CONTACT:
Joan Houston Hall
6121 Helen White Hall
600 N. Park Street, Madison, WI 53706
608-238-7490 (home)
608-263-2744 (work)
608-263-3817(fax)
Joan Houston Hall will negotiate costs with you. Contact her directly to make arrangements. REGION:
Dane County, Southeastern WisconsinHUMANITIES EXPERTISE:
Linguistics, American dialects
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JOAN HOUSTON HALL
Joan Houston Hall has been on the staff of the Dictionary of American Regional English (widely known as DARE) since 1975, becoming chief editor in 2000. She is past president of the American Dialect Society and the Dictionary Society of North America and has been a member of editorial advisory boards for the Journal of English Linguistics, VERBATIM-The Language Quarterly, and Oxford University Press.
Public Presentations:
American English Dialects Are Alive and Well!
America has always been a land of many speechways: New Englanders, New Yorkers, and Southerners, for instance, are easily recognized on the basis of their speech. Wisconsinites, too, have characteristic language features. But we often hear today that the media and our love of travel are homogenizing American English. Is that true? Joan Houston Hall will explain that despite the fact that some words (like "submarine sandwich") have become known nationwide through commercialization, thousands of others (such as "hero," "hoagie," "grinder," and "Cuban") retain their regional distinctiveness. Although our dialects are changing all the time, they are not on the verge of extinction. Hall also explains how DARE contributes to such other disciplines as law enforcement, medicine, psychiatry, and theater. As one reviewer has said of DARE, it is scholarly, endlessly fascinating, and enlightening. You can hear America talking from its pages.
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