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Studies of the Regional Dialects in North America"The investigation of theregional dialectsofAmerican Englishhas been a major concern for dialectologists andsociolinguistssince 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 thespeechof the region. A boundary line called anisoglossdelineates 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)