ENGL 569: History of U.S. English
This course examines the history of the English language in the United States. We'll consider the shifting roles of English in its American context over the last five centuries, and some of the methods and tools for studying that history. English is the language of a wide range of people and public discourses in the U.S., and many communities have made English their own. Our approach will be through the methods and tools of historical language study, so we will take time to learn about both corpus methods and critical discourse analysis: the qualitative and quantitative tools for approaching historical archives. Particular areas of focus for the class might include:
- settlement patterns and the development of regional varieties of English
- Contact with indigenous languages of the Americas
- Language of the Salem witch trials
- the history of African-American Englishes
- the development of English education and standard language ideologies
- development of language in written genres: literature, journalism, trial records
- source materials: written records, dictionaries, recordings, digitized corpora, literature
Students are not expected to have any background in language studies and are encouraged to pursue research questions which overlap with fields of interest in literature, culture, writing studies, and pedagogy.