Listening to America

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Robert Hendrickson

All of the lingo, slang, and patois of the greatest country on earth. The Queen?s English has no place across the pond, where a long history of defiance, creativity, and originality has made its way into the everyday vocabulary of Americans coast-to-coast. God Bless America is an informative and entertaining guide to the meaning and history beneath our uniquely American words and phrases. Robert Hendrickson makes it clear that whether you?re ordering?fried chicken? or heading out to see a?movie,? you are celebrating contributions to the English language made by Americans, both famous and forgotten. With extensive research and a passion for language, Hendrickson furthers our understanding of the familiar and introduces us to the more obscure artifacts of American speech. God Bless America provides the definitions and background for many uniquely American phrases and terms, such as:? Bald eagle? Boston baked beans? Five-and-ten? Give?em hell? Lazy Susan? Sho? nuff? Yankee Doodle? And more! A dictionary packed full of historical accounts, etymological peculiarities, and imaginative spirit, God Bless America represents not only the American language but also the American people. This book provides an undeniable resource for travelers, patriots, and Anglophiles from all walks of life.

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Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton

"This book: give a comprehensive and descriptive overview of the entire language history of English ; illustrates and discusses current trends, theories, and methods of the field ; contains an overview of the history of historical linguistics as a discipline as well ; has more than 100 articles with general introductions to the different subjects which are intelligible to all ; includes an extensive index."--Publisher's website.

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Patricia Roberts-Miller

This persuasive analysis of Puritan public discourse and its social consequences offers significant new ideas about the influence of Puritan language practices on American cultural identity.

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Frank Kermode

"This book argues that something extraordinary happened to Shakespeare's language in midcareer, somewhere around 1600.". "An initial discussion of some of the language of the earlier plays looks for signs as to what was afoot, and this leads to a treatment of the central turning point. The rest of the book provides close studies of what came after that, in the great works between Hamlet and The Tempest. Special attention is paid to many passages which are now so obscure that after all the work done by scholars they remain difficult. How could this be so, when Shakespeare was always a popular dramatist? How did this language develop, and how did it happen that in spite of everything Shakespeare had an audience capable of understanding Hamlet at the beginning of the decade and Coriolanus near the end of it?"--BOOK JACKET.