San Antonio College Library

Examines sociolinguistic questions and the dynamic state of American English, a language rich in regional variety, strong in global impact, and steeped in cultural controversy. Episode one discusses linguistic dialect zones, the tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, the impact of dialect on grapholect, the northern cities vowel shift, the roots of African-American English, minority linguistic profiling, biases against nonstandard speech,...

This title examines the dynamics of a multilingual planet, offering us a snapshot of a globalized society. Multilingualism is everywhere in a globalized society. This book looks at its consequences, from the development of multilingual communities to language competition and variation. The author examines lingua francas, pidgins, creoles and artificial languages on the way to developing a snapshot of the social life of language. The book asks: How...

"We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But this isn't the case. When we look closely, we find that many basic concepts are not universal, and that speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently. Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe, explaining what linguistic diversity tells us about human culture, overturning conventional wisdom...

Accents of English is about the way English is pronounced by different people in different places. Volume I provides a synthesizing introduction, which shows how accents vary not only geographically, but also with social class, formality, sex and age; and in volumes 2 and 3 the author examines in greater depth the various accents used by people who speak English as their mother tongue: the accents of the regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland...

Combines personal reflections, historical allusions, and traveler's observations about the author's encounters with language and its users throughout the English-speaking world. David Crystal has been described by The Times Higher Education Supplement as a "latter-day Samuel Johnson." Now in a delightfully decisive journey through the groves and thickets of the English language, he combines personal reflections, historical allusions, and traveler'...

A delightfully witty and informative book for fans of Patricia T. O'Conner's previous bestseller Woe Is I and other popular books on language, like Eats, Shoots & Leaves and The Elements of Style. Do the British really speak better English than Americans do? Why don't French women wear brassieres? Does ain't deserve its bad rep? Should niche rhyme with quiche? Not so fast--the answers may surprise you! In this fascinating book, the authors cover the...

"Tradition, community, and pride are fundamental aspects of the history of Appalachia, and the language of the region is a living testament to its rich heritage. Despite the persistence of unflattering stereotypes and cultural discrimination associated with their style of speech, Appalachians have organized to preserve regional dialects--complex forms of English peppered with words, phrases, and pronunciations unique to the area and its people. Talking...

"Lingo takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of sixty European languages and dialects, sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences ... Lingo takes us into the remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the favored tongue; to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks; to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required...

A history of the English language draws on the diversity of dialects and regional accents around the world, as well as the dialects that appear in a variety of literary classics, to explain the significance of the language.