dialectology

In this course, I discovered the most interesting aspects of lingustical transformation. The language is a reflection of our thoughts, mentality, and our expression towards the world. The historical circumstances, traditions, and culture have a great influence on language. The way in which we speak identifies us who we are. This is our identity. Through the course of dialectology, we found the different lingustical variations of American English. There are vernacular and social dialects, which have interesting historical development. USA is a big country with many ethno groups, which have their own history, traditions, and ways of development. Therefore, it is not surprisingly that all those dialects so different, unusual, and unique.
The study of dialects itself is, the study of variant features within a language, their history, differences of form and meaning, interrelationships, distribution, and, more broadly, their spoken as distinct from their literary forms. This discipline recognizes all variations within the bounds of any given language; it classifies and interprets them according to historical origins, principles of development, characteristic features, areal distribution, and social correlates. For example when we talk about AAE, we all realize the history of African American ethnicity and understand the way in which their dialect had been formed. So it is all about dialects. Now we are witnesses another lingustical revolution is the bilingual transformation of Spanish English. Again we can follow all steps to answer on one simple question is why do we have such kind of phenomenon as Spanish English. There is because of great population of Spanish speakers in the country. However to find out the deep roots of lingustical transformation we should look very carefully in anthropological and etymological retrospections. Because every language is own culture and history of ethno group. And we are investigators on philological fields who wants to learn all those aspects in the lingustical system.

Post 9--Last Post: What was it all about?

Hi everyone,

In this, the last post, I'd like you to reflect on the course. Today, when we talked about English as an official language, so many themes of the semester came up: language and identity, language and power, politics and language, diversity, "-isms" (racism, etc.), language and nationality, education, etc. I think it's a great topic for the last discussion day of the course.

What about you? As you reflect back on the course, what will you take with you from it both in the short and mid/long-term? How will your experiences in this course affect how you undertake your final project? What questions would you like to answer about language through your final project? What about after the class? Do you think that you'll apply any of the concepts/knowledge that we experienced in this course to life? to school? to whatever?

Thank you for a great class. I still think this was one of the smartest classes I've ever had. If only it was also one of the most "attended" ; - ).

Tiffany