Dear Jed,
Big smiles! Thank you for your kind words. I'm really glad to hear that
my works are useful with your students. Am always eager to hear
feedback. So please feel free to share my email address.
Now that I think of it, one of my recent articles deals very much with
some of the tensions of dealing with stigmatized language varieties in
the U. S. South. It's a piece that appeared in a New Zealand online
journal _English Teaching: Practice and Critique_. After sharing
vignettes from my collaborator's third grade classroom where she
implements contrastive analysis and code-switching with her 2nd and 3rd
graders, I share principles that have allowed me to successfully defuse
social and political concerns of principals, central school office
administrators, teachers, students, parents, politicans, reporters, etc
as I go about doing this work using linguistic approaches to teaching
Standard English in diverse classrooms.
And my book, __Code-switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban
Classrooms_ has an extended section in chapter 1 dealing with "the
vexing problem of terminology" that speaks specifically to talking with
educators about language varieties in the U. S. south.
Hmm... I may be repeating earlier list info, but _English Teaching:
Practice and Critique_ has just put out a VERY interesting two-volume
series, featuring, for example, Martha Kolln, Craig Hancock, and Connie
Weaver exploring issues of what counts as knowledge about grammar, whose
grammar, etc.. And the editor, Terry Locke, provides a beautifully
insightful overview, introduction. Check it out! Here are the URLs
(part one -- December 2005)
http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?id=10&p=1
(part two -- May 06)
http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?current=true&p=1
yeah, I'm SURE martha and Craig must have talked extensively about these
issues. so please pardon the repetition.
cheers all!
Rebecca Wheeler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rebecca S. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English Education
Department of English
Christopher Newport University
Newport News, VA 23606
[log in to unmask]
(o): 757-594-8889
(c): 757-651-3659
http://www.faculty.users.cnu.edu/rwheeler/
http://www.ncte.org/profdev/onsite/consultants/wheeler
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
----- Original Message -----
From: "John E. Dews-Alexander" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, July 10, 2006 9:58 pm
Subject: Re: Sources for History of Southern American English
> Dr. Wheeler,
> I am certainly familiar with your work. Language Alive in the
> Classroom and your code-switching articles are required reading in
> my teacher education classes! Thank you so much for your thoughtful
> response -- I'm going to look into those sources as soon as I get a
> chance. The ADS work would be fantastic! I hadn't thought to look
> into Dr. Wolfram's work, but I bet it's a goldmine!
> Thanks again -- it's a very surreal experience to receive an e-
> mail from someone whose work you've dealt with so much! I'm sure
> all of ATEG's membership is looking forward to your future work!
> Jed
>
> "Dr. Rebecca Wheeler" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Jed,
> Walt Wolfram's work at North Carolina State University is
> unsurpassed on
> history and systematicity of southern dialects. See some of his
> stuff at
> http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/bios/wolfram.htm
>
> Further, and i don't have the exact cite here, but I believe the
> American Dialect Society recently came out with a special volume on
> Southern American English, so that's worth checking into.
>
> My own work in teacher education and code-switching is available
> throughthe NCTE -- see either my NCTE consultant website or my CNU
> facultywebsite for articles and a link to my recent book on Code-
> switching.
> Wolfram has a whole middle school curriculum he's co-constructed with
> Jeffrey Reaser, his former grad student who is now on faculty with
> NCSU.
> For further south, you might try Bethany Dumas's work -- she's
> worked on
> the languages of the Ozark Mountains. I believe she's at U. Tennessee,
> Knoxville.
>
> Have at it!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rebecca Wheeler
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Rebecca S. Wheeler, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Department of English
> Christopher Newport University
> Newport News, VA 23606
>
> [log in to unmask]
> cell: 757-651-3659
> work: 757-594-8889
>
>
> http://www.faculty.users.cnu.edu/rwheeler/
> http://www.ncte.org/profdev/onsite/consultants/wheeler
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John E. Dews-Alexander"
> Date: Monday, July 10, 2006 8:51 pm
> Subject: Sources for History of Southern American English
>
> > Hi again, ATEGers!
> > I already have a question for you! Perhaps I should have sent
> > this to a dialectology listserv, but I trust this group to have
> > more than one person who knows this subject matter better than most.
> > I'm working on a project over the summer that I want to use
> > with local secondary schools (11th and 12th graders) here in
> north
> > Alabama to initiate conversations about language variety,
> dialects,
> > etc. I want to eventually convey the idea of what many of these
> > students speak (Southern American English, African American
> > English, Chicano English, etc) is in no way bad, lazy or any
> other
> > prescriptive nonsense, but just different varieties of English
> with
> > their own structures and rich histories. Basically, I need a way
> to
> > quickly debunk their own insecurities about their language
> > competence and get them thinking descriptively (this part of a
> > larger project to teach grammar within this context).
> > The best way I've found to break down language myths is to
> > expose them for what they are using 1) examples of systematicity
> > within dialects and 2) tidbits of historical linguistic accounts
> of
> > the language variety in question.
> > Systematicity I'm comfortable with, but historical linguistics
> > is a relatively new field for me. Thanks to lots of great, easily
> > accessible materials on African American English and Chicano
> > English, I've had no problems pulling together some highlights of
> > the language history, the processes of sound and syntactic
> change,
> > etc. However, with Southern American English, I'm having more of
> a
> > problem.
> > I want to be able to tell the students where their language
> > variety comes from, where their non-standard grammatical features
> > can be traced to, etc. I've got a couple of leads on the Scots-
> > Irish immigrants, especially in north Alabama, but my searches
> > aren't turning up much.
> > Is there a particular author(s) that someone can recommend for
> > this topic or some particular works? Herb, based on your posts, I
> > thought you might have some ideas of what I should be looking for
> > to unravel the history of Southern American English. Is there a
> > standard work to consult?
> > I would be glad to provide more specific examples of the kind
> > of questions I have, but I thought it might be easier to start
> out
> > with just a broad question and see if any references come up.
> > Thanks for any help you can provide!
> > Jed
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
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> >
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>
>
>
> *****************************************************************
> John (Jed) E. Dews-Alexander
> Instructor, Undergraduate Linguistics
> MA-TESOL/Applied Linguistics Program
> Educator, Secondary English Language Arts
> English Department, 208 Rowand-Johnson Hall (Office)
> University of Alabama
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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