7 - DIALECTS

Summary

Introduction

American dialects record the contents of the English language as social facts realized in a geographic framework. As complete linguistic systems, all dialects report speech within the context of larger constructs – a language or a national variety of a language at a given point in the history of its development. American dialects transmit a national variety of Modern English in a distinctive pattern of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

The first speakers of American English received the language in a plastic state and shaped it according to their experience. Current regional and social dialects of American speech reflect the experiences of explorers and settlers on the Atlantic seaboard, of Western pioneers who followed them, and of later immigrants who energized the society as it moved across the continent. The dialects echo developments in the English language at critical historical junctures. They mirror cultural interaction – distinguishing Northern, Southern, Midland, and Western divisions of American geography, stratified according to the racial caste, sex, age, and education of American society. And they unite in the formation of American English, unmistakable to any speaker of the English language today.

The sounds, syntactic structures, and lexicon of American English unite in an integrated system. The phonology provides a system of contrastive sets (phonemes) that distinguish consonants, vowels, and units of intonation (stress, pitch, and juncture). The grammar outlines the arrangement, selection, and inflection of speech parts. And the vocabulary records a cultural index through distinctive words that identify the artifacts, ideas, and behavior of the American people.