OKU Reference Services Division
Cornell University Library

http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/ling1005s.html

Research Guide for
Linguistics 100.5:

Language, Thought and Reality: We are What We Speak.

 Information Literacy
Research Strategy
CU Library Gateway
Finding Background Resources
Finding Books
Finding Articles
Internet Resources
Evaluating Sources
Citing Sources
Research and Reference Help
Feedback

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Information Literacy

Information Literacy...enables learners to master content and extend their investigations, become more self-directed, and assume greater control over their own learning. An information literate individual is able to:

Research Strategy

Research strategy: a tutorial - an online, hypertext guide that serves as an outline for conducting library research.

  1. Choosing and developing your topic
  2. Finding background information
  3. Finding books
  4. Finding periodical articles (magazine, newspaper, and journal articles)
  5. Using the WWW to find Internet resources
  6. Evaluating the sources that you find
  7. Citing your sources

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FINDING BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Guides and Handbooks

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language/ David Crystal. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge U, 1997.
(Olin Ref P29 .C95 C2+)

This illustrated one-volume encyclopedia presents the major themes in language study. A glossary and index provide excellent access to the many articles. Excellent maps, plates, photographs and charts. A bibliography is appended.

Carrera, Michael A. The Language of Sex: An A to Z Guide. New York: Facts on File, 1992.
(Mann Ref HQ 9 .C31 1992; also Olin stacks)

An excellent general dictionary of common terms related to sex and sexual behavior. Some specialized medical terms are included. Good for one-paragraph-long, understandable definitions. A small bibliography divided by subject and an index are included at the back.

The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics R.E. Asher, editor-in-chief ; J.M.Y. Simpson, coordinating editor. Tarrytown, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1994. 10 vol.
(Olin Ref P29 .E56+)

The most comprehensive and up-to-date encyclopedia in linguistics and related subject areas, containing "more than 2000 articles...by more than 1000 contributing editors." (Introduction) Broad in scope, so that interdisciplinary aspects of linguistics and language studies are covered as well as various areas of linguistics. Global communication and writing systems are included, as well as extensive biographies/bibliographies of linguists. Signed articles include authoritative bibliographies. Consult the separate Index volume for alphabetical and classified listings.

International Encyclopedia of Communications/ Barnouw, editor in chief ... et al. 4 vols. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
(Uris Ref P87.5 .I61; also Mann Ref)

This four-volume set contains articles on all aspects of communication. Articles are arranged alphabetically, many have references to other articles, and all have bibliographies. This is an extremely valuable, detailed, and scholarly work.

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics/ William Bright, editor in chief. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
(Olin Ref P29 .I61; also Uris Ref)

The intention of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive source of up-to-date information on all branches of linguistics, aimed primarily at an audience of students and professional scholars in linguistics and adjacent fields (Introduction). The longer articles consist of signed essays of up to 5000 words in length, surveying large fields of study, e.g. phonetics. Shorter essays (also signed) deal with more specific topics within those fields; or with particular language families which have been topics of extensive linguistic research (Introduction).

The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences / edited by Robert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1999.
(Olin Ref + BF 311 .M556x 1999)

One of the best recent subject encyclopedias we've seen. It consists of about 500 authoritative, signed articles covering the entire expanse of cognitive studies. The articles are arranged in alphabetical order. Access is aided by very thorough name and subject indexes. Extensive cross-references help the user find her way. Each article also has a good, up-to-date bibliography. Six prefatory essays provide overviews of Philosophy, Psychology, Neurosciences, Computational Intelligence, Linguistics and Language , and Culture, Cognition and Evolution, with many reference to the articles themselves. There is a great deal of linguistic material from "historical linguistics" to "innateness of language". Highly recommended for the overviews, and the thoroughness of the articles. Beautifully produced.

Philip H. Herbst.Wimmin, Wimps & Wallflowers: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Gender and Sexual Orientation Bias in the United States. Intercultural, 2001.
(on order for Olin Reference)

In the same vein as his previous work, The Color of Words, Herbst has compiled an extensive dictionary of almost 1100 words used to disparage people with regard to their gender or sexual orientation. Herbst includes the slurs one would expect, such as "faggot" and "slut," but he also examines words like "girl" and "honey," which in certain contexts are considered condescending or disparaging. Entries are generally longer than the definitions available in other dictionaries of slang, ranging from one sentence to two pages. The definitions include examples of usage, some etymologies, and extensive cross references. Herbst is especially concerned with the context and history of the terms. A lengthy bibliography is included. Most readers will find that browsing through this well-researched and carefully considered work raises their sensitivity to their use of language, and librarians will find it useful for reference.(LJ)

Handbooks and Guides

Linguistics: a Guide to the Reference Literature/Anna L. DeMiller. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1991.
(Olin Ref Z7001 .D45x 1991)

The latest edition is also available as an electronic book:

Linguistics: a Guide to the Reference Literature/Anna L. DeMiller. 2nd ed. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 2000.

