LINGUIST List 11.465

Sat Mar 4 2000

Qs: Chinese/English Taboo,North American dialects

Editor for this issue: James Yuells <jameslinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jr Christopher Smith, Chinese and English Taboo Language
2. Robin Belvin, North American dialect regions

I'm an undergrad doing a paper on the comparison of English taboo and
swearing to that of Chinese. I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding
any resources. I was just wondering if anyone had information concerning
this topic. I'm especially interested in the function of homophones in
taboo language. Anything would be great.

Thank you,
Chris Smith

This query really consists of three specific questions, and I would welcome 
either
direct answers or references to relevant literature:

First, is there a consensus among dialectologists on what the major dialect 
areas
are for North American English? I have a NIST spoken language corpus which
identifies eight (New England, Northern, North Midland, South Midland, 
Southern, NYC,
Western and 'Army Brat' (i.e. transient)), and I would be interested in 
knowing how
widely held this rough division of areas is.

Second, which if any of the Canadian (English) dialect regions can be 
lumped into
one of the US regions?

Third, is Canadian French relatively uniform, or are there distinct dialect 
regions
comparable to those which exist among North American English speakers?

Thanks in advance for your help. I'll post a summary later.

Robert Belvin