Studies of the Regional Dialects in North America

"The investigation of theregional dialectsofAmerican English

has been a major concern for dialectologists andsociolinguists
since at least the early part of the twentieth century, whenThe
Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canadawas launched
and dialectologists began conducting large-scale surveys of
regional dialect forms. Although the traditional focus on regional
variation took a back seat to concerns for social and ethnic
dialect diversity for a couple of decades, there has been
resurgent interest in the regional dimension of American
dialects. This revitalization was buoyed by the publication of
different volumes of theDictionary of American Regional
English(Cassidy 1985; Cassidy and Hall 1991, 1996; Hall 2002),
and more recently, by the publication ofThe Atlas of North
American English(Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2005)."
(Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes,American English:
Dialects and Variation, 2nd ed. Blackwell, 2006)

Varieties of Regional Dialects in the U.S.

"Some differences in U.S.regional dialectsmay be

traced to the dialects spoken by colonial settlers from
England. Those from southern England spoke one dialect
and those from the north spoke another. In addition, the
colonists who maintained close contact with England
reflected the changes occurring inBritish English, while
earlier forms were preserved among Americans who
spread westward and broke communication with the
Atlantic coast. The study of regional dialects has
produceddialect atlases, withdialect mapsshowing the
areas where specific dialect characteristics occur in the
speechof the region. A boundary line called anisogloss
delineates each area."
(Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams,An
Introduction to Language, 9th ed. Wadsworth, 2011)

Regional Dialects in England and Australia

"The fact that English has been spoken in England for
1,500 years but in Australia for only 200 explains why
we have a great wealth of regional dialects in England
that is more or less totally lacking in Australia. It is
often possible to tell where an English person comes
from to within about 15 miles or less. In Australia,
where there has not been enough time for changes to
bring about much regional variation, it is almost
impossible to tell where someone comes from at all,
although very small differences are now beginning to
appear."
(Peter Trudgill,The Dialects of England, 2nd ed.
Blackwell, 1999)

Dialect Leveling

"[T]he frequent complaint today that 'dialects are dying out'

reflects the fact that the basis for dialects has shifted.
Nowadays, people travel hundreds of miles and think nothing of
it. People commute to work in London from as far afield as
Birmingham. Such mobility would explain, for example, why 150
years ago there was a traditional Kentish dialect, while today it
barely survives, such is the close and regular contact with
London. . . . [I]nstead of small relatively isolated communities
where each person mingles with more or less the same people
for a life-time, we have vast human melting-pots where people
have diffuse social networks--mingling regularly with different
people, adopting new speech forms and losing the old rural
forms. Both developments in communication and the effects of
urbanisation have contributed todialect levelling, a term
referring to the loss of original traditional dialectal distinctions."
(Jonathan Culpeper,History of English, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2005)

Dialectal Variation

"Adialectisvariationin grammar andvocabularyin addition to

sound variations. For example, if one person utters the sentence
'John is a farmer' and another says the same thing except
pronounces the word farmer as 'fahmuh,' then the difference is
one ofaccent. But if one person says something like 'You should
not do that' and another says 'Ya hadn't oughta do that,' then this
is adialectdifference because the variation is greater. The extent
of dialect differences is a continuum. Some dialects are extremely
different and others less so."
(Donald G. Ellis,From Language to Communication. Routledge,
1999)

Types of Variation

"[R]egional variation is only one of many possible types of differences

among speakers of the same language. For example, there are
occupational dialects (the wordbugsmeans something quite different
to a computer programmer and an exterminator), sexual dialects
(women are far more likely than men to call a new houseadorable),
and educational dialects (the more education people have, the less
likely they are to usedouble negatives). There are dialects of age
(teenagers have their ownslang, and even thephonologyof older
speakers is likely to differ from that of young speakers in the same
geographical region) and dialects of social context (we do not talk the
same way to our intimate friends as we do to new acquaintances, to
the paperboy, or to our employer). . . . [R]egional dialects are only
one of many types oflinguistic variation."
(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes,A Biography of the English Language,
3rd ed. Wadsworth, 2012)