language

Formal object(sound laws, shifts, syntax, etc.)

Linked to the life of the speakers(language cannot be separated from the culture of

which it is part)

Events that have influenced AE

Population mobility (external and internal migrations)

Innovation Break with the past (Europe, Natives) Democracy Large land area Ethnically diverse population

Spread of E as a world language

British empire American technological and economic

hegemony

> separation between the 2 nations in 1776 was schizophrenic:

Rejection Nostalgia

Noah Webster

Patriot and lexicographer Nationalist agenda Proposed simplification of spellings A host of new words

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Major differences Vocabulary

Americanism Contribution of other languages

Style 19th century Stereotype of AE as “tall talk, turgidity, and taboo” Declamatory style, Kentucky spirit

Pronunciation and class accent Pronunciation should follow spelling (Webster Relaxed pronunciation VS peremptory RP Rhotacism

Bush: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kiqs_ZxDiXM&feature=related

Blair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPCTBXse80c

The first use of the word Americanism is by John Witherspoon (1781), a Scot and then president of the Princeton College:

“Americanism, by which I understand an use of phrases or terms, or a construction of sentences, even among persons of rank or education, different from the use of the same terms or phrase, or the construction of similar sentences, in Great Britain […] it does not follow in every case, that the terms of phrases used are worse in themselves, but merely that they are American and not of English growth.”

More recent definitions of Americanism

From the Oxford English Dictionary. The Dictionary of American English: “not only words and phrases which are clearly or apparently of American origin, or have greater currency here than elsewhere, but also every word denoting something which has a real connection with the development of the country and the history of its people” (William Craigie)

From Dictionary of Americanisms:

“'Americanism' means a word or expression that originated in the United States. The term includes: outright coinages, such as appendicitis...such words as adobe...which first became English in the US; and terms such as faculty, fraternity, refrigerator when used in senses first given them in American usage” (Mitford Mathews)

2 points reconciled by John Algeo

Synchronic Americanism: “expression with characteristic form or use in America, whatever its origin”

Diachronic Americanism: “expression that originated in America, whatever its current use”

Some lexicon...

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/americanbritish.html

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/usgbdiff.html#a2b