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New England English Summary

New England English: Large-Scale Acoustic Sociophonetics and Dialectology by James N. Stanford (Associate Professor of Linguistics, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Dartmouth College)

For nearly 400 years, New England has held an important place in the development of American English, and New England accents are very well known in the popular imagination. While other projects have studied various dialect regions of New England, this is the first large-scale academic project since the 1930s to focus specifically on New England English as a whole. In New England English, James N. Stanford presents new variationist sociolinguistic research covering all six New England states, with detailed geographic, acoustic phonetic, and statistical analyses of recently collected data from over 1,600 New Englanders. Stanford and his team of Dartmouth students built this dataset over 8 years of face-to-face fieldwork and online audio recordings and questionnaires. Using acoustic phonetics, computational processing, and dialect maps, the book systematically documents major traditional New England dialect features and their current usage in terms of geography, age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and other factors. This dataset is interpreted in terms of William Labov's outward orientation of the language faculty, dialect levelling, convergence and divergence, and Hub social geometry. The result is a wide-ranging empirical analysis and theoretical overview of this influential English dialect region.

New England English Reviews

Jim Stanford and his Dartmouth team have put New England in the spotlight for studies of language change and variation. This book provides a stunning array of new field methods and techniques of data analysis. It should be required reading for students of language and society for years to come. * William Labov, Professor of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania *
James Stanford provides an extensive account of dialect variation in New England, a region that is critical historically to the understanding of American English. Technological advances since the time of Kurath's foundational work enabled Stanford to collect and statistically analyze data in ways that were previously unknown. The result is a comprehensive, readable, and important book for dialectologists of English. * Julie Roberts, Executive Director, American Dialect Society, and Professor of Linguistics, University of Vermont *
This book is a significant and admirable achievement in American English dialectology: undoubtedly the most important study of New England English since Kurath's Linguistic Atlas of New England in the 1930s. It will appeal to a broad audience, from expert dialectologists, through college students in linguistics classes, to language-loving amateurs among the general public. * Charles Boberg, Associate Professor of Linguistics, McGill University *
This book tells us everything we could want to know about New England English - past, present and future - and it has important theoretical impact. The clear presentation of methods are great training materials to follow his tantalizing suggestions for future study. It is a fine model of the work that can be accomplished through the integration of undergraduate teaching and research, providing new evidence that this regional dialect remains vibrant. * Naomi Nagy, Professor of Linguistics, University of Toronto *

About James N. Stanford (Associate Professor of Linguistics, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Dartmouth College)

James N. Stanford is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Dartmouth College. He studies dialects and language variation using quantitative sociolinguistic methods and acoustic sociophonetics, and is co-editor of Language Regard: Methods, Variation and Change (2018) and Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages (2009).

Table of Contents

Preface Part I: Setting the Stage Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Linguistic Variables Chapter 3: Early Founders and the Founder Effect Part II: Bird's Eye View: The Mechanical Turk Online Project Chapter 4: Results from the Mechanical Turk Online Audio Recordings Chapter 5: Results from the Mechanical Turk Online Written Questionnaires Part III: Exploring the Hub: Fieldwork Results from Eastern Massachusetts Chapter 6: Fieldwork results from eastern Massachusetts Chapter 7: Focus on subgroups within the Hub Part IV: Exploring Northern New England: Fieldwork Results Chapter 8: Fieldwork results from northeastern New England Chapter 9: Focus on subgroups of northern New England Part V: Summary and Discussion Chapter 10: Summary of empirical results Chapter 11: Outward orientation, leveling, and Hub social geometry Appendix A: Primary Field Interview Materials Appendix B: Field Interview Materials for the New Hampshire/Vermont Border Study Appendix C: The Mechanical Turk Self-Reporting Questionnaire Appendix D: The Mechanical Turk Audio Survey Appendix E: Information about the publicly available database: Dartmouth New England English Database (DNEED) References

Additional information

NPB9780190625658
9780190625658
0190625651
New England English: Large-Scale Acoustic Sociophonetics and Dialectology by James N. Stanford (Associate Professor of Linguistics, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Dartmouth College)
New
Hardback
Oxford University Press Inc
2019-12-06
376
N/A
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