The BLUR (Blues Lyrics Collected at the University of Regensburg) Corpus: Blues Lyricism and the African American Literary Tradition

Authors

  • Ulrich Miethaner

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.64

Abstract

The BLUR corpus, a computerized collection of more than 8,000 transcripts of pre-World War II blues recordings, is a powerful research tool which facilitates investigations into various aspects of the blues. This paper illustrates how an analysis of BLUR might deepen our insights into structural aspects of blues poetry and and its contribution to the African American literary tradition.

Author Biography

Ulrich Miethaner

Academic Career 1989-1997: LA Gymnasium (E/G) at the University of Regensburg 1991/1992: CU (Colorado University) Boulder 1997-2001: Research assistant at the department of English Linguistics (University of Regensburg) 1998: Research at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC) and at the Blues Archive (Oxford, MS) 1999: Research at the Archive of Traditional Music (Bloomington, IN) 2000: Research at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC)

Focus of research

Research project: "Ein computerlesbares Korpus früher Blues-Texte als neuartige diachrone Evidenz zum African American English" sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); collection and computerization of early blues lyrics for the BLUR corpus; Fields of study: African American English, corpus/computational linguistics, sociolinguistic methodology; African American vernacular tradition

Presentations

Miethaner, Ulrich, with Edgar W. Schneider. "A computerized corpus of early blues lyrics as diachronic evidence for AAE." Paper presented at NWAV(E) 27, Athens, Georgia, October 1998.

Miethaner, Ulrich. "(Orthographic) transcriptions of (diachronic) non-standard varieties: The case of (earlier) AAVE." Paper presented at NWAV(E) 28, Toronto, October 1999.

Müller, Andreas and Ulrich Miethaner. "Sociolinguistic methodology for the next millenium: Recording, transcription, multi-media corpora, data transfer." Paper presented at NWAV(E) 28, Toronto, October 1999.

Miethaner, Ulrich. "BLUR (Blues Lyrics Collected at the University of Regensburg)." Paper presented at The Blues Tradition: Memory, Criticism, and Pedagogy, Penn State University, June 29th - July 1st 2000.

Publication

Miethaner, Ulrich. "Orthographic transcriptions of nonstandard varieties: 
The case of earlier African American English." Journal of Sociolinguistics “4 (2000): 534-60.

 

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How to Cite

Miethaner, Ulrich. “The BLUR (Blues Lyrics Collected at the University of Regensburg) Corpus: Blues Lyricism and the African American Literary Tradition”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 2, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.64.

Issue

Vol. 2 (2001)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.