shape the course of the study of Southern English Contents Notesonthecontributors pagexi Acknowledgments xiv Introduction 1 1 TheoriginsofSouthernAmericanEnglish 6 2 Shakespeareinthecovesandhollows?Towardahistory of SouthernEnglish 17 3 EightgrammaticalfeaturesofsouthernUnitedStates speechpresentinearlymodernLondonprisonnarratives 36 4 ThesharedancestryofAfrican-AmericanandAmerican- White Southern Englishes: some speculations dictated by history 64 5 ThecomplexgrammaticalhistoryofAfrican-American andwhitevernacularsintheSouth 82 - 6 Grammatical features of southern speech: yall, might could, andfixinto 106 7 Soundingsouthern:alookatthephonologyofEnglish in theSouth 119 ix x Contents 8 Vowelshiftinginthesouthernstates 126 9 EnclavedialectcommunitiesintheSouth 141 10 UrbanizationandtheevolutionofSouthernAmerican English 159 11 TheEnglishesofsouthernLouisiana 173 12 Featuresandusesofsouthernstyle 189 References 208 Index 233 Notes on the contributors JohnAlgeoisProfessorEmeritusattheUniversityofGeorgia.Heistheauthor, co-author,oreditorofseveralbooksincludingthethird,fourth,andfiftheditions ofTheOriginsandDevelopmentoftheEnglishLanguage(withThomasPyles)and volume6oftheCambridgeHistoryoftheEnglishLanguage.HehasbeenaFulbright ResearchFellowandaGuggenheimFellowattheUniversityofLondonandwas EditorofAmericanSpeechfortenyears.HeisaPast-PresidentoftheAmerican DialectSociety. GuyBaileyisProvostandVicePresidentforAcademicAffairsattheUniversity ofTexas–SanAntonio.Heistheauthor,co-author,orco-editorofninebooks andmonographs,includingAfrican-AmericanEnglish:Structure,HistoryandUse (1998,withSalikokoS.Mufwene,JohnR.Rickford,andJohnBaugh)andhas been author or co-author of over sixty journal articles on African-American Vernacular English, Southern English, creole Englishes, sociolinguistics, and dialectology CynthiaGoldinBernsteinisProfessorofEnglishattheUniversityofMem- phis.SheistheauthorofarticlesinAmericanSpeech,JournalofEnglishLinguistics, SECOLReview,editororco-editorofthreebooksincludingLanguageVariety in the South Revisited (1997, with Thomas Nunnally and Robin Sabino) and WindowsonSouthernSpeech(inprogress).Herarticlesandbookchapterscover bothlinguisticandliterarytopics. Patricia Cukor-Avila is Associate Professor of English at the University of NorthTexas.Sheisco-editorofTheEmergenceofBlackEnglish:TextsandCom- mentary(1991,withGuyBaileyandNatalieMaynor).Inadditiontoherarticles onsociolinguistics,shehaswrittenarticlesandgivenconferencepresentations onbilingualismandlanguageacquisition. GeorgeT.DorrillisAssociateProfessorofEnglishatSoutheasternLouisiana University. He is the author of Black and White Speech in the Southern United States:EvidencefromtheLinguisticAtlasoftheMiddleandSouthAtlanticStates (1987) and of several articles on the phonology of southern speech. He is a xi xii Notesonthecontributors former assistant editor of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic Statesandisco-authorofarticlesduringtheearlystages(1970s)ofcompilation andpublicationoffieldworkforthatproject. Connie Eble is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and has been Editor of American Speech, quarterly journal of the AmericanDialectSocietysince1996.ShepublishedSlangandSociability:In- GroupLanguageAmongCollegeStudents(1996)andistheleadingauthorityon collegeslangintheUnitedStates. CrawfordFeaginwasmostlyrecentlyVisitingProfessorattheUniversityof ZurichandwasaFulbrightProfessorattheUniversityofKlagenfurt(Austria). Sheistheco-editororauthoroffivebooksincludingTowardsaSocialScience ofLanguage:IVariationandChangeinLanguageandII:SocialInteractionand DiscourseStructure(1996,1997,withGregoryGuy,DeborahSchiffrin,andJohn Baugh),andDevelopmentandDiversity:LinguisticVariationacrossTimeandSpace (1990,withJeroldA.EdmondsonandPeterMu¨hlhau¨sler). BarbaraJohnstone is Professor of English and Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University.Sheworksattheinterdisciplinaryintersectionofdiscourseanalysis, sociolinguistics, and critical theory and is the author of five books including Qualitative Methods in Sociolinguistics (2000), The Linguistic Individual (1996), and Stories, Community, and Place (1990). She is also the author of a book on Arabicdiscourseandhaswrittennumerousresearcharticlesandbookchapters aboutnarrative,repetition,self-expressionandregionalvariation. SalikokoS.MufweneisProfessorofLinguisticsattheUniversityofChicago. HehasheldvisitingprofessorshipsattheUniversite´deLyonIII,theUniversity