Despite the media frenzy surrounding the 1996 Ebonics resolution by the Oakland School Board, the term "Ebonics" remains a mystery to most. John Baugh, a well known African-American linguist and education expert, here offers a short and accessible explanation of the origins of the term, the linguistic reality behind the hype, and the politics behind the outcry on both sides of the debate. Using a non-technical, first-person style, and bringing in many of his own personal experiences, Baugh debunks many commonly-held notions about the way African-Americans speak English, and the result is a nuanced and balanced portrait of a complex and deeply fraught subject.

The Cambridge Thesaurus of American English is an original and up-to-date collection of over 200,000 synonyms and antonyms for the most commonly used words and phrases in contemporary American English. Compiled by renowned expert on American language use and author of Doublespeak, William Lutz, the Thesaurus is alphabetically arranged, and designed to give the user quick access to a coherent set of synonyms and antonyms. The Cambridge Thesaurus provides a brief list of common, usable synonyms organized according to their frequency of use and their meaning. In those cases where the distinction between senses of a word is not clear, a brief definition is provided. Any synonyms that are slang or that have restricted usage are clearly labeled to that effect. Concise and readable yet complete and reliable, The Cambridge Thesaurus will be the ideal desktop reference for high school and college students, office personnel, and anyone else in search of that perfect word.

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has for fifty years included a regular collection of neologisms called "Among the New Words." A recent issue, for example, includes four quotations for "date rape," two for "designated driver," and six for "DNA fingerprinting," "intifada," and other current terms. Complete documentation is given for all citations, which are fuller than those given in most dictionaries and both British and American sources have been consulted. At the time these terms appeared in "Among the New Words," they appeared in none of the major dictionaries. A survey of "Among the New Words" can therefore reveal much about the origin and early use of these expressions and the social climate in which they prospered. Now for the first time, this valuable resource will be available in one volume. The original articles themselves are reproduced and John Algeo has prepared a complete index, with glossary, to every word and expression included in the 113 installments of "Among the New Words." In addition, he has written several introductory essays exploring both the linguistic and social implications of new words as revealed in this collection. No other collection of new words has been so systematically compiled over such a long period, demonstrating changing word patterns and social norms over five decades. None has been prepared with such thorough and accurate documentation. It is a unique repository of language use from 1941-1991. John Algeo currently co-edits "Among the New Words."

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics. The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society has for fifty years included a regular collection of neologisms called "Among the New Words." A recent issue, for example, includes four quotations for "date rape," two for "designated driver," and six for "DNA fingerprinting," "intifada," and other current terms. Complete documentation is given for all citations, which are fuller than those given in most dictionaries and both British and American sources have been consulted. At the time these terms appeared in "Among the New Words," they appeared in none of the major dictionaries. A survey of "Among the New Words" can therefore reveal much about the origin and early use of these expressions and the social climate in which they prospered. Now for the first time, this valuable resource will be available in one volume. The original articles themselves are reproduced and John Algeo has prepared a complete index, with glossary, to every word and expression included in the 113 installments of "Among the New Words." In addition, he has written several introductory essays exploring both the linguistic and social implications of new words as revealed in this collection. No other collection of new words has been so systematically compiled over such a long period, demonstrating changing word patterns and social norms over five decades. None has been prepared with such thorough and accurate documentation. It is a unique repository of language use from 1941-1991. John Algeo currently co-edits "Among the New Words."

Singlish is the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore. It has sparked much public debate, but so far the complex question of what Singlish really is and what it means to its speakers has remained obscured. This important work explores some of the socio-political controversies surrounding Singlish, such as the political ideologies inherent in Singlish discourse, the implications of being restricted to Singlish for those speakers without access to standard English, the complex relationship between Singlish and migration, and the question of whether Singlish is an asset or a liability to Singaporeans. These questions surrounding Singlish illustrate many current issues in language, culture and identity in an age of rapid change. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of World Englishes and sociolinguistics. Its detailed analysis of the Singlish controversy will illuminate broader questions about language, identity and globalization.

