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Title Speaking of Alabama : the history, diversity, function, and change of language / edited by Thomas E. Nunnally ; foreword by Walt Wolfram ; afterword by Michael B. Montgomery
Published Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, 2018

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Exploring language in Alabama / Thomas e. Nunnally -- Multilingual Alabama / Michael D. Picone -- Southern American English in Alabama / Catherine Evans Davies -- Extreme North Alabama: cultural collisions and linguistic fallout / Thomas E. Nunnally and Guy Bailey -- Just what is the southern drawl? / Crawford Feagin -- The heart of Dixie is in their vowels: the relationship between culture and language in Huntsville, Alabama / Rachael Allbritten -- The monophthongization of [a?] in Elba and the environs: a community study / Anna Head Spence -- To [a:] or not to [a:] on the Gulf Coast of Alabama / Jocelyn Doxsey -- "They sound better than we do": language attitudes in Alabama / J. Daniel Hasty -- Code-switching between African American and standard English: the rules, the roles, and the rub / Kimberly Johnson with Thomas E. Nunnally -- College writers as Alabama storytellers: cultural effects on academic writing / Charlotte Brammer -- Tsalagi language revitalization and the Echota Cherokee / Robin Sabino -- Afterword: some thoughts about ways ahead / Michael B. Montgomery
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject English language -- Dialects -- Alabama
English language -- Variation -- Alabama
English language -- Social aspects -- Alabama
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- General.
English language -- Dialects
English language -- Social aspects
English language -- Variation
Alabama
Form Electronic book
Author Nunnally, Thomas, editor
ISBN 9780817391980
0817391983