Speaking American: A history of English in the United States

In this book, Richard Bailey has produced a narrative with a difference, a fitting culmination of and tribute to his lifelong devotion to the words and ways of the English language and its variant forms, particularly those in North America. Bailey has told not one, but eight stories of the English language in the United States. The following quotation explains his method, ‘But there is no “story” of English, or of any language. Rather, there are many stories, many perspectives, many points of view. And it is the same with language as a whole’ (Crystal 2009: 15, cited (vii)). The structure of the book illustrates this point: Each chapter deals with one region or city that typifies a development during one fifty-year period in the nation’s history. This is an elegant and fruitful arrangement. In ch. 2 (16–26), ‘Chesapeake Bay, before 1650’, Bailey examines the earliest English-speaking settlements on the Atlantic seaboard, their interaction with indigenous peoples, and the problem of finding an ‘American’ form of English in a colony characterized by small isolated settlements, high mortality, and a paucity of surviving records. He takes the position that these conditions minimize the effects of the founder principle (26; compare Mufwene 2001: 60) and colonial lag (following Dillard 1992: 32–33, 228). Ch. 3 (27–47) ‘Boston 1650–1700’ looks at the speech ways of New England, as evidenced by the letters and court records of a relatively more literate and stable population. Bailey illustrates the multilingual and multidialectal character of the voices present in New England at this time (see Kytö 2004). In ch. 4 (48–71) ‘Charleston 1700–1750’, Bailey traces the influence of varying populations of settlers from Barbados, Boston, and Pennsylvania, noting that the linguistic conservatism and ‘Anglophilia’ of the upper class in Charleston reflected a social and linguistic rift between coastal and inland residents. Ch. 5 (72–97) ‘Philadelphia, 1750–1800’, explores the multilingualism of the mid-Atlantic, with Dutch, Swedish and particularly German settlement populations, and also the linguistic impact of the intellectual activity of Franklin’s chosen city, the third largest in the British Empire in 1750. As in Charleston, evidence of numerous forms of English, including Welsh, Scots Irish, and African American, is provided by advertisements for runaway indentured servants and slaves. Bailey notes that Philadelphia’s power and prestige diminished as a result of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and the relocation of state and federal governments, and that for this reason the city cannot be held up as the ‘hearth and origin of English for western America’ (pace MacNeil & Cran 2005: 49). Ch. 6 (98–120) ‘New Orleans, 1800–1850’ analyzes a society with perhaps the greatest degree of multilingual input in all of the United States, with Native American languages including Choctaw and Mobilian jargon, three different French populations (from France,