This work investigates the syntax of the higher portion of the functional structure of the clause using comparative data from hundreds of Northern Italian dialects. The area contains dialects that are different in most ways yet homogenous syntactically, making it an ideal ground for analyzing micro-variations in syntax. The book sheds new light on debated problems such as subject-clitic inversion, verb movement and subject positions, and the structure of the higher functional phrases.

Creolization of Language and Culture is the first English edition of Robert Chaudenson's landmark text Des îles, des hommes, des langues, which has also been fully revised.
. With reference to the main varieties of creole French, Chaudenson argues against the traditional account of creole genesis for a more sophisticated paradigm which takes full account of the peculiar linguistic and social factors at play in colonial societies.
This is an accessible book which makes an important contribution to the study of pidgin and creole language varieties, as well as to the development of contemporary European languages outside Europe. Key features include:
Analysis of current debates on the development of creoles
Discussion of many aspects of human culture including music, medicine, cooking, magic and folklore
Translation of all French sources from which Chaudenson quotes extensively

This is the first systematic attempt to trace the beginnings of modern literary Yiddish, an issue of great significance in the linguistic, literary, and social history of the Yiddish language. The eighteenth century marked the turning point in the history of literary Yiddish, a period of rapid linguistic assimilation to German and Dutch in the West and, by sharp contrast, the increasing cultural autonomy of Eastern European Jewry. Books printed in the West reflected the impact of New High German and contemporary Western Yiddish. Books published in Eastern Europe, the new centre for Yiddish printing, used Eastern Yiddish both for new works and for new editions of old Yiddish works. Dr Kerler examines hitherto neglected Yiddish books from the period in order to analyse the linguistic changes manifest in both the transition and shift from old to nascent Modern Literary Yiddish within the broader context of genre and literary traditions and in the framework of Yiddish dialectology, grammar, and sociolinguistics. Many of the grammatical norms of nineteenth and early twentieth-century literary Yiddish are shown to have their origins in the eighteenth century. A major work of linguistic scholarship, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish is an important contribution to the study of the crystallization process of literary languages, highlighting in the case of Yiddish the dynamics of emergence in the absence of the usual governmental support.

There are some 6,500 different languages in the world, belonging to around 250 distinct families, and conforming to numerous grammatical types. This text investigates and seeks to explain that diversity. Daniel Nettle examines why diversity evolved at all, given that the biological mechanisms underlying language are the same in all normal human beings. He then considers whether the distribution of diversity may be linked with the major patterns of human geography and prehistory. Human languages and language families are not distributed evenly: there are few in Eurasia compared to the thousands in Australasia, the Pacific, and the Americas. There is also a marked correlation between bio- and linguistic diversity. The author explains how and why this diversity arose. To do so he returns to the earliest origins of language, reconstructing the processes of linguistic change and diffusion that occurred when humans first filled the continents and, thousands of years later, turned to agriculture. He concludes by examining the causes of linguistic mortality, and why the number of the world's languages may halve before 2100. The text draws on work in anthropology, linguistics, geography, ar

The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.

British urban accents are undergoing rapid and extensive changes, perhaps more so now than ever before. This volume surveys the modern state of accents in Britain, looking in detail at some 15 accents from around Britain and introducing issues at the forefront of ongoing work in theoretical sociolinguistics and descriptive dialectology. Work indicates that many of these ongoing changes span wide geographical areas. A full overview of theoretical and methodological issues at the forefront of sociolinguistics is provided and, at the same time, a detailed comparative survey of variation and change in the phonology and phonetics of English is offered. Individual chapters, written by researchers carrying out key studies of major accents, focus on a single urban area and a principal academic theme.

In the most reliable and readable guide to effective writing for the Americans of today, Wilson answers questions of meaning, grammar, pronunciation, punctuation, and spelling in thousands of clear, concise entries. His guide is unique in presenting a systematic, comprehensive view of language as determined by context. Wilson provides a simple chart of contexts -- from oratorical speech to intimate, from formal writing to informal -- and explains in which contexts a particular usage is appropriate, and in which it is not.

