Walt Wolfram (walt_wolfram@ncsu.edu)
ENG 584/498 Ethno linguistics
North Carolina State University
MW 3:00-4:15, Tompkins G17
Spring 2011
Course Syllabus
I. Course Description
This course examines the nature of ethnolinguistic variation in the English-speaking diaspora, with
particular attention to ethnic varieties in the United States that include African American English,
Hispanic English, Native American English, Cajun English, Jewish English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and
other varieties. In addition, the course will include Caribbean Englishes (Bahamian English) African
Englishes (Ghanaian English), and Southeastern Asian Englishes (Indian English) to complement the
focus on North American socioethnic varieties.
Prerequisite: ENG 524 or ENG 525 or their equivalents, or the consent of the instructors.
II. Texts
The primary texts for the class include the following:
Bordewich, Frank (1996) Killing the White Man’s Indian: The Reinventing of Native Americans at the
end of the Twentieth Century. New York: Doubleday.
Fought, Carmen (2003) Chicano English in Context. New York/Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Fought, Carmen (2006) Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Green, Lisa J. (2002) African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Kachru, Braj B., ed. (1993) The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press.
Kachru, Braj B. Yamuna Kachru & Cecil L. Nelson, eds. (2006) The Handbook of World Englishes.
Malden: Blackwell.
Kortmann, Bernd, Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, and Clive Upton (eds.),
Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol.1-4: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Leap, William L. (1993) American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Mendoza-Denton, Norma (2008) Home Girls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth
Gangs. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.
Morgan, Marcyliena (2002) Language, Discourse, and Power in African American Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Peñalosa, Fernando (1980) Chicano Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction. Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
Rampton, Ben (1995) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London/New York:
Longman.
Rickford, John R (1999) African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution and Educational
Implications. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell.
Wolfram, Walt (1974b) Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City.
Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Wolfram, Walt, and Erik R. Thomas (2002) The Development of African American English. Malden:
Blackwell.
Wolfram, Walt, Clare Dannenberg, Stanley Knick, and Linda Oxendine (2002) Fine in the World:
Lumbee Language in Time and Place. Raleigh: NC State Extension/Publications.
In addition, the class will use a set of articles and chapters compiled by the instructor. These will be
available online at the NC SLAAP website. Students should use this resource, which includes more than
700 sociolinguistic articles and papers of interest to students and staff.
2
NC SLAAP website:
http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/stafftools/library/pdfs.php. For use of the pdf library, the user ID is: ncllp;
password: bigtime. For use of the data for research, the instructor or student should contact webmaster
Tyler Kendall for a password.
A bibliographic reference list will be compiled during the course of the semester. Many of the assigned
readings for the course are included in the syllabus, but this will be augmented during the course of the
seminar.
III. Requirements
The class will be conducted as a professional seminar, with active participation by the instructor and
students. Class sessions will include mini-lectures/presentations, discussions, and student and instructor
discussions of articles and papers. We will also have several guest lectures on topics of interest to the
class by Mary Kohn (Hispanic English), Jenn Renn (AAE), Janneke Van Hofwegen (AAE), and Ralph
Fasold (Pennsylvania Dutch).
Students are required to complete the following projects for satisfactory completion of the course:
1) Write a 300-400-word abstract for a research paper presentation to be given at a professional
conference.
2) Give two brief reports on assigned readings; reports will include a brief overview of the article
and a critical reaction to it.
3) Give a research presentation on some aspect of an ethnic variety of American English in a format
that is suitable for scholarly presentation at a sociolinguistics conference. The presentation may
be singly or co-authored. The presentation will be delivered as a 20-minute, in-class presentation.
4) Prepare PowerPoint presentation and a handout to accompany the oral presentation following
current sociolinguistic formatting conventions.
5) Submit a 15-25 page written version of the paper following a format suitable for publication in a
journal. The paper should follow the formatting of one of the major sociolinguistic journals. It
should be sectionized (and paginated), and include a 100-150-word abstract at the beginning. It
should also list up to 5 key words.
Students will present will present their papers at the class meeting near the conclusion of the class.
Student Evaluation Percentages:
There are no exams. Students will be evaluated on the basis their regular participation in class,
including their familiarity with assigned reading, discussions, presentation of the paper to the
class, and the final written paper. Percentages are as follows:
In-class Reports
15%
Class presentation
25%
Handout/PowerPoint
10%
Final Paper
50%
Due dates for assignments:
March 14
Abstract due
March 28
Outline for paper due
April 18
Handout for paper due
April 20-May 2 Final presentations
May 9
Paper due
V. Course Outline
The following topics will be covered in the course, though the outline will not necessarily match the
weekly schedule.
