ENGL 4663: History of the English Language                                                          Mercer

 

REQUIRED VIDEO/DVD RESPONSES

Revised 8-27-09

 

For each of your two required video/DVD responses, watch one of the programs listed below under “VIDEOS AND DVDs” or other programs for which you get my permission, and write a response.

 

CONTENT: Your response should include

  • the most important idea(s) or main point(s) presented in the program
  • some of the specific supporting details the program uses to illustrate its main point(s)
  • interesting information you have learned for the first time
  • (when applicable) how the program relates to what we have studied in this class so far

 

You may use first-person pronouns (“I”) if you wish, but do NOT focus on your personal opinions about the content of the program.

 

ORGANIZATION: Organize your response into two or more paragraphs.  Do not write just one solid paragraph.

 

LANGUAGE AND STYLE:  Use clear, straightforward language.  Write in your own words.  If you use any direct quotations from the program, put those words inside quotation marks.

 

MECHANICAL CORRECTNESS: 

  • Avoid serious errors such as sentence fragments, comma splices, run-on sentences, and subject-verb agreement errors.
  • Use present-tense verbs to refer to the program itself and to statements that continue to be true.  Use past-tense verbs to refer to historical information.  Examples:
    • This program illustrates the vast influence of the Scots-Irish people.
    • French eventually lost its influence in England as the Normans adopted English.
  • Letters referred to as letters, words referred to as words, and phrases referred to as phrases should be italicized or placed inside quotation marks.  Quoted dialogue and definitions should be placed inside quotation marks. Examples:
    • In the Boston dialect of English, the r in park is not pronounced.
    • The word cow is native English, but beef is French.
    • The expression “y’all come” is rarely heard outside the South.
    • Jonathan Swift objected to the word mob, which is short for the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, meaning “vacillating crowd.”
    • In Shakespeare, “the count his galleys” means “the count’s galleys.”
  • Italicize the titles of long works published separately, such as the title of a video series.  Place inside quotation marks the titles of shorter works within longer works, such as the title of an episode in a video series.  See the punctuation of titles under “VIDEOS AND DVDs” below.

 

EDITING AND PROOFREADING:  Before submitting your papers, carefully edit and proofread them.  Use spell-check.

 

LENGTH:  Each response should be no shorter than about 1Ľ pages in length and no longer than two (2) full pages.  A response that does not meet this minimum requirement will not receive a satisfactory grade. 

 

MANUSCRIPT FORM:  The number of pages in a document is largely determined by manuscript form.  To ensure that your paper meets the length requirements, carefully follow these guidelines for manuscript form:   

  • Use Times New Roman 12 as the font.
  • Although default margins in many versions of Word are 1.25 inches, use one (1)-inch margins on all four sides of the page. 
  • Double-space the entire document, including the heading (see below); do NOT leave additional spaces between paragraphs or anywhere else in your paper.
  • Use left (NOT right or full) justification.
  • Use the standard four-line MLA heading in the upper left of the first page: your first and last names, the instructor’s title and last name, the course prefix and number (ENGL 4663), and the due date. 
  • Indent each paragraph one-half inch from the left margin.  

 

VIDEOS AND DVDs: The following videos and DVDs are on reserve for seven-day checkout from the NSU-BA library.  Many of them are also available at other academic libraries and through the Tulsa City-County Library system, including the Tulsa Central Library Media Center.  You may also watch other programs in any of these series. In case you wish to avoid seeing some of the same material twice, an asterisk indicates that at least part of an episode will be shown in class.   

 

From The Story of English VHS video series  

 (Call number: Broken Arrow AV PE 1072.S77 1986)

 

*Part (tape) 2, program 3: “A Muse of Fire” [Early Modern English, Shakespeare, and the English of the first English colonies in America]

 

Part (tape) 2, program 4: “The Guid Scots Tongue” [the Scots dialect of English, the Scots-Irish people, and the effect of the Scots-Irish on American English]

 

Part (tape) 3, program 5: “Black on White” [black English]

 

Part (tape) 3, program 6: “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” [American English]

 

Part (tape) 4, program 7: “The Muvver Tongue” [colonial English: the varieties of English in the former British Empire]

 

Part (tape) 4, program 8: “The Loaded Weapon” [conflict over language in Ireland]

 

Part (tape) 5, program 9: “The New Year’s Words: A Look into the Future” [the future of the English language, as seen in 1986]

 

From Do You Speak American? DVD series

(Call number: Broken Arrow AV PE 2808.D596 2005)

 

Disc 1: “Up North” [Pronunciation in New England and New York; prescriptivism vs. descriptivism; Hispanics who don’t speak English; Standard English; written English; vowel shift in Northern cities; African-American English in Detroit; bias against dialects in American education; hip-hop]

 

Disc 2: “Down South” [Appalachian English; Southern dialects; Cajun English; “cowboy” English; African-American English in Texas; Texan Kinky Friedman; language and politics; language on the Tex-Mex border]

 

Disc 3: “Out West” [Spanglish and Chicano; African-American English in California; California slang; Valley Girl and surfer slang; skateboarder jargon; language and gay culture; voice-activation technology; language and technology]

 

From The Adventure of English DVD series

(Call number: AV PE 1075)

 

*“Birth of a Language” [Old English]

 

*“English Goes Underground” [Middle English]

 

“The Battle for the Language of the Bible”

 

*“This Earth, This Realm, This England” [Early Modern English]

 

“Speaking Proper” [English in the 17th -19th centuries]

 

“The Language of Empire” [English in British colonies]

 

Voices of North Carolina

(Call number: PA 4414.07 T3 2005)

[Includes various dialects and languages of North Carolina, such as “Hoi Toider” (“High Tider”) dialect, Smoky Mountains highland speech, and Cherokee]