5 - General American

Question 1

General American
what does it refer to ?
Other terms ?

Answer 1

A term usually used to refer to a type of American pronunciation that does not have specific regional features.

• Other terms: Standard American English, Network English

basically : negative def : not eastern nor souther, not coastal.
Socially, though not explicitly state, a “middle America” that does not draw attention to itself. It is therefore a composite standard, a generalisation. Like R.P IT IS NON LOCALISABLE but it APPLIES TO 2/3 of US PPOPULATION

Question 2

American English: a (very) short history

Answer 2

• When varieties aren’t in contact (any more), they begin to change in
  different directions.
• British innovations have little impact on American English, and the other way around.
• Wells: this happened around 1750 → the great divide
• The Westward expansion was synonymous with a sort of levelling.

Question 3

West vs EAST in USA

Answer 3

west = much bigger
dialectal areas : less
variation. It takes time for variation to
develop

east = = more dialectal areas. Smaller dialectal areas = dialects have had more time to diverge

Question 4

Noah Webster

Answer 4

• Educated at Yale → a law degree but preferred to teach.
• He set up several schools that weren’t very successful.
• As a ‘patriot’, he thought that Americans should have their own ‘sort’ of English.
• He wanted to standardise / standardize American usage.
• Several books, including the American Dictionary of the English
  Language [1828] and specific books for children’s education

. * A huge impact on American usage (rare)

Question 5

Noah Webster, quote

Answer 5

• Dissertations on the English Language (1789):
• ‘Our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, should no longer be our standard;
  for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline’.

Question 6

Noah Webster and pronunciation

Answer 6

• He insisted that all parts of words should be pronounced fewer weak
  forms than in British English.

→ secretary
US /ˈsekrəteri/
vs. GB /ˈsekrət(ə)ri/ ;

→ ceremony
US
/ˈserəmoʊni/
vs. GB /ˈserəməni/).

Webster was in favo(u)r of as much regularity between spelling and
pronunciation as possible.

Question 7

Navarro (2016 : 82) sur Webster quote

Answer 7

: « il est probable que la norme rhotique, qui assigne
une valeur phonétique à tout <r> graphique, ait été renforcée par
l’utilisation massive du manuel de Webster. »</r>

Question 8

Webster played a part in what ?

Answer 8

• Webster played a part in promoting a variety of English that was
  pretty homegeneous on the US territory (many fewer differences thanin Britain).
• Something that was regularly observed in the 18th century.
• 1781, John Witherspoon, the Scottish president of Princeton
  University, noted: “being much more unsettled, and moving frequently from place to place, [Americans] are not so liable to local peculiarities either in accent or
  phraseology”

Question 9

Today GA what’s happening ?

Answer 9

• US accents are diverging, not converging. Labov (2006):

Although there is influence of the mass media, it doesn’t affect the way we speak everyday : regional dialects of this ocuntry are getting more and more different : people from Buffalo, St Louis & Los aneles are now speaking ++ differently from each other than they ever did