Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

FAIN: RZ-50220-04

University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0001)
Michael D. Picone (Project Director: November 2003 to July 2009)

Publication of two volumes of essays deriving from papers delivered at the LAVIS III Symposium, exploring language variety in the American South. The results of the conference will also be disseminated electronically on a website.

A proposal for support for publication and related website that will present state-of-the-art research on linguistic variation in the American South, resulting from the LAVIS III Symposium to be held at the University of Alabama, April 2004. The co-editors of the two-volume publication are the organizers of the LAVIS III Symposium. Historical perspectives will focus on indigenous languages, links to the Caribbean, and the nature of the historical European linguistic mix. Contemporary perspectives will focus on the complexity of relationship between black and white speech, current language contact, new frameworks and technologies for qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and the use of innovative methodologies in approaching an expanded object of study including perceptual dialectology, discourse analysis and pragmatics, language ideology, and the representation of Southern speech in the media. Traditional notions of "race" in dialectology and sociolinguistics will be critiqued.