The Columbia Guide to Standard Written American English provides the answers to questions about American English the way no other guide can with:

* an A--Z format for quick reference;

* over five thousand entries, more than any other usage book;

* sensible and useful advice based on the most current linguistic research;

* a convenient chart of levels of speech and writing geared to context;

* both descriptive and prescriptive entries for guidance;

* guidelines for nonsexist usage;

* individual entries for all language terms.

A vibrant description of how our language is being spoken and written at the end of the twentieth century -- and how we ourselves can use it most effectively -- The Columbia Guide to Standard American English is the ideal handbook to language etiquette: friendly, sensible, and reliable.

The study of comparative syntax in closely related languages has yielded valuable insights into syntactic phenomena--for example in the study of the Romance languages--yet little comparative work has been done on English dialects. This is the first comparison of the syntax of Belfast English and Standard English, using Chomsky's "Principles and Parameters"/Minimalist framework. Alison Henry analyzes various Belfast English constructions and their Standard English counterparts to gain insight into both English syntax and syntactic theory in general. In the process, she makes valuable data on Belfast English readily available for the first time.

Irving Lewis Allen provides an insightful history of the rise of New York as a metropolis and the accompanying slang that surrounded it. Anecdotal and at times analytical, this book is both a lexicon of slang and a history of recent casual language.

This standard text, now in paperback for the first time-- the companion volume to Foreign Dialects-- American Dialects offers representative dialects of every major section of the United States. In each case, a general description and history of the dialect is given, followed by an analysis of vowel and consonant peculiarities, of its individual lilt and rhythm, and of its grammar variations. There are also lists of the idioms and idiomatic expressions that distinguish each dialect and exercises using them. American Dialects also includes musical inflection charts and diagrams showing the placement of lips, tongue, and breath.

Recent models of dialect contact, notably in the work of Trudgill, Chambers, James Milroy, and Labov have stressed the importance of the notions of salience, simplification, linguistic complexity, and the speech community in accounting for the patterns that arise. In this case-study of the speech of rural migrants in the Norwegian city of Bergen, Paul Kerswill critically examines the usefulness of these concepts, and puts recent models of dialect contact to the test for the first time against a case of such contact as it is actually happening. Dialect contact often, it is said, leads to Koineization - the emergence of new, mixed varieties of a language resulting from the intermingling of speakers of different varieties of that language. Kerswill investigates the extent to which processes of change typically ascribed to Koineization are already prefigured in the speech of the first-generation adult migrants of this study. While the author's approach is broadly quantitative he also demonstrates the importance of ethnographic and social-psychological explanations in accounting for the wide differences between individuals in the study. He argues for a sociolinguistic methodology founded on a richer and more comprehensive view of the social factors influencing, langague use.

This book presents a series of illuminating studies which conclusively demonstrates that the prevailing conception of historical linguistics is deeply flawed. Most linguists today believe that there is no good evidence that the Indo-European family of languages is related to any other language family, or even any other language. In like manner, the New World is deemed to contain hundreds of language families, among which there are no apparent links. Furthermore, it is claimed, there are no known connections between the languages of the Old World and those of the Americas. And finally, the strongest belief of all is that there is no trace of genetic affinity--nor could there be--among the world's language families.
The author argues that all of these firmly entrenched--and vigorously defended--beliefs are false, that they are myths propagated by a small group of scholars who have failed to understand the true basis of genetic affinity. Twentieth-century Indo-Europeanists (though not their nineteenth-century forebears) have confused the issue of genetic affinity, which derives from classification, with such traditional concerns of historical linguistics as reconstruction and sound correspondences. Once it is recognized that taxonomy, or classification, must precede these traditional concerns, the apparent conflict between the traditional view and that of Joseph Greenberg and his followers is seen to be illusory. And finally, a comparison of all the world's languages in this new perspective leaves little doubt that all extant human languages share a common origin.