Contemporary linguistics is not one unified discipline; it is more accurate to view it as consisting of a nucleus of general areas surrounded by a growing number of interdisciplinary research fields, approaches, and applications. Thus it is no easy task to compile a guide that surveys the sources for a conglomerate of overlapping fields. DeMiller shows that it can be done successfully and professionally. Her work annotates over 700 reference sources, published mostly from 1957 to 1999, that are neatly organized and discussed in chapters clustered into three parts: general linguistics, allied areas, and languages.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Ed. Tom McArthur. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
(Olin Ref PE 1628 O975; also Uris Ref, Mann Ref)

This Companion is an invaluable survey of the historical background and recent progress of a language that "has become a global resource." (p.xvii) Scholars have written accessible entries that discuss its varieties (Australian, Canadian, American, British, Yiddish, etc.), its precursors (French, Anglo-Saxon, Old English, etc.), its development, and its use. An excellent source of background information on the English language.

Online Dictionaries

Oxford English Dictionary
The OED presents in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectical usage and slang. This online edition contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Contains over 350,000 entries and meanings. Word definitions are further enhanced by examples of use, usage notes and a newly revised appendix of Indo-European roots.

Merriam Webster Online: The Language Center
Contains an electronic version of the 10th ed. of Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, as well as a thesaurus.

YourDictionary.Com
Many online dictionaries in many languages.

Specialized Dictionaries

Dictionary of American Regional English. Frederic G. Cassidy, chief ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1985- .
(Olin Ref PE2843 .D55)

The first volume (introduction and letters A-C) of this long-awaited work is finally a reality. Thinking and planning for it actually began with members of the American Dialect Society long before the official project start date in 1965. The dictionary, or DARE, as it has become known, is the rich reward for a massive effort by hundreds of contributors aided by funding from government and nongovernment sources, and the generous support of various institutions. An entry begins with the basic information: headword or words, part of speech, pronunciation (only when DARE has supporting oral data), variant spellings, etymology, geographical labels, usage labels, cross-references, and editorial notes. This information is followed by the meanings, numbered and with alphabetic subdivisions if necessary. Last come dated quotations supporting the meanings. (De Miller)

Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Colloquialisms and Catch Phrases, Fossilised Jokes and Puns, General Nicknames, Vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been Naturalized. 8th ed. London: Routledge and Uegan Paul, 1984.
Uris Ref PE 3721 P27+ 1984

The long title explains quite completely what can be found in this source. An appendix includes words that were thought to be too unwieldly to fit in the main body of the text.

An Intelligent woman's guide to dirty words: English words and phrases reflecting sexist attitudes toward women in patriarchal society, arranged according to usage and idea. Chicago: Loop Center, YWCA, 1973.
Olin Library Reference PE1689 .I61

The title says it all.

Maggio, Rosalie. The non-sexist word finder: a dictionary of gender-free usage.. Boston : Beacon Press, 1989.
Olin Library Reference and Uris Library Reference, PE1689 .M19 1989

An excellent dictionary of gender-based discriminatory language with alternatives. Over 5,000 entries and 15,000 alternatives. The introduction does an excellent job of discussing various aspects of discriminatory language. She provides a very brief bibliography under "Further Reading."

Bibliographies

Henley, Nancy, and Barrie Thorne, comps. She Said/He Said: An Annotated Bibliography of Sex Difference in Language, Speech, and Nonverbal Communication. 1st Know ed. Pittsburgh, PA: Know, Inc., 1975.
Olin Library Z7164.S42 H51

This bibliography was first published by Thorne and Henley in Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1975). The pagination of the bibliography in that book has been kept in this Know edition. The compilers have brought together materials from a wide variety of sources. There are references from popular magazines such as Ms. and Redbook as well as from the scholarly literature of linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and English language studies. Books, articles, and papers are all included.

