How We Talk: American Regional English Today (review)

Reviews269 How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Allan Metcalf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2000. Pp. xvi + 207. $14.00 paper. Hl ' ow We Talk is a survey of regional and ethnic language variation in the U.S. It is written in a popular style, obviously meant to appeal to an audience of people "interested in words," but without any linguistic knowledge. The back cover assures us that it is composed of "short essays that are easy to read," and the layout, which features frequent text boxes and illustrations , also seems designed to reassure the skittish reader. (The quotations in the text boxes are drawn from a wide range of sources and provide an interesting counterpoint to the main text; the illustrations, with a few exceptions, add nothing to the reader's understanding.) But this is not the usual cobbledtogether collection of quaint or "colorful" expressions and funny pronunciations ; Metcalf's purpose is to give his readers an enlightened, if basic, understanding of language variation, and in this he is, within his self-imposed limitations, very successful. The Introduction deals with some basic concepts. Variation exists at all levels, from individual speakers to broad national types such as U.S. and British English: "Looking at varieties of the American language is like looking at varieties of the American climate: How many we find depends on how closely we look" (viii). The main determining factor in how we speak is social environment : "We grow up speaking the way people around us speak. . . . We talk most like those we talk with" (ix) . But people are not usually limited to a single fixed variety: "While we may speak a version of 'General American' at work, at home we enjoy putting on and even showing off our local ways of speaking" (xi) . Finally , Metcalf warns us that his treatment will necessarily be highly selective: "Whatever place you call home, you're likely to find it underrepresented in its depth, breadth, and subtlety" (xiii) . The Introduction also has a "Note on Sources"; Metcalf lists the obvious general sources on American English variation, along with a small but judicious selection of more narrowly focused works. Anyone who was inspired to learn more would certainly find some good suggestions here, though such readers might have been better served by a list specifically aimed at providing "suggestions for further reading." Metcalf also acknowledges his debt "to the copious evidence of present-day American English among the billion pages of the World Wide Web, notjust scholarly websites but popular one like those for Utahnics and Seattlese, and ordinary sites whose comments and conversation provide evidence for local words like the Northwest's spendy or Boston's ckansers" (xiv-xv) . This is no token nod to trendiness; it is clear throughout the book that Metcalf has made good use of the Web. The bulk of How We Talk is a geographical survey. It is divided into three main chapters — "The South," "The North," and "The West" — which are then subdivided into smaller sections — "The North," for instance, into 270Reviews "New England," "New York City and the Mid-Atlantic," and "The Inland North" — and finally there is a state-by-state survey of these subregions, with special sections devoted to some major cities. Typically, at each level Metcalf begins with some characteristic features of pronunciation and perhaps a grammatical feature or two, and then gives a list of characteristic vocabulary. Given his decision to eschew not only IPA but practically anything savoring of technical terminology, Metcalf does a good job of describing some major features of regional pronunciation and even of insinuating some basic phonetic concepts. Here, for example, is his statement of the conditioning of the /ai/ diphthong in some Soudiern speech: "In the heart of Dixie, Southerners tend to be more discriminating [than in the South Midland] and pronounce 'ah' or 'ah-ee' depending on the sound that follows. They may say the Southern 'ah' for I, 'trah' for try, 'tahm' for time, . . but for them nice white rice follows the Northern pattern, 'nah-ees whah-eet rah-ees.' . . . For such people, consonants like s, f p, t, and k make the difference; if the 'long i' comes immediately before...