Abstracts for American Speech, vol. 80, no. 3

[Grant Barrett]

These are the abstracts for the issue of the American Dialect Society
Journal _American Speech_, vol. 80, no. 3.

The Invisible Community of the Lost Colony: African American English
on Roanoke Island

Jeannine Carpenter
Duke University and North Carolina State University

Abstract: The regional accommodation of earlier and contemporary
African American speech remains a major issue in the development of
African American English (AAE). This article analyzes a unique
regional situation with respect to African American speech--Roanoke
Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the first
settlement of British colonists disappeared in 1587 and where a
stable community of African Americans has lived since the Civil War.
Quantitative analysis of the speech of four generations of African
Americans from Roanoke Island for Outer Banks regional features and
core diagnostic structures of AAE shows patterns of dialect alignment
over time. The generational patterns reveal changes in alignment in
the AAE spoken on Roanoke Island over apparent time. However,
significant levels of individual variation in each generation are
also attested, challenging generalizations about consistent changes
over time. The mixed dialect alignment among Roanoke Island African
Americans supports the conclusion that regional speech patterns can
serve an important role in the development of different varieties of
AAE. Furthermore, the unique configuration of dialect features on
Roanoke Island indicates alternative trajectories of change in
different regional settings, influenced by such factors as population
size and local and extended interethnic contact situations.


Male chauvinish, feminist, sexist, and sexual harassment: Different
Trajectories in Feminist Linguistic Innovation

Jane Mansbridge and Katherine Flaster
Harvard University

Abstract: The usage of the term male chauvinist, commonly thought to
have arisen in the late 1960s, is tracked in the New York Times from
1851 to 1999 using the ProQuest Historical Newspapers online archive,
along with feminist, another revivified word, and the new coinages
sexist and sexual harassment. Male chauvinist reveals the
characteristic pattern of a vogue word in its relatively swift rise
and slower decline, while the other words, once introduced or
reintroduced, have a more sustained trajectory. A comparison through
survey research of male chauvinist with sexist reveals greater cross-
class and cross-race usage of male chauvinist.


So Weird; So Cool; So Innovative: The Use of Intensifiers in the
Television Series Friends

Sali Tagliamonte and Chris Roberts
University of Toronto

Abstract: The use of intensifiers in the television series Friends
between 1994 and 2002 provides a unique opportunity to (1) study
linguistic innovation in real time and (2) test the viability of
media-based data as a surrogate to “real-world” data in
sociolinguistic research. The Friends data exhibit almost the same
overall rate of intensification as similar studies of contemporary
English, and the same intensifiers occur most frequently: really,
very, and so. Frequency of intensifier correlates with its time
origin, reflecting the typical layering of forms in language.
Moreover, in Friends the once primary intensifier in North America,
really, is being usurped by so, which is used more often by the
female characters than by the males. Taken together, these findings
support the claim that media language does reflect what is going on
in language and may even pave the way for innovation. Television data
can provide interesting and informative sociolinguistic data for study.


Among the New Words

Wayne Glowka, Debra Dent, Kathryn Ball, Kim Benfield, Charles Farmer,
Scott Daniel, Nicole Hensel, Jamie McAfee, Lee Ogletree, Jessica
Rossin, Terri Scott, R. Doug Thompson, and William V. Sinski
Georgia College & State University;

David K. Barnhart, Lexik House Publishers

Headwords:
angel
backdoor draft
blog-, blogo-
blogosphere
blogospheric
clone and kill, clone-to-kill
crunked
douche chill
erototoxin
faith-based
fetch
flip-flopper
hillbilly armor
holy toast
Jesusland
lawn mullet
luanqibaozhao
meet-up, meetup
Nerdvana
Orange Revolution
partner reduction
reality-based
security mom
stalkette

Reviews

Principles of Linguistic Change, vol. 2, Social Factors, by William
Labov
Review by William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.

What’s in a Word? Etymological Gossip about Some Interesting English
Words, by Robert Gorrell
Review by Sarah Hilliard