Items are annotated, often with cross-references to other items in the bibliography, and arranged by topic. It includes work not only on language about the sexes in a section on sexist bias in the English language, but also on differences in the way men and women use language, such as differences in word choice, phonology, conversational patterns, language acquisition, and verbal ability. (deMiller)

Key, Mary Ritchie. Male/Female Language: With a Comprehensive Bibliography. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.
Olin Library P40 .K44

Now also available as an electronic book.

Key's bibliography on male/female language (pp. 181-307) is essentially a selective updating of a comprehensive bibliography published in 1975. She has added numerous items published in popular and news magazines as well as entries treating the problems of legal terminology, an area recently receiving attention in the literature. She centers the bibliography in linguistics, but includes related literature dealing with nonverbal, literary features of language, and sociolinguistics issues as well as more general works showing changing perspectives of males and females. Entries are arranged alphabetically and except for the notation of "review" are unannotated. Most references are to material published in English with a smattering of titles published in Western European languages. (deMiller)

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FINDING BOOKS

Cornell University Library Catalog and the Olin Library Card Catalog

The Cornell University Library Catalog includes the holdings of all 17 libraries on the Ithaca campus, in addition to those of the Geneva Experiment Station. The catalog contains records for books, computer files, government documents, manuscripts and archives, maps, musical scores, periodicals, serials, sound recordings, and visual materials received and cataloged since 1973. There are also records for most pre-1973 items, and for items that are on order or in process.

Connect to the Cornell University Library Catalog

When to Check the Card Catalog

Some materials in the humanities and social sciences acquired prior to 1973 have records that have not yet been converted to digital form. Access to these records is through the card catalog located in Olin Library. The card catalog contains cards for authors, titles, and subjects filed in an alphabetical, word-by-word arrangement.

The Cornell University Library uses Library of Congress subject headings as the standard for subject searching. Unlike searching by keyword, where any term or wording of a topic can be entered into the computer, subject searching requires you to use the exact wording of an official Library of Congress subject heading in order to retrieve search results.

Some useful Library of Congress Subject Headings for this class are:

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FINDING PERIODICAL ARTICLES

Periodical Indexes and Abstracts

Periodical indexes and abstracts identify and locate articles in magazines, journals and newspapers. Periodical indexes provide the authors, titles, and sometimes abstracts, of relevant articles, along with the name of the periodical, volume, pages and date. Some online periodical indexes also provide the full-text of the article. When full-text articles are not provided, use the Cornell Library Catalog to determine which library owns the periodicals you need.

Anthropological Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Tozzer Library, Harvard University. 1984- . Updated quarterly.

(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

Anthropological Literature is the most comprehensive index for the field, containing references to English- and other European-language articles that appear in journals or edited collections held by the Tozzer Library at Harvard. Primary emphasis is on archaeology, anthropology (biological, physical, cultural, social) and linguistics. Book reviews, conference proceedings and reports are not included. Coverage begins with 1982. Earlier coverage of journal articles is provided by the Author and Subject Catalogues of the Tozzer Library (Olin Ref Z5134 .H33 1988).

GenderWatch
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection; also in print, Olin Ref Z 7003.L75)

GenderWatch is a full text database of publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas. GenderWatch supports programs in business, education, literature and the arts, health sciences, history, political science, public policy, sociology and contemporary culture, gender and women's studies and more. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, n-g-o and special reports.

Linguistics Abstracts. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985- .
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection; also in print, Olin Ref Z 7003.L75)

A quarterly abstracting service covering the theory and practice of general linguistics. It does not attempt to serve the literature of applied linguistics or the historical study of language and dialects. Many of the abstracts are written by the authors of the articles cited, coming from just over 100 journals.

LLBA; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts. San Diego: Sociological Abstracts Inc., 1967- .
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection; also in print, Olin Ref Z7001 .L114)

Published by Sociological Abstracts, Inc., LLBA is designed to provide rapid access to scholarly articles relevant to language and language behavior, regardless of disciplinary focus. Abstracts are grouped under such headings as linguistics, psychology, communication sciences, hearing, etc. with appropriate subdivisions. Entries are drawn from more than 1,000 journals, reports, occasional papers, etc., in some 30 languages. Publication is quarterly with an annual cumulated index.

