Southwest Areal Linguistics Then And Now

When this book was first published in 1982, there were approximately eleven million Spanish-speaking people in the United States. This volume constitutes a comprehensive and accessible set of readings on the Spanish spoken in the United States. The authors examine various aspects of language structure and language use by the American Chicano, Puerto Rican and Cuban populations. Chapters include descriptions of language variation, reports of language contact and language change and analyses of the ethnography of language use in bilingual communities with particular emphasis on code-switching. Several chapters explore the educational implications of language structure and language use. This collection will be of interest to a wide range of linguists, anthropologists and sociologists. Bilingual educators and language planners in bilingual communities will find it of particular value and students of sociolinguistics will discover in it the main trends of sociolinguistic analysis usefully exemplified.

A collection of the total range of scholarly and popular writing on English as spoken from Maryland to Texas and from Kentucky to Florida The only book-length bibliography on the speech of the American South, this volume focuses on the pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, naming practices, word play, and other aspects of language that have interested researchers and writers for two centuries. Compiled here are the works of linguists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators, as well as popular commentators. With over 3,800 entries, this invaluable resource is a testament to the significance of Southern speech, long recognized as a distinguishing feature of the South, and the abiding interest of Southerners in their speech as a mark of their identity. The entries encompass Southern dialects in all their distinctive varieties—from Appalachian to African American, and sea islander to urbanite.

A monumental achievement of scholarship, this volume on the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico (often called Aztecs) constitutes our best understanding of any New World indigenous society in the period following European contact. Simply put, the purpose of this book is to throw light on the history of Nahua society and culture through the use of records in Nahuatl, concentrating on the time when the bulk of the extant documents were written, between about 1540-50 and the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the earliest records are full of implications for the very first years after contact, and ultimately for the preconquest epoch as well, both of which are touched on here in ways that are more than introductory or ancillary.

Chicano English can rightly be said to be, in its different varieties, the most widespread ethnic dialect of U.S. English, spoken by large sections of the population in the American Southwest. It represents a type of speech referred to by E. Haugen as a bilingual dialect, having developed out of a stable Spanish-English setting. In their book, the authors provide a comprehensive examination of Chicano English, devoting particular emphasis to the social factors determining its characteristic features and uses. Special attention is given to the question of homogeneity as against ordered variation within Chicano English, to features of pronunciation and grammar, to its communicative functions, to the evaluative attitudes of its speakers and others and, finally, to its uses in literature and the media. In spite of its importance, Chicano English has been insufficiently documented; this monograph is intended to contribute towards redressing the balance.