South Shore Phrase Book


Book Description

Collected from the talk of the people who live along Nova Scotia's South Shore, from Halifax to Yarmouth on the Atlantic shore, this book is a lively guide to the unusual way they speak. It is both very old, including words and phrases spoken but not written down since before Chaucer, and in a lively way, new and elaborate, like the original, complete version of "happy as a clam." It provides a guide to the life and character of these resilient fisher and farm folk. The work is illustrated with old photographs from the region, and it includes scholarly appendices on "Elizabethan English on Nova Scotia's South Shore" and "Rough Measure in Maritime Dialect Research," the latter written with Jacqueline Baum. The language will bring back vivid memories to those who have visited this scenic Maritime place and attract those who have not, to do so. As the record of a limited speech community, it may help students of English as a Second Language. It has been used by novelists, playwrights, and poets (including Robert MacNeil of the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Canada's prolific dramatist Paul LeDoux, and George Elliott Clarke, a much-honored black Canadian poet), to give authentic flavor to their works. It will bring joy and insight to all who love language.




The Second South Shore Phrase Book


Book Description




American Dialect Research


Book Description

Containing all new material and published for the American Dialect Society's centennial celebration (1889-1989), this volume bings together in one place, as no previously published work has, current approaches to the general problems of language distribution and variation. The several chapters offer accounts of how questions are formulated and how data are collected, stored, and intepreted in the various research traditions of dialectology and sociolinguistics, particularly as they have been carried out by researchers associated with the American Dialect Society. More specifically, this book takes trips to the scholar's laboratory. How is this work done? What pitfalls in fieldwork, processing, and interpretation have been encountered and how have they been overcome? What techniques have been used to get at the facts and underlying explanations of language variety? What does recent work suggest about the most rewarding areas and methods for future investigation?




The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: J-Z


Book Description

Entry includes attestations of the head word's or phrase's usage, usually in the form of a quotation. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).




The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English


Book Description

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.




Quest of the Folk, CLS Edition


Book Description

The popular conception of Nova Scotians as a pure, simple, idyllic people is false, argues Ian McKay. In The Quest of the Folk he shows how the province's tourism industry and cultural producers manipulated and refashioned the cultural identity of the region and its people to project traditional folk values. McKay offers an in-depth analysis of the infusion of a folk ideology into the art and literature of the region and the use of the idea of the "Simple Life" in tourism promotion. He examines how Nova Scotia's cultural history was rewritten to erase evidence of an urban, capitalist society, class and ethnic differences, and women's emancipation. In doing so he sheds new light on the roles of Helen Creighton, the Maritime region's most famous folklorist, and Mary Black, an influential handicrafts revivalist, in creating this false identity.




Quest of the Folk


Book Description

Ian McKay shows how the tourism industry & cultural producers have manipulated the cultural identity of Nova Scotia to project traditional folk values. He offers analysis of the infusion of folk ideology into the art & literature of the region, & the use of the idea of the 'simple life' in tourism promotion.




Vice Slang


Book Description

Are you a bit of a chairwarmer? Do you use the wins from a country straight to get scudded on snakebite in a blind tiger? Do you ride the waves on puddle or death drop? Vice Slang gently eases you into the language of gambling, drugs and alcohol, providing you with 3,000 words to establish yourself firmly in the world of corruption and wickedness. All words are illustrated by a reference from a variety of sources to prove their existence in alleys and dives throughout the English speaking world. This entertaining book will give you hours of reading pleasure.




Odysseys Home


Book Description

Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature is a pioneering study of African-Canadian literary creativity, laying the groundwork for future scholarly work in the field. Based on extensive excavations of archives and texts, this challenging passage through twelve essays presents a history of the literature and examines its debt to, and synthesis with, oral cultures. George Elliott Clarke identifies African-Canadian literature's distinguishing characteristics, argues for its relevance to both African Diasporic Black and Canadian Studies, and critiques several of its key creators and texts. Scholarly and sophisticated, the survey cites and interprets the works of several major African-Canadian writers, including André Alexis, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Claire Harris, and M. Nourbese Philip. In so doing, Clarke demonstrates that African-Canadian writers and critics explore the tensions that exist between notions of universalism and black nationalism, liberalism and conservatism. These tensions are revealed in the literature in what Clarke argues to be – paradoxically – uniquely Canadian and proudly apart from a mainstream national identity. Clarke has unearthed vital but previously unconsidered authors, and charted the relationship between African-Canadian literature and that of Africa, African America, and the Caribbean. In addition to the essays, Clarke has assembled a seminal and expansive bibliography of texts – literature and criticism – from both English and French Canada. This important resource will inevitably challenge and change future academic consideration of African-Canadian literature and its place in the international literary map of the African Diaspora.




Cop Talk


Book Description

The work of a father and son, this lively word-book presents the slang of law enforcement officers, including prison guards, customs officers, and street cops. It includes language gathered both from working and ex-cops and from printed sources. It evokes the life of this key speech group in an America in crisis--the pride and solidarity, the shame of corruption and brutality, the horror and the excitement of life on the front of the thin blue line. It is the sixth of Lewis Poteet's slang dictionaries, the others having come out of Nova Scotia's South Shore, the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and the worlds of hockey, cars and motorcycles, and aviation. These words and definitions offer raw material for anyone interested in language and culture, and entertainment and enlightenment for anyone fascinated by the spectacle of this living busy world of law and outlaws. The main body of the book consists of words and phrases from police slang, followed by a personal account of Aaron's attraction to and formation in police work, a set of stories from Aaron's first employment in such work, an essay on Canadian, British, and American regional police cultures by Lewis, and a Poteet Cop Talk Quiz to test your knowledge of the slang.