UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #315
CASSIDY, FREDERIC G.

CASSIDY, Frederic G. (1907-2000)
Professor of English
At UW: 1939-1978

Interviewed: November 1985	(2 sessions)
Interviewer: Martin Dowling
Length: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Background; Oberlin College; Work on Early Modern English Dictionary; Ph.D. work and teaching at Michigan; His wife; Development of field of linguistics; Arrival at UW in 1939; Work on Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States; Research, funding and editing of Dictionary of Jamaican English; Questionnaires for lexicographic field research; American Dialect Society and genesis of Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE); Editing DARE; Funding; Audrey Duckert; Research; Field work; Editing; Computer use.

First Interview Session: November 5, 1985
Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:00	Family background.  Early childhood and education in Jamaica.  Explanation of Creole language and culture found in Jamaica, and his experience with that language.  Move to Akron, Ohio, at age 11.  Example of dialect in Ohio; the mango and the yam.  Education in Akron and Oberlin College.  

00:11:15	Interest in English at Oberlin.  Self-financing of college expenses. Extracurricular activity.  

00:18:04	Influential teachers at Oberlin: Charles Henry Adams Wager, head of English Department, and Professor Jelliffe; both held informal seminars, literary clubs.  More on college social life.  

00:24:35	Employed at campus Maison Francaise, where he met his wife.  MA thesis on Matthew Arnold, and Arnold's visit to Madison.

00:26:25	Course work in Anglo-Saxon literature first work in linguistics and language studies.

00:27:54	Life in Ohio with his brother after parents return to Jamaica.

00:28:47	End of side

Tape 1/Side 2

00:28:51	Career decisions in college.  Employed at University of Michigan in 1931-38 on staff of Early Modern English Dictionary, clerical and investigative work.  Describes research for EMED.  FC's newfound passion for lexicography.

00:34:35	Course work for Ph.D. at University of Michigan.  Warner Granville Rice most influential teacher, an expert on Milton and Matthew Arnold.  Ph.D. advisor Charles Carpenter Fries, a linguist.  Work on dictionary and with Fries brought him from literature to language studies.

00:37:55	Linguists at that time had stronger language and literature training than presently.  Laments theoretical concentration of modern linguistics, and neglect of languages.  Linguistics departments originally developed out of language departments, but are presently more closely related to social sciences.  These observations in relation to FC's own work, which is historically based.

00:42:15	Effect of WWII on linguists: recruited as teachers of foreign languages, cryptanalysis, widened scope of language studies.

00:45:40	His wife, Helene Monod Cassidy also an academic, in French literature.  Both at Oberlin, married 1931, both got Ph.D. from Michigan in 1938.  Her father on faculty of University of Strasbourg, where they worked in 1935-6.

00:48:13	Teaching at Michigan.  No female English instructors allowed at the time.  Taught freshman and sophomore English.

00:49:55	End of first session.

Second Interview Session: November 12, 1985
Tape 2/Side 1 

00:00:00	Circumstances of his coming to Madison after completing Ph.D. at Ann Arbor.  Got the job by mail.  Hired to work for the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States, before Madison.  Describes fieldwork done in Ohio, hired to cover Wisconsin for the Atlas.  Describes preparatory research and fieldwork in Wisconsin.  Hired by Professor Miles Hanley, linguist at UW, given second semester off to do research.  

00:10:15	Question re precedent for the methodology behind questionnaire formation and field work. 

00:11:10	Did not seek military service, exempt because he had children and his work considered helpful to the war effort.  Finished Atlas work long before other areas were finished.  Still not completed.  Importance of North Central States region in American dialect.  Help from graduate assistants.

00:16:05	Work on Jamaican dialect.  His unique qualification to research a neglected language.  Received a Fulbright.  Describes literary research at Institute of Jamaica in Kingston.  Describes weaknesses of Oxford Dictionary.

00:24:44	From literary research and former questionnaires formed a questionnaire suitable to Jamaica.  Problems of using tape recorders in the field. 

00:28:38	Question re picking communities.  Regional flavor not as strong.  Differences caused by degree of urbanization.

00:29:26	End of side. 

Tape 2/Side 2

00:29:30	Wife teaching at the University College of the West Indies, in Jamaica, children in school, during field work.  Came back to Madison with thirty tapes.  Editing of material took three years, with one semester devoted entirely to checking his material with other published dictionaries.  

00:32:20	Relation of literary to oral (fieldwork) sources.  Describes range of variation within oral sources, based on age, geographical remoteness, etc.  Example.

00:37:17	1958-59 got another Fulbright and returned to Jamaica.  Worked stretched over sixteen years: 1951-67. 

00:38:09	Use of social sciences in dictionary work: gender, geography, occupation, urbanization, etc.  Dialects should not be subject to value judgments, each should be accepted and understood.  

00:43:10	Joined American Dialect Society in 1939.  Recalls meeting of Modern Language Association in New Orleans, 1939.  Genesis of his responsibility for the DARE project.  Publication in the ADS journal.

00:47:10	Initial funding for the project: Office of Education funded the field work for five years 1965-1970.  Data collected was far larger than had been expected.  NEH picked up when the Office of Education stopped its funding of projects.

00:50:05	Much work done by Audrey Duckert, his graduate assistant, on Wisconsin dialect.  Worked on WHA radio program.  She went to work for Merriam-Webster, and got Ph.D. from Radcliffe and hired by University of Massachusetts.  She became involved with writing the DARE questionnaire.  Taped interviews far better than surveys done through the mail.

00:54:00	Describes 1843 tape recordings used for DARE, independent of the questionnaire.

00:57:19	End of side.  End of tape.  

Tape 3/Side 1

00:00:13	Use of computer for storing DARE questionnaire information.  Use of scanners vs. punch cards.  Processing done by private company in Muscoda, Wisconsin.

00:02:50	Editing of information; editors working on different letters of the alphabet.  Letter B twice as big as expected.  Preparing the first volume: definition of terms "American" and "regional."

00:06:52	Maps in first volume a simplification of Linguistic Atlas maps, which are quite elaborate.  Maps used to find and reveal usages with distinct regional characteristics.  Used as research tool as well as for clarity in the volume.

00:08:40	Effect of changing computer technology on an ongoing project.  All the work done before accessibility of personal computers.

00:12:25	UNIVAC in danger of being disposed of, which is essential for the maps.  Cannot make maps until after editing, so must hurry editing before UNIVAC is disposed of.

00:14:02	Problem of future funding helped by getting the first volume out.  Vicious circle: inconsistent funding hurts planning which causes inefficiency.  In danger of losing staff because unable to plan.

00:16:15	End of interview.

END