Linguistics

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  Nativism Reborn? The Official English Language Movement and the American States

  In July 1992 Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) angrily suggested during floor debate ... that the United States should not continue accepting immigrants who speak no English. "I pick up the telephone and call the local garage," Byrd said. "I can't understand the person on the other side of the line. I'm not sure he can understand me. They're all over the place, and they don‘t speak English. We want more of this?" Later he apologized for the remark, saying, "I regret that in the heat of the moment I spoke unwisely."

  Is America in the midst of another backlash ...Read More

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  Smoky Mountain Voices: A Lexicon of Southern Appalachian Speech Based on the Research of Horace Kephart

  A stingy man “won’t drink branch water till there’s a flood,” and it is “a mighty triflin’ sort o’ man’d let either his dog or his woman starve.” Some places are “so crowded you couldn’t cuss a cat without gettin’ fur in your mouth.” For almost thirty years Horace Kephart collected sayings like these from his neighbors and friends in the area around Bryson City, North Carolina.

  Kephart, a librarian with an interest in languages and in the American Frontier, left his career and his family in midlife to settle in what was at the turn of the century the ...Read More