1.1DEFINITION OF DIALECT

Dialect is defined, by Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, as a “version of language differing

in some aspects of grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary from other forms of the same

language." Dialect includes various terms that as a whole define the meaning. Dialectology,

dialect geography and linguistic geography are three components that correlate with dialect.

The traditional study of dialectology has focused on regional dialects but has evolved to include

social and geographical placement.

Dialect often answers the question, “Where are they from?” Because of the different areas

and locales, the answer could begin as broad as "America" and filter down to be as specific as

"The United States," the "South," "Georgia," and "Macon." Dialects can convey geographical

information about the speaker, but can go further when describing what language is being

studied.( Jamie Burney, Jennifer Pittman, Rebekah Revels, Marisa Suggs, Jared West, Andrea

Wright, Students, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke)

1.2 DEFINITION OF ACCENT

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), accent came from Latin “Ad to +

cantus singing”, which came from Greek, which literally meant, “song added to”. This indicates

that the Greeks saw accent “as a distinct difference of musical pitch in pronouncing the syllables

of a word” (Dion. Hal., n.d. as cited in Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). This term's meaning has

split two ways since then: One can understand it in terms of (1) “stress” or (2) a “mode of

utterance” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, 2nd and 3rd definitions). Accent gained its “stress”

meaning due to language change. As Greek evolved it lost its "musical accent" and the “stress

accent has remained as a substitute for [it]” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). The same

language change took place in Italian, Spanish, German, and English (Oxford English

Dictionary, 1989). Swedish and Norwegian however have maintained musical accent in their

languages (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).

The “mode of utterance” definition came because as the Oxford English Dictionary

(1989) explains, a varied utterance might “consis[t] mainly in a prevailing quality of tone, [a]

peculiar alteration of pitch, but may [also] include mispronunciation of vowels or consonants,

misplacing the stress, and misinflection [sic] of a sentence.” Such systematic variances can

identify where a person is from (e.g. a German “accent”) (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989).

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