Research

[Baker, John]

        For starters:  Do not rely on your own subjective impressions of
what has happened to words.  You need access to one or more databases
with information on word frequency, preferably structured so that they
can be broken down by date and geographic region.  These may be either
free public tools, such as Google Groups, or fee-based databases, such
as Lexis.  Bear in mind that both of my example databases have limited
reliability for searches more than about 15 or 20 years back; you should
choose databases that will give meaningful data for the period and words
you are researching.  Talk to your reference librarian.

        You should also take advantage of the word histories in better
dictionaries.  The Oxford English Dictionary provides an invaluable word
history, including examples of use over time.  The Random House Historic
Dictionary of American Slang provides similar information for the words
it covers (HDAS is not yet complete).  Again, talk to your reference
librarian.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Tanya Boettcher
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 12:17 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Research

I am an English major at Kennesaw State University, and I am in need of
some help.  I am in an American English class, and a project for that
class is to discover why certain words have seemed to have disappeared
in from main stream vocabulary.  For example, most people would say that
they were pants instead of trousers.  It is almost as if the word
"pants" has replaced the word "trousers."  My problem is that I have no
idea were to look for information regarding this phenomenon.  If anybody
has any suggestions as to how I might go about researching this project
I would truly appreciate it.

  Thanks,
  Tanya Boettcher

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