Soochow Univ. English Educators’ Program at PSU

Dialects and American English

By Dr. Jeff Conn connjc@pdx.edu http://web.pdx.edu/~connjc/

Click here to download the resources with notes

Click here to download the PowerPoint presentation in PDF form

Click here to download a PDF copy of English consonants and vowels chart

RESOURCES

Video and Internet Sources:

American Tongues video - http://www.cnam.com/non_flash/language/american.html

Do You Speak American – website and video http://www.pbs.org/speak/

Conn article on Portland accent: http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/pacificnorthwest/

International Dialects of English Archive - http://web.ku.edu/~idea/

Some Useful Books:

Carver, C. (1987) American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Labov, W. (1994) Principles of Lingusitic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, W. (2001) Principles of Lingusitic Change, Volume 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

Labov, W., Ash, S. and Boberg, C. (2005) Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

http://linguistics.online.uni-marburg.de/free/courses/atlas_of_nae/atlas_main.html

Milroy, L. and Gordon, M. (2003) Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell.

O’Grady, W., Archibald, J., Aronoff, M., Rees-Miller, J. (2005) Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (5^th edition). Bedford/St. Martin’s Press.

Wells, John C. (1982) Accents of English 1: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press.

Wells, John C. (1982) Accents of English 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press.

Wells, John C. (1982) Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press.

*Wolfram, W. and Schilling-Estes, N. (2006) American English. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 2nd Edition.