Walt Wolfram is a leading sociolinguist dedicated to exploring the social and ethnic dialects of American English. His foundational work, particularly with urban African American English, established its legitimacy as a complex linguistic system. Wolfram has extensively documented the linguistic diversity across various communities, from the Appalachian Mountains to the coastal islands of North Carolina. Through his publications and public outreach, he champions the principle of linguistic gratuity, emphasizing the responsibility to give back to the communities from which linguistic insights are gained.
A pioneering longitudinal study of sixty-seven African American children, this book examines language development through childhood. It provides a unique glimpse into what it means to mature from a linguistic perspective and will be a key work for advanced students and researchers in sociolinguistics.
The 5-Minute Linguist provides a lively, reader-friendly introduction to the subject of language suitable for the general reader and beginning students.The third edition adds new topics now at the forefront of linguistics and updates others.
Thomas E. Nunnally's volume presents essays by linguists who examine the speech varieties occurring both past and present across Alabama. Taken together, the accounts in this volume offer an engaging view of the major features that characterize Alabama's unique brand of southern English. Written in an accessible manner for general readers and scholars alike, Speaking of Alabama includes such subjects as the special linguistic features of the Southern drawl, the "phonetic divide" between north and south Alabama, "code-switching" by African American speakers in Alabama, pejorative attitudes by Alabama speakers toward their own native speech, the influence of foreign languages on Alabama speech to the vibrant history and continuing influence of non-English languages in the state, as well as ongoing changes in Alabama's dialects. Adding to these studies is a foreword by Walt Wolfram and an afterword by Michael B. Montgomery which place both the methodologies and the findings of the volume into their larger contexts and point researchers to needed work ahead in Alabama, the South, and beyond. The volume also contains a number of useful appendices, including a guide to the sounds of Southern English, a glossary of linguistic terms, and online sources for further study. Language, as presented in this collection, is never abstract but always examined in the context of its speakers' day-to-day lives, the driving force for their communication needs and choices. Whether specialist or general reader, Alabamian or non-Alabamian, all readers will come away from these accounts with a deepened understanding of how language functions between individuals, within communities, and across regions, and will gain a new respect for the driving forces behind language variation and language change
This book provides a very readable, up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences.