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. The book is organized in half-century segments around influential centers: Chesapeake Bay (1600-1650), Boston (1650-1700), Charleston (1700-1750), Philadelphia (1750-1800), New Orleans (1800-1850), New York (1850-1900), Chicago (1900-1950), Los Angeles (1950-2000), and Cyberspace (2000-present). Each of these places has added new words, new inflections, new ways of speaking to the elusive, boisterous, ever-changing linguistic experiment that is American English.
Freed from British constraints of unity and propriety, swept up in rapid social change, restless movement, and a thirst for innovation, Americans have always been eager to invent new words, from earthy frontier expressions like "catawampously" (vigorously) and "bung-nipper" (pickpocket), to West African words introduced by slaves such as "goober" (peanut) and "gumbo" (okra), to urban slang such as "tagging" (spraying graffiti) and "crew" (gang). Throughout, Bailey focuses on how people speak and how speakers change the language. The book is filled with transcripts of arresting voices, precisely situated in time and space: two justices of the peace sitting in a pumpkin patch trying an Indian for theft; a crowd of Africans lounging on the waterfront in Philadelphia discussing the newly independent nation in their home languages; a Chicago gangster complaining that his pocket had been picked; Valley Girls chattering; Crips and Bloods negotiating their gang identities in LA; and more. Speaking American explores-and celebrates-the endless variety and remarkable inventiveness that have always been at the heart of American English.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Speaking American manages a difficult feat: presenting original research while remaining accessible to non-specialists. The broad outlines of the story are familiar, but the examples are fresh ... Speaking American is an authoritative, engaging and impressively readable account Jack Lynch, Times Literary Supplement
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Pappband
mit Schutzumschlag
Maße
Höhe: 249 mm
Breite: 164 mm
Dicke: 25 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-19-517934-7 (9780195179347)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Richard Bailey is the author Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language and Nineteenth-Century English, and the associate editor for The Oxford Companion to the English Language. A long-time faculty member at the University of Michigan, he retired in 2007 as Fred Newton Scott Collegiate Professor of English.
Preface ; 1. Introduction ; 2. Chesapeake Bay, before 1650 ; 3. Boston, 1650-1700 ; 4. Charles Town, 1700-1750 ; 5. Philadelphia, 1750-1800 ; 6. New Orleans, 1800-1850 ; 7. New York, 1850-1900 ; 8. Chicago, 1900-1950 ; 9. Los Angeles, 1950-2000 ; 10. Cyberspace, 2000- ; References ; Index
