English in America: A Linguistic History by The Great Courses

Think about this: How would you address a group of two or more people? Would you say “you”, “you all”, “yous”, “you lot”, “y’all”, “you guys”, “you’uns”, “yinz”, or something else? Would that change depending on whom you were talking to or where you were? Your answers can provide revealing insights into who you are, where you grew up or live now, and your social, economic, and educational background.

Welcome to the enthralling world of linguistics. If you’ve ever been curious about how words like awesomesauce ever came to be, let alone made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, or if you’ve wondered why you say “firefly” and someone else calls the same insect a “lightning bug”, English in America is for you.

There’s an incredibly rich and colorful history behind American English. A profoundly diverse assortment of cultures has influenced our vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, and the language continues to grow and shift. Dialect variations are widespread and actually increasing, and the new words, accents, and sentence structures both reflect and shape changes in our culture and society. Investigating these dialects is the domain of sociolinguistics, the study of the intricate interrelation between language variation and cultural, interpersonal, and personal identity.

Over 24 lectures, you’ll encounter a wide range of ethnic and social groups that have shaped the course of the development of American English over the centuries: English speakers from all over the British Isles; speakers of West African languages; immigrants from Western and Eastern Europe; speakers of languages from Asia; and Spanish speakers from all over the world. In considering the contributions of these groups, you’ll also gain deep insights into the perceptions – and misperceptions – about language and dialect variation. As you’ll discover, American English is an umbrella term for many different EnglishES, reflecting who we have always been as a nation.

About the Author

Dr. Natalie Schilling is an Associate Professor of Linguistics and head of a research project at Georgetown University called Language and Communication in Washington, DC. She earned a doctorate in Linguistics from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received a bachelor’s degree in English, and she holds a master’s degree in English from North Carolina State University.

Dr. Schilling has appeared on a number of NPR programs, and has authored and contributed to articles in national publications. She is the author of Sociolinguistic Fieldwork, coauthor of American English: Dialects and Variation (third edition), and coeditor of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (second edition). She has conducted forensic linguistic investigation of speaker profiling and authorship attribution, applying expertise in American English dialect variation to casework.

Product details

• Full Audiobook MP3 Format
• Full PDF Guidebook Included
• Listening Length: 5 hours and 55 minutes
• Author: Natalie Schilling, The Great Courses
• Narrator: Natalie Schilling
• Release Date: February 05, 2016
• Publisher: The Great Courses
• Version: Original recording
• Language: English
• ASIN B01AYGHNCM