Creating Canadian English The Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English

This lively account of the making of Canadian English traces the variety's conceptual, social and linguistic developments from the twentieth century to the present. This book is not just another history of Canadian English; it is a history of the variety's discovery, codification, and eventual acceptance, as well as the contribution of the linguists behind it. Written by an active research linguist focusing on Canadian English, this book is an archive-based biography on multiple levels. Through a combination of new data and re-interpretations of existing studies, a new voice is given to earlier generations of Canadian linguists who, generally forgotten today, shaped the variety and how we think about it. Exploring topics such as linguistic description and codification, dictionary making, linguistic imperialism, linguistic attitudes, language and Canadian identity, or the threat of Americanisation, Dollinger presents a coherent, integrated and balanced account of developments spanning over almost a century.

1. What is Canadian English?; 2. The heritage of Canadian English; 3. Avis pulls it off; 4. The 'technology': slips, slips, and more slips; 5. 1967 – excitement and hype; 6. Riding the wave of success; 7. A global village and a national dictionary war; 8. Decolonizing DCHP-1 and DCHP-2; 9. Is there really a Canadian English?; Further reading.

Stefan Dollinger is associate professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of English, specializing on Canadian English and linguistic border studies. He is author of New-Dialect Formation in Canada (2008), The Written Questionnaire in Social Dialectology (2015) and, of particular interest for the present book, chief editor of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (2017).