Do You Speak American? Up North

Description

In this program, Robert MacNeil canvasses the North to learn firsthand about linguistic dialect zones, the tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, the impact of dialect on grapholect, the northern cities vowel shift, the roots of African-American English, minority dialects and linguistic profiling, biases against nonstandard speech, and the general perception of the U.S. Midland dialect as "normal American." Hip-hop street talk, IM slang, Pittsburghese, and Gullah and Geechee are sampled, and Bill Labov, the dean of American linguists; Jesse Sheidlower, American editor of the august OED; and New York magazine's John Simon are featured.

Runtime

57 min

Series

Subjects

Genre

Date of Publication

[2005], c2005

Database

Films on Demand

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