Everyone in the United States knows the notorious long o’s and w’s of the New York Accent–but for the first time ever, New York City English has been described and analyzed by Professor Michael Newman of Queens College, City University of New York. New York City English is one of the most recognizable of all the US dialects and past research on it launched modern sociolinguistics. Yet the city’s speech has never before received a comprehensive description and analysis. Until now. In his book New York City Dialects of English , Michael Newman examines the differences and similarities among the ways English is spoken by the extraordinarily diverse population living in the New York dialect region. Using data from a variety of sources, including older dialectological accounts, classic and recent variationist studies, and original research on speakers from around the dialect region, Newman intertwines this data into an in-depth account of the New York dialect. Newman explores all levels of language, including phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, and discourse, complemented with a history of English in the region. Despite this, New York City Dialects of English provides far more than a dialectological and historical inventory of linguistic features. Pushing past the surface layer, the forms used by different groups of New Yorkers are discussed in terms of their complex social meanings. Furthermore, Newman illustrates the varied forms of sociolinguistic significance with examples from the personal experiences of a variety of New Yorkers, including links to recordings of actual speech on the publisher’s website and videos on YouTube. The result is a rigorous but accessible and compelling account of the English spoken in one of the greatest cities in the world.

New York City English (Dialects of English [DOE], 10) PDF

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