HOE and dialects texts

[Beverly Flanigan]

The best replacement for Wolfram's old book is his and Schilling-Estes'
_American English: Dialects and Variation_ (Blackwell, 1998).  I've used it
twice now and have had good luck with it, even though I have to cut out a
couple of chapters to make it fit in a quarter (it's perfect for a
semester).  I always worry about how much undergrads will comprehend of it,
but this year they especially impressed me in their exams and term projects
(informant-based analyses of selected dialects).  I supplement it with
readings (including "pop" pieces like nsp. interviews with Labov and
Wolfram), NPR discussions (two just last year), and audio and video
tapes.  I no longer use "The Story of English" at all; there are far better
ones available now.  I also have the students subscribe to the ADS list,
even if they just lurk (one student got into it with you all though, on
tschotchkes); they actually enjoyed it!

At 06:43 PM 3/21/00 -0600, you wrote:
>I'm teaching "American English: History and Dialects" this summer at
>IIT after a two-year hiatus, and I'm looking for text suggestions.
>
>The students will probably only take this one linguistics course in
>their lives, so in the past I've used some decidedly un-textbooky
>things, like "The Story of English," the companion to the PBS series.
>In conjunction with that, I used Wolfram's "American Dialects," and
>actually had a nice little 8-week course that students enjoyed and
>got a lot from.
>
>Are there any new texts out there?  Wolfram is out of print, so I
>must have a new text for the survey of American dialects portion of
>the course, and I need something accessible.  I'm pretty happy with
>TSOE, but I'd be interested in a newer but still highly-accessible
>history of English, if such a thing exists.
>
>Thanks.
>
>--
>-
>
>Greg
>greg at pulliam.org