The Dictionary of American Regional English is a dictionary that documents the different dialects of American English. It is published by Harvard University Press. Its offices are located in Helen C. White Hall at the University of Wisconsin in downtown Madison and its current chief-editor is Joan Houston Hall. The project was started in 1963 by Frederic Gomes Cassidy. He raised funds for the project, trained the fieldworkers and served as editor-in-chief. The original questionnaire had 1,847 questions in 41 categories. From 1965 to 1970 the field workers conducted week-long interviews with 1,002 test subjects in 1,002 communities in all 50 U.S. states. 40,000 expressions recorded earlier by the American Dialect Society are also incorporated into the dictionary. The editors also include local idioms found in regional novels and small town newspapers.
Informants
After each location was chosen, it was the responsibility of the fieldworker to find people, informants, to complete the questionnaire. Informants had to be born and raised in or near the community they were representing. Members of families with long histories in the community were preferred and people who had traveled extensively or lived in other communities were generally avoided. Older people were generally preferred to younger people. Small biographies were recorded for each informant that contained, at a minimum, the five following pieces of information: age, race, gender, educational level, and the type of community in which they lived (urban, large city, small city, village or rural). In addition to responding to the questions asked, each informant was recorded as they read "Arthur the Rat" [1] and as they spoke freely for twenty minutes or more about a familiar topic.
The DARE questionnaire
The questionnaire had a total of 1,847 questions in 41 categories. Some of the field workers asked the test subjects to name wildflowers shown in photographs, but the process was cumbersome and was carried out only in some of the interviews.
Categories
The first 15 categories are listed below in the original order.
See also
Reference
