American English: Dialects and variation By Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling- Estes (review)

Abstract

194LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) American English: Dialects and variation. By Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling -Estes. (Language in society 24) Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Pp. xvii, 398. Reviewed by John Algeo The English language used in the United States is a subject of perennial and widespread interest. Since the founding of the American Dialect Society in 1889, it has been the object of scholarly study, and since the publication of the first edition of H. L. Mencken's American language in 1919, the topic has captured popular interest. However, only in more recent years has it become a part of the academic curriculum. This textbook presents some contemporary scholarship on variation in American English, based on Wolfram's 1991 Dialects andAmerican English, with extensive modifications. Although the series editor presents the book as 'vital reading for scholars with theoretical interests' (xii), the authors more accurately describe it as intended to be an introduction to the subject for 'students in English, education, speech and language pathology, cultural anthropology, sociology, and psychology, as well as the various branches of linguistic studies' (xiii). In carrying out that intention, the book has a number of strengths and one major weakness. The strengths of the book include its style. In a discipline in which obfuscation of expression is curiously at loggerheads with the purpose of the object of its study—communication by language—this book deserves praise for being well written, with little jargon and in literate prose. It is a reflection on the times to praise a book for what would once have been considered a basic requirement—readable writing. Be that as it may, the writing in this book is clear, concise, and craftsmanlike. Another strength, especially for the intended audience, is that the authors do not assume prior knowledge of the subject matter. Technical terminology is restrained, and linguistic formalisms are avoided. The book has about it an aura not of gedanken experiments but of fieldwork, less of theory for its own sake and more of data to be interpreted by a theory. A third strength is the authors' consideration of how the book might actually be used as a text for courses in its subject matter. The chapters are divided into subsections with helpful headings. Exercises calling for creative responses by students are scattered throughout at the points where they apply. Each chapter ends with a short annotated bibliography for further reading. Systematic information is set forth in lists, figures, charts, maps, tables, and graphs. A 22-page appendix presents an 'inventory of socially diagnostic structures', that is, a list of features in pronunciation and grammar that are important as markers on the continuum between standard English and varieties of vernacular English in America. The book ends with a helpful glossary of terms (also 22 pages long), a list of references, and a detailed subject index. A fourth strength is the comprehensiveness and authoritativeness of the sociolinguistic coverage . The book does not try to cover all aspects of American English but focuses on variation within this national form of the language, specifically variation that raises questions about the social acceptability ofthe variants. It addresses the question of what linguistic features Americans respond to as markers of social status and how those markers fit onto a scale of social variation ranging from formal standard to colloquial vernacular. The body of the book consists of eleven chapters that fall into several major sections. First, three chapters cover the basis of language variation. Ch. 1 addresses the questions of what dialects are (in the popular mind, as well as the scholarly view), how dialects differ sociologically between standard and vernacular forms, and why and how dialects are studied. Ch. 2 considers how dialects come into existence and how language in general changes. Ch. 3 covers such aspects of dialect variation as vocabulary (including slang), pronunciation, grammar, and pragmatics or usage. Next, Ch. 4 treats the history of American English as that history has resulted in the development of dialects. The following four chapters cover important types of present-day variation resulting from historical change: by region, by social class and ethnic group, by gender, and by style. Style is not dialect in the...