Lee Pederson

Linguistic Geography in Wyoming

In 1988, Madsen’s field work in fifteen rural communities initiated a preliminary survey for a Linguistic Atlas of Wyoming (LAW). The work elaborates computer methods of American linguistic geography, as developed in the LAGS project, testing field and editorial procedures for a general dialect survey of the Rocky Mountain regions. The survey begins with a grid, a questionnaire, and an approach that places electronic resources, the tape recorder and computer, at the center of the research design. Field work seeks conversational responses in the composition of field records designed for discourse analysis. As an ASCII file, the protocol preserves every word recorded in the field. The file enters the database as a unit of analysis. The file registers, sorts, and maps its contents in a concordance program written by John J. Nitti at the University of Wisconsin. With those resources, the LAW Project develops a capacity for self-correction as the investigation proceeds, and transmits an updated database with the entry of each successive electronic protocol (ASCII file).

A Graphic Plotter Grid

many perspectives and transmitted geographical, historical, and social findings effectively through maps. He demonstrated the fact that an atlas is more than an emblem of linguistic geography, that the maps of a linguistic atlas give the work a powerful descriptive reference through graphic projection. This report pays homage to a great friend by addressing some of his main concerns about the study of language in its cultural context through the introduction of a practical tool for traditional research, a functional map for general communication, a graphic plotter grid. For several years, the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) Project has needed a working map. The research calls for an analytical chart of the eight-state region that will unite the inventorial collection of the basic materials and the descriptive volumes that will complete the atlas. With the data base published (Pederson, Billiard, Bailey, Bassett, and Leas 1981) and its contents ordered in a concordance (Pederson, McDaniel, and Bassett 1984; forthcoming), the project needs an effective map and method to carry the investigation f orward--toward explanation through the analysis of recorded forms. Outlined here, the form and functions of a graphic plotter grid suggest a deliberate approach to matrix

LAMR/LAWS and the Main Chance

In 1988, we completed a preliminary survey of Wyoming folk speech. The approach proceeded directly from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) method, as summarized in Pederson ( 1993, 1995, 1996). Michael Madsen wanted field experience and a database for a dissertation. I wanted to test the notion of an automatic atlas in microform (AAM; see Pederson 1989) as the central component in a research design. Old friends had wanted to know more about North American English south of Western Canada (Kimmerle, McDavid, and McDavid 1951; Allen 1977). For those reasons, as a research initiative, the work reflects selfish interests. But, as any general inventory tends to do, the exercise looked beyond itself. It offered a chance to think out a plan to enlarge and unite existing databases of spoken American English in a systematic way. From the small Wyoming survey, then, came the larger plan outlined here. It begins with an extension of completed work, first into Colorado and Utah in 1990 and later advancing the study across the Rockies and through the Pacific states. In the process, these projects aim to produce a Linguistic Atlas of the Middle Rockies (LAMR) and a Linguistic Atlas of the Western States (LAWS). The main chance, the most important issue at stake here, concerns more than composition of two more linguistic atlases, however useful they may be. Now the plan recognizes a chance to develop technics for the organization of linguistic atlas files in a logical extension of the LAMR/LAWS model.

The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest, Volume 1. Harold B. Allen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973. Pp. xiii, 425

a work in progress for more than two decades. As the first comprehensive report of findings from a region west of the Atlantic States, this folio volume is a large and important publication. The book is necessarily large because it covers material that might be expected in no fewer than three volumes: a handbook that outlines the history of the project, the region, and the native population and summarizes the methodology, the sample, and the findings; a linguistic atlas that organizes the data in a collection of descriptive maps; a word geography that analyzes the regional vocabulary. The book is important because it offers valuable information about the development and composition of American English in the Upper Midwest and raises interesting questions about the domain of linguistic geography. Those questions concerning the theoretical, investigative, and descriptive range and responsibilities of the discipline are inevitable reflexes of a pioneering effort. This program was the first to combine the methodologies of the Wenker and Gilliéron traditions of dialectology in a coherent survey by using the postal questionnaire as a supportive component of a conventional field in-