Professor Paul Breslin Responds!

I just recieved an E-mail from Professor Paul Breslin from Northwestern College asking for assistance on my topic. He responded:

Dear Jordan,

Well, "the English language as a whole" is an enormous subject, beyond the
grasp of any one expert, let alone a high school student.  You'll need a
more focused version of the topic.

That means finding

1) a less all-inclusive object of study (for example, 19th century slang
in the U.S. rural south, the standardization of British English in the
18th century, or or the globalization of English in the 20th-21st century,
and

2) a question about it, such as "When African Americans migrated from the
rural south to northern cities, was their usage resisted or adopted by
white northerners?; "Why were more English dictionaries compiled in the
18th century than in previous times?"; "What has been the effect of the
internet on the use of English in the U.S?"

You don't have to be know the answer to your question, and you might end
up revising the  question itself in the light of what you find out.

Finally, you'll need to anticipate the "so what" question from your
reader.  What makes your question interesting--does it explain something
we're interested in having explained?  Using the sample questions above,
you might say (again, these are only examples):

--"What might the answer to this question about language tell us about
race relations; did whites back then think it was cool to talk black, as
many do now, or did they avoid language they thought of as 'black'"?

--"Might the growth of dictionary-writing tell us something about changing
ideas of correctness in speech or writing?

--"Are the many national and regional versions of English beginning to
merge into one, and if so, should we welcome or resist this trend"?

One book you might look at is _The Craft of Research_ (3rd edition) by
Wayne C. Booth, Joseph Williams, and Gregory Colomb, University of Chicago
Press, 2008.  It's meant for college and graduate students, but it is
clearly written and gives good advice on how to narrow a topic, design a
question, and define an interesting problem that your work is meant to
solve.

If you write to me again with a more clearly defined topic, I will try to
point you toward some good sources.  Remember that I am not a specialist
in linguistics or the history of English, though I do know something about
those fields.

Hope your work goes well,

Best,

Professor Breslin