Origins of Missouri English - by Christopher Strelluf & Matthew J Gordon (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Working with archival recordings, the authors trace the history of Missouri English and demonstrate how the voices of Missourians born over a century ago provide a unique window on the development of many of the pronunciation features that separate modern American dialects.

Review Quotes

The Origins of Missouri English: A Historical Sociophonetic Analysis is an important work by two outstanding scholars. Far beyond simply exploring vocalic changes that took place over a century ago in Missouri speech, itself an important endeavor providing compelling new evidence about the time depth and organization of contemporary changes in American English (i.e., the low back merger and the Southern Vowel Shift), this book serves as a prime example of why doing the hard work of finding and analyzing archival data is vital in our quest to understand the foundations of sound changes that are at the heart of the sociophonetic enterprise. An important complement to the rapidly emerging field of historical sociolinguistics which focuses more on textual data, this volume establishes what I hope will be a model for future work in what the authors refer to as 'historical sociophonetics.'

This detailed and accurate examination of the sources of English in Missouri is a milestone in the burgeoning field of historical sociophonetics. In their meticulous analysis of early recordings for this variety, the authors have succeeded both in illuminating its origins, going back to the late nineteenth century, and in achieving foundational results and insights which will point the way forward for further research in this field.

About the Author

Christopher Strelluf is associate professor of linguistics at the University of Warwick.

Matthew J. Gordon is professor of English at the University of Missouri, Columbia.