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(0)Richard W Bailey
Author
Description
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? Richard Bailey's Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present. --from publisher description.
Author
Description
Images of English demonstrates how opinions of the English language reflect prejudice and hope, bigotry and pride, scorn and celebration. Richard Bailey examines the attitudes of authors, critics, and commentators toward the English language and shows how their comments offer insight into the social conditions of their times. Images of English is the first attempt to focus exclusively on beliefs about English as a reflection of society itself- some...
Author
Description
Six aspects of nineteenth-century English are treated in separate chapters: writing, sounds, words, slang, grammar, and voices. In each domain, innovation and obsolescence are discussed as they were observed by contemporary writers. Thus Bailey shows how linguistic details gained powerful social meaning in the emergent stratification by class, region, race, and gender of the anglophone community. An abundance of quotations provides insight into the...