English Dialects

(4 Credits)

Regional dialects of English in the United States and abroad. Dialect variation is studied on many linguistic levels, from word choice to the pronunciation of vowels to the construction of sentences. Topics include the fundamentals of dialectology, the historical development of regional dialects, mechanisms of language change, and social evaluation of dialects. Connections are made to techniques of quantitative data analysis, practical applications of dialectology, and the importance of dialect data for the development of (socio)linguistic theory.