Do You Speak American
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''Do You Speak American?'' is a
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
and accompanying
book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
about
journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
Robert MacNeil Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, Order of Canada, OC (born January 19, 1931) is a Canadian-American journalist and writer. He is a retired television news anchor who partnered with Jim Lehrer to create ''The MacNeil/Lehrer Report'' in 1975. E ...
's investigation into how different people throughout the
United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
speak. The book and documentary look at the evolution of America's way of speaking from the
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
to various ways of speaking in regions throughout the country. Divisions of ethnicity,
geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...
and social status and how they affect how Americans communicate are addressed. As part of the project, MacNeil traveled across the country conducting interviews with ordinary people as well as experts such as
William Labov William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of ...
. In the United States, the documentary was broadcast in several parts on
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
. The companion book () was co-authored by MacNeil and William Cran.


References


External links


Official site on PBS
* PBS original programming American documentary television films Works about American English Documentary films about words and language Documentary films about the United States 2005 films Nan A. Talese books 2000s American films {{documentary-tv-film-stub