1. Ethnicity, Race, and Ethnic Group
 Defining ethnicity in sociolinguistic studies
3
 The linguistic basis socioethnic variation
2. Linguistic Dimensions of Socioethnic Varieties
 Transfer and substrate
 Dialect diffusion and accommodation
 Interlanguage
 Linguistic creativity
3. Linguistic Crossing and Socioethnic Varieties
4. Socioethnic Varieties in American English
5. Specific Varieties of English-North America
 Hispanic English
 African American English
 Native American English
 Cajun English
 Pennsylvania Dutch
 Jewish English
6. Other Socioethnic Varieties
 Caribbean Englishes
 Bahamian Englishes
 African Englishes and Ghanaian English
 Southeast Asian English and Indian English
VI. Tentative Class Schedule
Following is an approximate schedule of class sessions. The schedule is certain to change along with
the cumulative readings given students’ interests and the inability of the instructor to accurately gauge
class time allocation.
Week
1/10
1/12
Topic
Class Overview
Language, Race and Ethnicity
Ethnicity in Sociolinguistic
Studies
1/17
1/19
No Class- University holiday
No Class-Instructor out of
town
(read on sociolinguistic
crossing)
1/24
Linguistic Dimensions of
Socioethnic Varieties
Readings
Fought, Carmen (2002) Ethnicity. In Handbook of
Language Variation and Change. 444-72.
Fought, Carmen (2006) Language and Ethnicity,
Chapters 1& 2. 3-41
Benor, Sarah (2010) Ethnolinguistic repertoire:
Shifting the analytic focus in language and
ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14:159-83.
Carmen (2006) Language and Ethnicity, Ch. 10.
197-215.
Rampton, Ben (1995) Crossing: Language and
Ethnicity among Adolescents, Ch. 1(3-30), Ch.
11,12 (275-321)
Kachru, Braj. (1982) models for non-native
Englishes. In The Other Tongue: English across
Cultures. 31-57.
Wolfram, Walt. (forthcoming). The dynamic
development of socioethnic varieties of English in
North American. In English as a Contact
Language. Ms
Odlin, Terence (1989) Language Transfer: Crosslinguistic Influence in Language Learning. Ch. 13. 1-47
Tarone, Elaine (forthcoming) Interlanguage. In
Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. 1-8.
Student
presenters
4
1/26
Linguistic Dimensions of
Socioethnic Varieties
1/31
Special lecture-SALT and
dialect indexing socioethnic
dialects-Jenn Renn
2/2
Hispanic English-Early
research studies
2/7
Hispanic English-Current
research studies
2/9
Special lecture-Mary Kohn
2/14
African American EnglishHistory
2/16
African American EnglishCurrent Issues
2/21
Special Lecture: Janneke
Van Hofwegen
2/23
African American English
2/28
Native American EnglishesHistorical Studies
Copy of WAMVE feature inventory questionnaire
Copy of Dialect Density Measure Inventory
Schneider, Edgar List of features, general
introduction (xxii-8)
Craig, Holly and Washington, Julie (2005) Malik
Goes to School. Append
Renn, Jennifer, Measuring Style Shift: A Quantitative
Analysis of African American English. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
M.A. thesis. Appendix of DDM features.
Wolfram, Walt (1974) Sociolinguistic Aspects of
Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York
City. Chapter 2(9-43) & 7(189-222)
Penalosa, Fernando 1980) Chicano Sociolinguistics:
A Brief Introduction. Ch. 2(13-40), 6(115-26)
Fought, Carmen (2003) Chicano English in Context
Ch. 1-4. 1-109.
Otto Santa Ana & Robert Bayley (2004) Chicano
English: Phonology, in Varieties of English Vol.
2, 219-38
Robert Bayley and Otto Santa Ana (2004), Chicano
English: Morphology and Syntax, in Varieties of
English, Vol. 2, 572-90.
Mendoza Denton, Norma (2008) Homegirls:
Language and Cultural Practice among Latina
Youth Gangs. Ch 1-4, 9-10.
Wolfram, Walt, Mary E. Kohn @ Erin CallahanPrice (forthcoming) Southern-bred Hispanic
English: An emerging socioethnic variety.
Cascadilla
Kohn, Mary & Hannah Franz. Localized patterns for
global variants. American Speech 84:259-97.
Wolfram, Walt (2003) Reexamining the development
of African American English: Evidence from
isolated communities. Language 79:282-316.
Kautsch, Alexander (2004) Earlier African American
English: Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of
English Vol. 2, 534-50.
Wolfram, Walt, Janneke Van Hofwegen, Mary Kohn,
and Jenn Renn (forthcoming) Trajectories of
development in AAE: The first 17 years. Ms.
Van Hofwegen, Janneke (forthcoming) Investigating
caretaker’s influence on vernacularity. In AAL
Conference Proceedings
Wolfram, Walt (forthcoming) The African American
English canon in sociolinguistics. In Contours of
English and English Language Studies
Morgan, Marcyleina (2002) Language, Discourse
and Power in African American Culture. Ch. 1-3.
1-83.
Wolfram, Walt (1984) Unmarked tense in American
Indian English. American Speech 59:31-50.
