ENGL 5633: History of the English Language

 

RESEARCH PAPER TOPICS FOR AMERICAN STUDIES STUDENTS

 

Since you are earning a master’s degree in American Studies, the topic of your research paper should concern American English.  You are not limited to the topics listed below; these are only suggestions.  I have stated each topic below in the form of one or more research questions.  You should, in most cases, limit your topic to only one such question.  Also, many of the questions below are very broad and would need to be focused for a short paper (minimum length: five full pages, not including works-cited page).  Be sure that your paper goes significantly beyond the brief information about your topic in our textbook.  Possible research questions include:

 

(1)   What are the distinctive features, history, or impact on American English of a particular type of American English slang (such as Valspeak [Valley Girl slang], surf talk, gay slang, or Preppy talk) or jargon (such as computer jargon, military jargon, or sports jargon?  (To get an overview of the different types of slang listed above, see pages 347[b]-51 in The Story of English in the NSU-BA library.)  

(2)   What are the distinctive features, history, or influence of one particular variety of American English (such as Gullah, African American Vernacular English, Southern dialect, or Eastern New England [Boston] dialect)?  What bias exists in American society against this variety of English?

(3)   How have the Scots-Irish people and their variety of English influenced Southern dialects of American English?  (For an introduction to this topic, watch “The Guid Scots Tongue” from The Story of English video series on reserve in the NSU-BA library.)

(4)   What features of the English language have been considered sexist?  What is the history of the attempts to eliminate sexism in American English in the late 20th century?  To what extent has sexism in American English been reduced or eliminated?  (Consider limiting your topic to one particular aspect of sexist language, such as sexist job titles or masculine personal pronouns.) 

(5)   What is “inclusive language”?  Why do some American churches use inclusive language in Bible readings and/or church liturgy?  What is to be gained or lost from the use of inclusive language in Christian worship? 

(6)   What is the history of the development of African American Vernacular English (also called Black English or Ebonics)?  What are the distinctive features of Black English?  What was the controversy about the use of Black English in the Oakland, California, public schools in the 1990s?  Is it appropriate to use Black English in schools as a step toward teaching Standard English to speakers of Black English?

(7)   What are the distinctive features, history, or influence of Spanglish?  Should Spanglish be used to teach Standard English to Spanish-speaking students in the United States?

(8)   Should English be declared the official language of the United States and/or of an individual state?  What would be gained by such a declaration?  What would be lost?

(9)   What influence did the work of Noah Webster, including his American Dictionary (1828), have on American English?

(10)                       Why was Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961) so controversial?  Was this dictionary’s influence on the English language primarily positive or negative?

(11)                       What are the differences that make Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary a descriptivist dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary a more prescriptivist dictionary?  What are the relative merits of the two dictionaries and their approaches?  What is the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary?  How does it work?  Is it a positive or negative feature of the dictionary?

(12)                       What influence has a particular television program (such as Seinfeld or Star Trek) or film had on American English?  

(13)                       What is the relative use of English as opposed to other languages on the Internet?  To what extent does American English dominate over other varieties of English on the Internet?  What effect has the Internet had on the position of English as an international language?  

 

Topics relating to American English can also be found in the videos and DVDs listed in the document “Required Video/DVD Responses”—and in other items on reserve that relate to American English.