Language in Society

5 Regional Varieties of English 
125
5.1 Eliciting Regional Dialect Forms 
126
5.2 Mapping Regional Variants 
128
5.3 The Distribution of Dialect Forms 
132
5.4 Dialect Diffusion 
143
5.5 Perceptual Dialectology 
148
5.6 Region and Place 
153
5.7 Further Reading 
154
Websites 155
References 156
6 Social Varieties of American English 
159
6.1 Social Status and Class 
159
6.2 Beyond Social Class 
162
6.3 Indexing Social Meanings through Language Variation 
164
6.4 The Patterning of Social Differences in Language 
165

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Contents
vii
6.5 Linguistic Constraints on Variability 
170
6.6 The Social Evaluation of Linguistic Features 
174
6.7 Social Class and Language Change 
177
6.8 Further Reading 
179
References 179
7 Ethnicity and American English 
183
7.1 Ethnic Varieties and Ethnolinguistic Repertoire 
184
7.2 Patterns of Ethnolinguistic Variation 
185
7.3 Latino English 
188
7.4 Cajun English 
196
7.5 Lumbee English 
199
7.6 Jewish American English 
203
7.7 Asian American English 
206
7.8 Further Reading 
210
References 211
8 African American English 
217
8.1 Defining the English of African Americans 
218
8.2 The Relationship between European American and African 
American English 
220
8.3 The Origin and Early Development of African American English 
225
8.3.1 The Anglicist Hypothesis 
226
8.3.2 The Creolist Hypothesis 
226
8.3.3 A Note on Creole Exceptionalism 
228
8.3.4 The Neo‐Anglicist Hypothesis 
228
8.3.5 The Substrate Hypothesis 
230
8.4 The Contemporary Development
of African American Speech 
231
8.5 Conclusion 
238
8.6 Further Reading 
239
References 240