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.
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