• Your paper can be on any theoretical and/or empirical issue surrounding American English, its structure, history, and varieties–crucially informed by sociolinguistic and linguistic research practices, which we cover in the seminar. For instance, you can focus on the historical development and particular synchronic features of a regional or social variety in the USA. The paper could also be about particular features of American English (in general or in its particular varieties) in comparison to other “World Englishes” or sociolects of other languages (e.g., particular social varieties of German).
• You must think about topics or issues with an empirical part, where you can either conduct a (small-scale, pilot) experimental study to collect your own data, or analyze linguistic features of American speech in audio samples or texts that you find in other sources (e.g., online databases, corpora, archives, etc.). Essentially, you should not work on a rather general research area or topic on which review papers or handbook chapters have already been published.
• In principle, there is no restriction as to which sources you can consult for the background section of your term paper. However, you must go beyond course readings (i.e., textbook chapters and articles we have discussed in class) and search for recent, original academic work in journals or handbooks. You can for instance refer to various general or content-specific academic journals (e.g., Journal of English Linguisitcs, American Speech, English World-Wide), or edited volumes, and handbooks on varieties of English.
