Metcalf, Allan (Albert) 1940-

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METCALF, Allan (Albert) 1940-

PERSONAL: Born April 18, 1940, in Clayton, MO; married, 1994; children: four. Education: Cornell University, B.A., 1961; University of California, Berkeley, M.A., 1964, Ph.D. (English), 1966.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of English, MacMurray College, 477 East College Ave., Jacksonville, IL 62650-2510. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of California, Riverside, assistant professor, 1966-73, associate professor of English, 1973-81; MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL, professor of English and department chair, 1981—.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association, National Council of Teachers of English, Linguistic Society of America, Mediaeval Academy of America, American Dialect Society (executive secretary, 1981—).

WRITINGS:

(With Thomas E. Armbruster, Edgar C. Howell, IV, and Sandre Prasad) Riverside English: The Spoken Language of a Southern California Community, University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA), 1971.

Poetic Diction in the Old English Meters of Boethius, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1973.

Chicano English, Center for Applied Linguistics (Arlington, VA), 1979.

(With William J. Kerrigan) Writing to the Point, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1987, published as Essentials of Writing to the Point (adapted from Writing to the Point), Harcourt Brace College Publishers (Fort Worth, TX), 1995.

Research to the Point, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (San Diego, CA), 1991.

(With David K. Barnhart) America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1997.

The World in So Many Words: A Country-by-Country Tour of the Words That Have Shaped Our Language, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1999.

How We Talk: American Regional English Today, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.

Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004.

Contributor of numerous articles to academic journals, including Chaucer Review and Dictionaries.

SIDELIGHTS: Allan Metcalf has been a scholar of American English for many years. He has written several books for an academic audience, but he may be best known to nonlinguists for two books that examine the history of American speech for a popular audience. In the first of these books, America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America, Metcalf and coauthor David K. Barnhart look at the history of the United States, year by year, through one new word that was added to the language in each year. For example, "Yankee" first came into common usage in 1765, "flapper" in 1915, and "software" in 1959. The roughly page-long discussions of the words are "written with punch and verve," Thomas E. Nunnally wrote in a review for American Speech. The book "should appeal to both browsers and reference personnel in high-school, public, and academic libraries," reviewer Mary Ellen Quinn commented in Booklist.

The World in So Many Words: A Country-by-Country Tour of the Words That Have Shaped Our Language takes a similar approach to American English, this time dividing up new words by the country that "gave" them to the United States. In roughly two hundred "brief yet discursive essays," as Jeffrey E. Long described them in American Reference Books Annual, Metcalf covers some eight hundred words, including "boondocks" (from Tagalog), "bizarre" (from Basque), and "chocolate" (Native American). The World in So Many Words is not a book for professional linguists as it avoids diving too deeply into the original etymologies, or origins and historical developments, of these borrowed words. Instead, "it's for the word lover who deserves a good frolic with the language," concluded Booklist's Philip Herbst.

How We Talk: American Regional English Today is a more scholarly work than America in So Many Words and The World in So Many Words. In How We Talk, Metcalf examines the numerous differences in speech among the regions of the United States, as well as among various American ethnic groups. Southern accents and dialects are discussed at length, as are those of New York and Boston. In the section on ethnic speech, attention is given to African-, Hispanic-, and Native Americans, as well as Jewish speakers of Yiddish. "For fiction writers hoping to create authentic-sounding dialogue, this book could function as an indispensable guide," commented Booklist reviewer David Pitt.

Metcalf makes a serious linguistic argument in Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, but he does so in the context of a "brisk, scholarly romp that will appeal beyond the usual word mavens," according to Christian Science Monitor reviewer Todd Nelson. The book sprang from Metcalf's work with the American Dialect Society. At Metcalf's urging, the society began recognizing a "Word of the Year" in 1990. As described on the American Dialect Society Web site, "Words of the Year are those that reflect the concerns and preoccupations of the year gone by. They need not be new, but they usually are newly prominent." Some words of the year remained in common usage, but others quickly faded, and Metcalf began to wonder what determined which words succeeded and which failed. His research found five characteristics that make a word likely to endure. As he explains in Predicting New Words, these characteristics form the FUDGE scale: frequency, unobtrusiveness, diversity of users, generation of forms and meanings, and endurance of concept. "Metcalf's style suits his subject well: he is humorous and often plays with words himself," Katherine Poltorak commented in the Yale Review of Books. "But his entertaining writing doesn't diminish his serious insights into language."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Reference Books Annual, 2000, Jeffrey E. Long, review of The World in So Many Words: A Country-by-Country Tour of the Words That Have Shaped Our Language, p. 413; 2001, Shannon Graff Hysell, review of How We Talk: American Regional English Today, p. 463.

American Speech, summer, 2001, Thomas E. Nunnally, review of America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America, pp. 158-176.

Booklist, April, 1998, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of America in So Many Words, p. 1340; August, 1999, Philip Herbst, review of The World in So Many Words, p. 2003; December 1, 1999, Bill Ott, review of America in So Many Words, p. 736; October 15, 2000, David Pitt, review of How We Talk, p. 397; September 1, 2002, David Pitt, review of Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, p. 32; June 1, 2004, Gilbert Taylor, review of Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush,
p. 1679.

Choice, February, 2003, R. B. Shuman, review of Predicting New Words, pp. 977-978.

Christian Science Monitor, November 27, 2002, Todd Nelson, review of Predicting New Words, p. 21.

Insight on the News, June 25, 2001, Stephen Goode, review of America in So Many Words, p. 4; October 1, 2001, Stephen Goode, review of The World in So Many Words, p. 4; February 18, 2003, review of America in So Many Words, p. 8.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1999, review of The World in So Many Words, p. 1110; August 15, 2002, review of Predicting New Words, p. 1201.

Library Journal, December, 1997, Ilse Heidmann, review of America in So Many Words, p. 105; August, 1999, Neal Wyatt, review of The World in So Many Words, p. 89.

New York Times Magazine, August 12, 2001, William Safire, review of How We Talk, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 1999, review of The World in So Many Words, p. 74.

Speculum, July, 1977, Fred C. Robinson, review of Poetic Diction in the Old English Meters of Boethius, pp. 714-715.

Yale Review of Books, spring, 2004, Katherine Poltorak, review of Predicting New Words.