oftheWestIndies,theNationalUniversityofSingapore,andHarvardUniversity. HeistheauthorofTheEcologyofLanguageEvolution(2001),co-authorofCre- olizationofLanguageandCulture(2001,withRobertChaudenson–mainauthor); and editor of Africanisms in Afro-American Language (1993), Topics in African Linguistics(1993,withLiobaMoshi);and African-AmericanEnglish:Structure, History,andUse(1998,withJohnR.Rickford,GuyBailey,andJohnBaugh). EdgarW.Schneider is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Regensburg,Germany,afterpreviousappointmentsinBamberg,Georgia,and Berlin. He has written and edited several books (including American Earlier Black English, 1989; Introduction to Quantitative Analysis of Linguistic Survey Data,1996;FocusontheUSA,1996;EnglishesAroundtheWorld,1997;Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, 2000) and has published widely on the dialectology,sociolinguistics,history,semantics,andvarietiesofEnglish. JanTilleryisAssociateProfessorofEnglishattheUniversityofTexas–San Antonio. She is the author or co-author of articles on southern speech and themethodologyofsociolinguisticsincluding“Thenationalizationofasouth- ernism”(2000,withGuyBailey,JournalofEnglishLinguistics)and“TheRutledge Notesonthecontributors xiii effect:theimpactofinterviewersofsurveyresultsinlinguistics”(1999,withGuy Bailey,AmericanSpeech). WaltWolframisWilliamC.FridayDistinguishedProfessoratNorthCarolina StateUniversity.HehaspioneeredresearchonawiderangeofAmericanvernac- ulardialects,includingmanysouthernvarieties,andhasauthoredorco-authored sixteen books including American English: Dialects and Variation (1998), Language Variation in School and Community (1999), and a seminal descrip- tive linguistic book on African-American Vernacular English: A Sociolinguistic DescriptionofDetroitNegroSpeech(1969).Heistheauthorofovertwohundred articlesonabroadrangeofsociolinguistictopics. LauraWrightisLecturerinEnglishLanguageattheUniversityofCambridge, andworksonthehistoryofEnglishfromdocumentarysources,particularlythe historyoftheLondondialect.In2000shepublishedaneditedvolume(TheDevel- opmentofStandardEnglish1300–1800:Theories,Descriptions,Conflicts)reopening the question of how standard English came about. Most recently Wright has beentranscribingsixteenth-centurytestimoniesfromLondon’sBridewell,from whence speakers were transported to Virginia and the Caribbean plantations, andeighteenth-centurydocumentsfromtheislandofSt.Helena,whichcontain testimoniesfromboththewhiteemployeesoftheEastIndiaCompanywholived there,andtheirblackslaves. Acknowledgments TheeditorsgratefullyacknowledgeCoastalCarolinaUniversity’ssupportofthis projectthroughtheThomasW.andRobinW.EdwardsCollegeofHumanities and Fine Arts, especially the encouragement and resources of Charles Joyner, directoroftheWaccamawCenterforCulturalandHistoricalStudies.Wealso appreciatetheableandwillingassistanceofGeoffreyParsons,PatriciaBennett, andLoriArdintheUniversity’sOfficeofInternationalPrograms,whosefriend- ship,expertise,andtechnologyeasedourwayinproducingafinal,editedversion ofthismanuscript. We are indebted to the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL), whichhasprovidedandcontinuestoprovideafertilegroundfortheexploration of all aspects of Southern English. The idea for this volume emerged during discussionsataSECOLconference;allofthepeopleinvolvedinthewritingand editingofthisbookhavecontributedsignificantlytothatorganizationandhave gainedmuchfromitsconferencesandpublications.SpecialthankstoSECOL membersThomasNunnally,GretaLittle,andConnieEblewhoprovidedadvice intheearlystagesofthisproject. It has been a pleasure to work with Katharina Brett, Senior Commission- ingEditorinLanguageandLinguisticsatCambridgeUniversityPress.Sheis remarkablyeffectiveandefficient,andthisvolumehasprofitedfromhersugges- tionsandkeeninsights. Above all, we’d like to thank the authors for their enthusiastic response to the invitation to write a chapter for this book, for their carefully considered contributions,andfortheirinvaluableandtimelyeditorialadviceateachstageof theprocess.Ithastrulybeenaprivilegetobeinpartnershipwiththisfinegroup oflinguists,scholars,andwriters. ThepublisherhasuseditsbestendeavorstoensurethattheURLsforexternal websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can makenoguaranteethatasitewillremainliveorthatthecontentisorwillremain appropriate. xiv
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