Swingin' the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture.

A Note on Texts and Letter FormsPreface to the Revised EditionIntroduction: Finding English, Finding Us1. Caedmon Learns to Sing: Old English and the Origins of Poetry2. From Beowulf to Wulfstan: The Language of Old English Literature3. In This Year: The Politics of Language and the End of Old English4. From Kingdom to Realm: Middle English in a French World5. Lord of This Langage: Chaucer's English6. I Is as Ille as a Millere Are Ye: Middle English Dialects7. The Great Vowel Shift and the Changing Character of English8. Chancery, Caxton, and the Making of English Prose9. I Do, I Will: Shakespeare's English10. A Universal Hubbub Wild: New Words and Worlds in Early Modern English11. Visible Speech: The Orthoepists and the Origins of Standard English12. A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary13. Horrid, Hooting Stanzas: Lexicography and Literature in American English14. Antses in the Sugar: Dialect and Regionalism in American English15. Hello, Dude: Mark Twain and the Making of the American Idiom16. Ready for the Funk: African American English and Its Impact17. Pioneers Through an Untrodden Forest: The Oxford English Dictionary and Its Readers18. Listening to Private Ryan: War and Language19. He Speaks in Your Voice: Everybody's English20. Faith in English: Vernacular Devotion and Biblical TranslationEpilogue: The Talk and the TextAppendix: English Sounds and Their RepresentationGlossaryReferences and Further ReadingAcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments to the Revised EditionIndex

Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language

Although they are an integral part of everyday life, song lyrics are not included in any of the standard corpora of English (e.g., BNC, ICE, CIC, Brown family) that are currently available. In this paper, I report on an analysis of lyrics based on a chart corpus containing British and American pop songs. The purpose of this study is to test various stylistic, diatopic and historical factors, with the help of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Findings from earlier research are tested against further corpus evidence, while I provide a broader statistical basis and more illustrative examples than in previous studies. I also address more theoretical issues, such as the principles behind the production of lyrics and the question of whether pop song lyrics can be categorised in terms of ‘spoken’ versus ‘written’ or ‘formal’ versus ‘informal’. I argue that pop lyrics constitute a rather special register. Finally, I outline areas of further study.

Love is all around: a corpus-based study of pop lyrics

This article describes the ways in which music is an important part of identity, and hence serves some similar functions to other forms of identity-related communication (eg, language) It will describe how music is used to incite intergroup hatred (eg, among soccer fans, military music) and to support valued identities (anthems, etc)  Relevant literature on stereotyping (including stereotyping of groups related to music) is included  The article also discusses how music is used to reduce intergroup hostility (eg, via cross-cultural musical collaboration and contact) The article connects the various literatures from communication, social psychology, sociology, and ethnomusicology, providing a broad overview of the many connections between communication, music, and social identity It closes with a research agenda for those interested in studying intergroup communication and music

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Music and Intergroup Relations: Exacerbating Conflict and Building Harmony through Music

The Jazz Image

Jazz musicians depend on intercommunication to achieve and maintain a sense of spontaneity. Musicians encourage each other vocally or through their instruments to attain higher levels of performance. The connection with an audience is also vocal and visceral. Because an original function of jazz was to accompany social dancers, a jazz audience's physical responses signaled the musicians to continue or heighten their level of intensity. Among musicians themselves, the jam session exists as the central agency for communicating in a common musical language, in an atmosphere of collective spontaneity. Parallels between the sense of community in a jam session and an open forum of discussants are clear--a successful session, like group conversation, depends on courtesy, decorum, and mutual respect as well as open-mindedness and willingness to listen. Thus, the connection between music and language manifests itself in the jazz context. As jazz itself evolved from the experience of African Americans, so did the argot that jazz musicians spoke rise from what is called jive language. H. L. Mencken, in a supplement to his American Language, defined jive language as "an amalgam of Negro-slang from Harlem and the argots of drug addicts and the pettier sort of criminals, with occasional additions from the Broadway gossip columns and the high school campus." [1] The linking of jazz and the underworld is not uncommon. Louis Armstrong recalled his days in the Storyville section of New Orleans, where pimps, gamblers, and prostitutes congregated among musicians playing in the hangouts where they plied their trades. [2] Chicago jazzmen Mezz Mezzrow [3] and Jimmy McPartland [4] have documented their experiences among gangsters and other lowlifes during Prohibition. In his preface to the Dictionary of American Slang, Stewart Berg Flexner remarks that the need to use slang terms reflects a need to reject the mainstream, to rebel against the squares, in order to be accepted as an insider. He writes, "We would rather share or accept vices than be excluded from a social group. For this reason, for self-defense, and to create an aura (but not the fact) of modernity and individuality, much of our slang purposely expresses amorality, cynicism, and 'toughness.'"[5] Jazz musicians and their followers saw themselves as outsiders: that is to say, in opposition to the mainstream society at large, to more traditional musicians and listeners, to critics, to authorities, to particular bandleaders, clubowners and union officials, and even to other jazz musicians of a former or a succeeding generation. Between 1934 and 1970, glossaries of jazz slang terms appeared in print, either as articles, appendixes to autobiographies of prominent jazz musicians, or entire volumes referred to as dictionaries. An examination of some of these glossaries and dictionaries, as well as several specific words, can highlight some possible origins as well as a steady and lively evolution of jazz parlance over time. In a 1932 article for American Speech, James Hart suggested that jazz slang found its way into the cultural mainstream through incorporation into popular song lyrics, for strictly commercial reasons. [6] He wrote, "The use of correct language in jazz will stamp a writer's songs as unnecessarily highbrow and hence hinder his sales. Therefore, the song writer allows the vernacular to slip into his compositions wherever it suggests itself." To illustrate this, Hart mentioned the colloquial use of contractions in titles, such as " 'S Wonderful" and "Wha'd Ja Do to Me"; the reconnotation of family words "mama," "papa," and "baby" into a context of adult relationships; and particularly the vocalization of instrumental sounds, such as "Vo-do-de-o-do," "Boop-boop-a-doop," and "Diga-diga-do-digadoo-doo." Arguably, Tin Pan Alley's version of jazz speech as reflected in song titles and lyrics distantly resembles that spoken by jazz players and others in their immediate social circles. …

Richard McRae

Papers

"what is hip?" and other inquiries in jazz slang lexicography