MLA Bibliography. Modern Language Association of America. 1963 - .
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

The largest and most comprehensive online database covering scholarship in the modern languages, linguistics, literatures, folklore, theater, and drama. Indexes approximately 4,000 journals and series as well as some books; entries appear both for collections of essays and for their contents. Updated ten times per year. Online access is restricted to the Cornell community. Also available in print as the MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures, from 1921 to the present, in Olin Library (Olin Ref +Z 7006 M68).

PsycINFO. Washington: APA, 1967-.
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

Contains citations and summaries of the international literature in psychology and related behavioral and social sciences, including psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, education, pharmacology, and linguistics. Includes applied psychology, communication systems, developmental psychology, educational psychology, social processes and issues. Two versions of this database are available. The INfo/Share version is similar to the Cornell Library Online catalog and contains a link to Cornell holdings of the journals cited. Both versions of this abstracting service use the vocabulary and index terms from the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms in Olin Ref (+Z 7203 P9731 1994).

Sociological Abstracts. San Diego: Sociological Abstracts, Inc., 1952-
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection; also in print, Olin Ref Z7163 S67+)

Indexes and abstracts the world's leading journals in sociology. This database is updated six times a year. There is extensive coverage of sociolinguistics.

Periodical Abstracts.
ProQuest Direct Web: 1986- .
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

Available as part of the ProQuest Direct system, Periodical Abstracts indexes and abstracts over 1500 periodicals, covering general interest magazines, newspapers and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. Also included are citations and abstracts to selected television and radio programs. The ProQuest Direct Web interface provides the full-text, in several formats, of many articles contained in the database.

Periodical Abstracts. ProQuest Direct Web: 1986- .
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

Available as part of the ProQuest Direct system, Periodical Abstracts indexes and abstracts over 1500 periodicals, covering general interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities and sciences. Also included are citations and abstracts to selected television and radio programs. This database is available through multiple interfaces. The ProQuest Direct Web interface provides the full-text, in several formats, of many articles contained in the database.

Women's resources international..
(Library Gateway -- eReference Collection)

An interdisciplinary database combined from Women Studies Abstracts (1984-present), Women's Studies Database (1972-present), New Books on Women and Feminism (1987-present), Women of Color and Southern Women (1975-present), The History of Women and Science, Health, and Technology: A Bibliographic Guide to the Professions and Disciplines (1970-1995), Women's Health and Development: An Annotated Bibliography (1995), Women, Race, and Ethnicity: A Bibliography (1970- 1990), WAVE:Women's Audiovisuals in English: A Guide to Nonprint Resources in Women's Studies(1985-1990). NISC will add new databases as they become available.

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Cornell University Library Gateway

The Cornell University Library Gateway is the Cornell University Library's homepage on the World Wide Web. The Gateway lists information about the CU Library and provides access to library resources and services.

The Cornell University Library Catalog contains records for materials held by 18 of the 19 libraries that collectively comprise the Cornell University Library. (The Weill Cornell Medical Library, located in New York City, has a separate catalog.) Many of these records now contain hypertext links that connect to the full text of e-books and articles from e-journals.

The e-Reference Collection contains titles, descriptive information, and links to over 2000 networked electronic resources, including periodical indexes, numeric and spatial data files, catalogs, audio-visual materials, and full text reference sources. There are two main ways to search for resources in your areas of interest: searching and browsing.

CU Library Web Sites connects to all of the Library's web pages.

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FINDING RESOURCES ON THE WEB

Selected Web Resources

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Personalized Electronic Services featuring MyLinks and MyUpdates.

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EVALUATING SOURCES

Evaluating the sources you find is a crucial step in the process of library research. The questions you ask about books, periodical articles, or multimedia sources are similar whether you're looking at a citation to the item or have the item in hand.

How to Critically Analyze Information Sources lists some of the critical questions you should ask when you consider the appropriateness of a particular book, article, media resource, or Web site for your research.

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CITING SOURCES

APA citation style

MLA citation style

Research and Reference Help

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Feedback and Evaluation

We would appreciate feedback about our library class sessions.

OKU Reference Services Division
Cornell University Library

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January 26, 2002, lt
Bob Kibbee, rk14@cornell.edu
Reference Services Division, Olin Kroch Uris Libraries
Cornell University Library
URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/ling1006a.html


Olin and Uris Libraries, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853
Information and reference: 607-255-4144, okuref@cornell.edu
Circulation: (Olin) 607-255-4245, (Uris) 607-255-3537, olincirc@cornell.edu