''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
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