Main description:
This volume explores the linguistic complexities and critical issues of the Midland dialect area of the USA, and contains a unique data-based set of investigations of the Midlands dialect. The authors demonstrate that the large central part of the United States known colloquially as the Heartland, geo-culturally as the Midwest, and linguistically as the Midland is a very real dialect area, one with regional cohesiveness, social complexity, and psycho-emotional impact. The individual essays problematize historical origins, track linguistic markers of social identity over time and across social spaces, frame dialect issues within the linguistic marketplace, account for extra-linguistic influences on changing patterns of linguistic behaviors, and describe maintenance strategies of non-English languages. This book is an important move forward in the understanding of American English. Sociolinguists, dialectologists, applied linguists, and all those involved in the statistical and qualitative study of language variation will find this volume relevant, timely, and insightful.
Table of contents:
- Introducing the Midland: What is it, where is it, how do we know?
- 1. What is dialect? - Revisiting the Midland
- The Evolving Midland
- 1. The North American Midland as a dialect area
- 2. Tracking the low back merger in Missouri
- 3. Evidence from Ohio on the evolution of /ae/
- Defining The Midland
- 4. On the use of geographic names to inform regional language studies
- 5. On the eastern edge of the Heartland
- 6. The final days of Appalachian Heritage Language
- 8. It'll kill ye or cure ye, one
- Power and Perception
- 7. Standardizing the Heartland
- 10. How to get to be one kind of Midwesterner
- 11. Midland dialect geography
- 12. Drawing out the /ai/
- Other Languages, Other Places
- 13. Learning Spanish in the North Georgia Mountains
- 14. The Midland above the Midland
- 15. Portable Community
- 16. The English of the Swiss Amish of Northeastern Indiana
- References
- Subject Index
This volume explores the linguistic complexities and critical issues of the Midland dialect area of the USA, and contains a unique data-based set of investigations of the Midlands dialect. The authors demonstrate that the large central part of the United States known colloquially as the Heartland, geo-culturally as the Midwest, and linguistically as the Midland is a very real dialect area, one with regional cohesiveness, social complexity, and psycho-emotional impact. The individual essays problematize historical origins, track linguistic markers of social identity over time and across social spaces, frame dialect issues within the linguistic marketplace, account for extra-linguistic influences on changing patterns of linguistic behaviors, and describe maintenance strategies of non-English languages. This book is an important move forward in the understanding of American English. Sociolinguists, dialectologists, applied linguists, and all those involved in the statistical and qualitative study of language variation will find this volume relevant, timely, and insightful.
Table of contents:
- Introducing the Midland: What is it, where is it, how do we know?
- 1. What is dialect? - Revisiting the Midland
- The Evolving Midland
- 1. The North American Midland as a dialect area
- 2. Tracking the low back merger in Missouri
- 3. Evidence from Ohio on the evolution of /ae/
- Defining The Midland
- 4. On the use of geographic names to inform regional language studies
- 5. On the eastern edge of the Heartland
- 6. The final days of Appalachian Heritage Language
- 8. It'll kill ye or cure ye, one
- Power and Perception
- 7. Standardizing the Heartland
- 10. How to get to be one kind of Midwesterner
- 11. Midland dialect geography
- 12. Drawing out the /ai/
- Other Languages, Other Places
- 13. Learning Spanish in the North Georgia Mountains
- 14. The Midland above the Midland
- 15. Portable Community
- 16. The English of the Swiss Amish of Northeastern Indiana
- References
- Subject Index