Leap, William (1993) American Indian English, ch 1
(13-43), Ch 3 (91-111)
Wolfram, Walt, Clare Dannenberg, Stanley Knick &
Linda Oxendine ( 2002) Lumbee English in
Context
5
3/2
Native American EnglishesCurrent Issues
3/7
No Class-Spring break
3/9
No Class-Spring break
3/14
Abstract due
Cajun English
3/16
Cajun English
3/21
Jewish English
3/23
Pennsylvania Dutch
3/28
Outline for paper due
Special Lecture-Ralph
Fasold
Caribbean Englishes
3/30
4/4
Abaco (Bahamas)-black and
white
4/6
African Englishes
4/11
The Case of Ghanaian English
Bordewich, Fergus (1996) Killing the White Man’s
Indian
TBA
Dubois, Sylvie & Barbara Horvath (2004) Cajun
Vernacular English. In Varieties of English. 20818
Dubois, Sylvie & Barbara Horvath Sounding Cajun:
The rhetorical use of dialect in speech and
writing. American Speech 77:264-87
Dubois, Sylvie & Megan Melancon (1997) Cajun is
dead: Shifting from a linguistic to a cultural
community. Journal of Sociolinguistics 1:63-93
Dubois, Sylvie & Barbara Horvath (1999) When the
music changes, you change too: Gender and
language change in Cajun English. Language
Variation and Change 11:287-313
Bernstein, Cynthia (2006) More than just yada yada
yada (Jewish English). In American Voices 25157.
Benor, Sarah (2010) Mensch, bentsch, and balagan:
Variation in the Jewish English repertoire.
Language & Communication 30:1-14
Huffines, Marion Lois (1984) The English of the
Pennsylvania Germans: A reflection of ethnic
affiliation. German Quarterly 57:173-82
Huffines, Marion Lois (1984) Pennsylvania German
stereotype: Particles, prepositions, and adverbs. In
Yearbook of German-American Studies 19:23-32
Mufwene, Salikoko (2006) Pidgins and Creoles, In
The Handbook of World Englishes. 313-327.
Aceto, Michael (2006) Caribbean Englishes, In The
Handbook of World Englishes, Ch. 13. 203-22.
Childs, Becky & Walt Wolfram (2004) Bahamian
English: phonology. In Varieties of English Vol.
2. 239-55.
Reaser, Jeffrey & Benjamin Torbert (2004)
Bahamian English: Morphology and syntax. In
Varieties of English Vol. 2. 591-608.
Bokamba, Eyamba (1982) The Africanization of
English. In The Other Tongue: English Across
Cultures, 77-98.
Omoniyi, Tope (2006) West African Englishes. In
The Handbook of World Englishes, Ch. 11.17287.
Huber, Magnus (2004) Ghanaian English:
phonology. In Varieties of English Vol. 4. 67-92
Huber, Magnus (2004) Ghanaian Pidgin English:
phonology. In Varieties of English, Vol. 293-101.
Huber, Magnus & Kari Dako (2004) Ghanaian
English: Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of
English, Vol. 4. 368-80
6
4/13
Indian (Asian) English
4/18
4/20
Handout for presentation
due
Indian (Asian) English
Student presentations
4/25
Student presentations
4/27
Student presentations
5/2
Student presentations
Huber, Magnus (2004) Ghanaian English:
Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of English,
Vol. 4. 380-85.
Gargesh, Ravinder (2006) South Asian Englishes. In
The Handbook of World Englishes, Ch. 6 (90114)
Gargesh, Ravinder (2004) Indian English:
phonology, In Varieties of English Vol. 4. 231-43.
Bhatt, Rakesh M (2006) Indian English: morphology
and syntax. In Varieties of English Vol. 4. 546-63.
TBA
VI. Office Hours
Walt Wolfram
Room 208, Tompkins Hall
Office hours: MW 4:15-5:30; other times TBA
Office Phone: (919) 515-4151
FAX (919) 515-1836
Email: walt_wolfram@.ncsu.edu
VII. Student Rights and Responsibilities
Students should be advised of the university policy on Academic Integrity; See
http://www.fish.ncsu.edu/ncsulegal/41.03-codeof/htm for details.
From the statement on academic integrity
7.1 The free exchange of ideas depends on the participants' trust that they will be given credit for
their work. Everyone in an academic community must be responsible for acknowledging, using the
methods accepted by the various academic disciplines, their use of others' words and ideas. Since
intellectual workers' words and ideas constitute a kind of property, plagiarism is like theft.
7.2 Furthermore, as a reader you may want to follow other writers' paths of research in order to make
your own judgments about their evidence and arguments. You will depend on those writers' accuracy
and honesty in reporting their sources. In turn your readers will depend on yours.
7.3 The free exchange of ideas also depends on the participants' trust that others' work is their own
and that it was done and is being reported honestly. Intellectual progress in all the disciplines
demands the truthfulness of all participants.
7.4 Plagiarism and cheating are attacks on the very foundation of academic life, and cannot be
tolerated within universities. Section eight (8) of the Code defines academic dishonesty and provides
information on potential sanctions for violators of academic integrity.
VIII. Policy on Working with Students with Disabilities
Reasonable accommodations will be made for students with verifiable disabilities. In order to take
advantage of available accommodations, students must register with Disability Services for Students
at 1900 Student Health Center, Campus Box 7509, 515-7653. For more information on NC State’s
policy, see http://www.ncsu.edu/provost/hat/current/appendix/appen_k.html.