This book presents a series of illuminating studies which conclusively demonstrates that the prevailing conception of historical linguistics is deeply flawed. Most linguists today believe that there is no good evidence that the Indo-European family of languages is related to any other language family, or even any other language. In like manner, the New World is deemed to contain hundreds of language families, among which there are no apparent links. Furthermore, it is claimed, there are no known connections between the languages of the Old World and those of the Americas. And finally, the strongest belief of all is that there is no trace of genetic affinity--nor could there be--among the world's language families.
The author argues that all of these firmly entrenched--and vigorously defended--beliefs are false, that they are myths propagated by a small group of scholars who have failed to understand the true basis of genetic affinity. Twentieth-century Indo-Europeanists (though not their nineteenth-century forebears) have confused the issue of genetic affinity, which derives from classification, with such traditional concerns of historical linguistics as reconstruction and sound correspondences. Once it is recognized that taxonomy, or classification, must precede these traditional concerns, the apparent conflict between the traditional view and that of Joseph Greenberg and his followers is seen to be illusory. And finally, a comparison of all the world's languages in this new perspective leaves little doubt that all extant human languages share a common origin.

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang offers the ultimate record of modern, post WW2 American Slang. The 25,000 entries are accompanied by citations that authenticate the words as well as offer examples of usage from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, musical lyrics, and Internet user groups. Etymology, cultural context, country of origin and the date the word was first used are also provided. In terms of content, the cultural transformations since 1945 are astounding. Television, computers, drugs, music, unpopular wars, youth movements, changing racial sensitivities and attitudes towards sex and sexuality are all substantial factors that have shaped culture and language. This new edition includes over 500 new headwords collected with citations from the last five years, a period of immense change in the English language, as well as revised existing entries with new dating and citations. No term is excluded on the grounds that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or any kind of slur. This dictionary contains many entries and citations that will, and should, offend. Rich, scholarly and informative, The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English is an indispensable resource for language researchers, lexicographers and translators.

The description of minority or threatened languages with a view to documenting the linguistic consequences of language contact and restriction has now emerged as a distinct area of investigation within sociolinguistics. In this book, Raymond Mougeon and Edouard Beniak present a series of analyses of the impact that contact with English on the one hand, and language-use restriction on the other, have had on the evolution of the French dialect spoken in the predominantly English-speaking province of Ontario, Canada. As a background to the analyses, the authors provide sociohistorical and sociolinguistic information on the Franco-Ontarian community, and make comparisons with other varieties of French both within and outside North America. They address fundamental theoretical issues such as the interplay between linguistic and extralinguistic causes of structural change and the mechanisms of linguistic change in bilingual as opposed to unilingual speech communities.

Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English presents an original study of Australian English and, via this, insights into Australian society. Utilising folklinguistic accounts, it uncovers everyday understandings of contemporary Australian English through variations across linguistic systems (sounds, words, discourse and grammar). Focusing on one variation at time, it explores young speakers' language use and their evaluations of the same forms. The analysis of talk about talk uncovers ethnic, regional and social Others in social types and prevailing ideologies around Australian English essential for understanding Australian identity-making processes, as well as providing insights and methods relevant beyond this context. These discussions demonstrate that while the linguistic variations may occur in other varieties of English, they are understood through local conceptualisations, and often as uniquely Australian. This book harnesses the value and richness of discourse in explorations of the sociocultural life of language. The findings show that analysis attending to language ideologies and identities can help discover the micro-macro links needed in understanding social meanings. The volume explores a wide range of language features but also provides a deep contemplation of Australian English.

Topics in this volume include: interlingual contact in the Pacific to the mid-19th century; the Sandalwood period; the Tok Pisin language; oceanic Austronesian languages; structures and sources of pidgin syntax; the pidgin pronominal system; and calquing - pidgin and Solomons languages.