Dictionary of American Regional English

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Joan Houston Hall and the staff of the "Dictionary of American Regional English" (DARE) will continue their documentation of regional and social variation in American English. They will concentrate on entries to appear in Volume V of DARE (Sl-Z), which is projected for publication in 2008. Four volumes of DARE have already been published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: A-C, 1985; D-H, 1991; I-O, 1996; P-Sk, 2002. DARE is based both on an extensive program of fieldwork conducted in 1,002 communities across the United States between 1965 and 1970 and on a massive collection of written sources (including materials such as diaries, letters, newspapers, novels, folklore collections, government documents, and electronic collections) that document American English from the seventeenth century to the present. DARE provides full historical treatment of the words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one part of the USA to another or that characterize the usage of one social group or another. Unique to DARE is the inclusion of maps (adjusted to reflect population density rather than geographic area) showing distributions of words. Although language change is inevitable over time, and though some have predicted the "homogenization" of American English, DARE makes it clear that regional words and phrases are still very much alive. The published volumes of DARE and the tape recordings and other materials collected for the project have been used by linguists, sociolinguists, and lexicographers. In addition, forensic linguists have used DARE to help identify crime suspects; physicians have used it to explain folk terms for ailments and diseases; and psychiatrists and gerontologists have used it in conjunction with standardized tests that call for identification of household objects (since makers of such tests have not recognized that use of regional vocabulary items can skew the test scores and result in misdiagnosis of illnesses such as aphasia). The DARE volumes are also widely used by teachers, researchers, librarians, journalists, historians, and playwrights, as well as by readers who simply delight in American English.