DR. ALICE F. FREED
(E-mail: freeda@mail.montclair.edu)

There is no textbook ordered for this course. Readings will be assigned on a weekly basis. Copies of the readings will be available in the Linguistics Department Seminar Room (DI 122) and/or on reserve in the library.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

In addition to the weekly reading assignments, a number of field-work/ dialectology assignments will be given. There will also be a term project which will be based on these field exercises (or the term project can be based on a topic of your own choice provided it follows the same general guidelines as the suggested class project). Details of the term project will be discussed in class. The term project will include an in-class presentation. Every assignment is to be completed and handed in, without exception, on the day that it is due. Most field work assignments will involve collecting data on aspects of language use; you may want to tape-record some of these so you will need several blank cassette tapes and access to a tape recorder.

You are responsible for the material (1) covered in the readings (2) from homework assignments and (3) from class lectures and discussions. The readings and assignments provide the basis for class discussions so be sure to complete all assignments and readings before each class. Meaningful class discussion will be impossible unless you have done the reading and have completed the assignments. Please write down any questions you have about the readings or exercises so you can ask these questions in class. You will be expected to have each assignment completed on the date that it is due whether or not you are in class that day or whether or not you are in class the day that the assignment is given. It is your responsibility to know what is due for each class. In general, late work will not be accepted and make-up exams will only be given for emergencies. Regular attendance is expected of all students. Frequent absences will adversely affect your semester grade. You do NOT need to tell me that you will be out or why you have missed a class; just keep track of how many absences you have accumulated.

Grades for the semester will be based on class participation, attendance and fieldwork assignments (25%), a midterm exam (25%), and the final term project and presentation (50%). Full participation in class discussions is expected from all students. Written assignments should be very carefully written. Grades will be based on your writing as well as the content of work so it is never a good idea to turn in a first draft or an uncorrected second draft. Typos are your responsibility to correct. You should not use extensive quotes in what you turn in but if you do use a quote, be sure to use proper references to your sources. Plagiarism, which is the use of someone else’s words or ideas without proper acknowledgment, will result in a failing grade. What you hand in must be typed in a standard 12-point font, with double spacing and one-inch margins.

Monday 12:00 - 1:00
Wednesday 3:00 - 4:00
Thursday 4:30 - 5:00; 7:30 - 8:00 or by appointment

A compilation of the work sheets of the linguistic atlas of the United States and Canada and associated projects. Edited by Alva L. Davis, Raven I. McDavid, Jr. [and] Virginia G. McDavid. 2d ed. Chicago, University of Chicago Press [c1969]

Dictionary of American regional English. Frederic G. Cassidy, chief editor. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985-<1996 >.

Handbook of the linguistic geography of New England. Hans Kurath. With the collaboration of Marcus L. Hansen, Bernard Bloch [and] Julia Bloch. Providence : Brown Univ. 1939.

How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Allan Metcalf. 2000.

After having worked through the word check-lists on pages 17-25 and 29-31 of Discovering American Dialects, you are to interview two people to see if you find any dialect differences among people whom you know. For this first field work project, you are to choose one of the approaches that Shuy describes. The two people whom you interview should be either from different towns in the United States or from two towns in New Jersey that are at least 25 miles apart; the participants should either be the same age and have roughly the same educational background, or they should be two people who differ only in age (at least 20 years apart) but who are from the same town and have roughly the same educational background.

You will need to prepare a list of 30 items (of the sort listed in the book), five of which are new items that you make up on your own. Prepare a written form to give to each of your informants with all thirty definitions listed but you are to conduct the interview orally. You may either choose to list the possible words following the definitions (as it is done in the reading) or you can base the interview on a "fill-in-the-blank" questionnaire. (Alternatively, you might decide to do half of your questionnaire one way and the other the other way but you should conduct both interviews in exactly the same way.)

Have each of the two people fill out a personal data sheet like the one that you were given the first day of class.

What you need to hand in:

Compile a list of all the definitions that you use and make two columns next to them, one for each of the two speakers. List the word or words used by each of the speakers in these columns and hand this in. Also hand in the personal data sheets making clear which speaker is which. KEEP THE ORIGINAL DATA SHEETS FOR YOURSELF FOR FUTURE USE.

DR. ALICE F. FREED

1. Sex Race Age

2. Where do you live?

3. State County Town

4. How long have you lived there? (years)

5. Birthplace:

6. Other towns, states, or nations you have lived in (please give approximate years for each place)

7. Have you traveled or lived outside your native state? (Yes or No)

If yes, where?

8. Highest grade level reached in school:

9. Parents' birthplace (state or nation):

10. Father Grandfather

Mother Grandmother

11. Do you (or did you ever) speak a language other than English at home? (yes or no)

(If yes, which language?)

 12. Occupation (If retired, former occupation):

 13. Spouse’s occupation

The following is a suggestion for your term-project. If you have a particular interest in some other aspect of a dialectology project, you should discuss it with me but it will have to follow the same general guidelines as described below.

You will need to collect data from at least twenty people who grew up in different parts of New Jersey. These people will serve as your informants/ participants for your dialect study. You will need to use people who have a clear home-town; this means that you will need to find participants who have lived in the same town their whole life, or at least until they began college. You will want to identify four or five people from each of the different regions of New Jersey that you study. The participants should live in (or should have grown up in) towns at least 25 miles apart and should be people who are between the ages of 18 and 25. We might agree to use college students.

Find at least twenty-five items for which the members of the group you are studying have different terms. Try food, fashion, slang, youth-culture, music, sports, etc. The first two fieldwork exercises will help you identify these items.

Keep careful records of personal data (real names are not necessary) and geographic information about each person.

Use the same method for all elicitation. You will need to try many items until you find 25 for which there are definite differences.