2.4.2 Regional Dialects
2.4.2 Regional Dialects
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Dialects: a variant of a language spoken by a group of people living in the same geographical area (regional dialects) or belong to the same social group (social dialects)
Regional dialects: varieties of a language spoken by people from different geographic regions (e.g., Southern English, Texas English, New York English, Boston English)
Major regional dialects in American English
Example: Southern English (distinctive features)
phonological:
Southern drawl; Texas twang
lexical:
y'all, buggie, ain’t, cut the light off
syntactic:
We might can go up there next Saturday. (double modals)
Daisy’s fixin’ to tell the story. (fixing)
Recommended Resources:
The different ways Americans speak - American Tongues (Documentary Series)
My Fair Lady Professor Higgins is teaching Eliza, a working-class flower girl from Cockney, the upper-middle English.
The Great Gatsby. Gatsby speaks with a strange accent, which sort of alienates him from the upper social class despite his incredible wealth.
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