Wanner: “I think the most interesting stuff happens with pronouns right now.”

Anja Wanner, chair of UW–Madison’s Department of English and professor of English language and linguistics, almost became a journalist until she took her first linguistics course while a student in Germany. The subject, she feels, perfectly combines her loves of language and data. The author, editor, and Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award recipient researches how populations — such as those in academia and those with dementia — use English syntax and grammar. Read on for her take on the use of grammar while texting and on they as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.

What does grammar mean to linguists and syntacticians?

Grammar to a linguist is something that everybody has, that everybody is fluent in, otherwise they could not produce sentences. So for a linguist and a syntactician, grammar is really an enabler, rather than for the layperson, [where] grammar is sometimes thought of as a corset. For a linguist, grammar is really what allows you to express complex ideas — and for us as social beings, that underlies our creativity and how we work and function.

Do you consider yourself to be more descriptive than prescriptive?

In linguistics, we are descriptive. Our job is to look at the language that we find, see the patterns, use experiments or grammaticality judgment tests to really get to those patterns and learn about how language is used. Linguists are not really concerned with prescriptive grammar. We are not the grammar police, we don’t walk around [telling] anyone how to speak. We are just listening and collecting data.

Do your colleagues in the English department share this outlook?

I have many colleagues who are not linguists. A senior colleague at one point wanted to understand what I’m working on, and I said, “Well, I’m writing this book on the English passive [voice].” And she said, “The passive? The passive is not allowed in my classes.” And I thought that was fabulous because she was using a passive — “the passive is not allowed” — to make a statement on how terrible this construction was and how nobody should use it.

What language patterns might you notice in texting and on social media?

We don’t just want to convey what we’re having for dinner. We also want to convey how we’re feeling about it. In texting or online chats, we’re using written language — including creative spelling, omissions, and creative punctuation — and emoji to convey that extra information. Research shows over and over again: it doesn’t ruin our grammar at all; it just adds a register.

What is your take on using a singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun?

I think the most interesting stuff happens with pronouns right now, because the rules for pronoun usage are not coming from a point of bad grammar; [they’re] coming from a point of being inclusive. And that is a very different motivation for directing people how to use grammar. I think the trend will be at some point that we use they as the default because it is the most inclusive form. For our students, there’s nothing odd about inclusive they, and even conservative style manuals are getting on board.

Find regional origins for the words featured in our print magazine, as well as maps showing the geographic regions of the United States used by DARE.

When you’re far from home, the way people talk is one of the first signs that you’re not in Kansas — or Wisconsin — anymore.

Several years ago, when I was living in Little Rock, Arkansas, it didn’t take long for Midwestern me to hear words and phrases unique to the heart of Dixie. During my first trip to the grocery store, the cashier smiled, handed over my receipt, and said what sounded like, “Appreciate ya!” I eventually learned that he meant “thank you.”

“We think of American English as being pretty homogeneous, but with our spoken language, there are still thousands of differences,” says Joan Houston Hall, chief editor for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) at UW–Madison.

For five decades, the DARE project has been documenting and celebrating the way we speak, and patiently working its way through the alphabet. In March 2012, the project reached a milestone that, during the early days, may have seemed out of reach: the twenty-sixth letter.

From 1965 to 1970, the UW had dispatched researchers to more than one thousand communities, where they conducted interviews with the locals and documented what words they used. After the fieldwork was done, editors in Madison used the collected responses to build DARE, volume by heavy volume. Hall took over as editor after the death of project founder Frederic G. Cassidy in 2000. In keeping with Cassidy’s mantra — “On to Z!” — DARE reached its goal, publishing a fifth volume that covers Sl to Z.

But it’s not over yet: a sixth volume, which will include sets of maps showing how synonyms are distributed across the country, is in progress, with publication planned for early next year. The following pages offer a sneak preview of some of that volume’s content.

In the future, DARE may conduct follow-up research, revisiting communities from the original survey.

And the dictionary will be released in electronic form next year, making it even more addictive to word lovers. Open the more-than-one-thousand-page fifth volume, and each entry leads you to look up another. Pretty soon, you’ll be figuring out ways to incorporate whoopensocker* into daily conversation.

*something extraordinary of its kind

DARE Synonyms

See also: maps showing the geographic regions referenced in the word lists below.

Jenny Price is senior writer for On Wisconsin.