Pilot Study for the Investigation of the English of the Pennsylvania Germans

FAIN: FT-13264-77

Marion L. Huffines
Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005)

To make preliminary identification of features which are characteristic of the English of the Pennsylvania Germans and to identify preliminary sets of linguistic and social influences on those feature. The Pennsylvania German subculture is of particular interest to sociolinguists because it appears to be a non-urban, non-black, non-negatively perceived group to which the factors of social status in terms of the dominant society are unimportant. Dialect data will be collected by tape-recording interviews between informants and a field worker.