Ethnicity Flashcards
What is the windrush generation
Empire windrush (ship) set sail 1948 times take some Caribbean people back to the Uk
Note from British govt “most of them with no particular skills and few will have more than a few pounds on their arrival”
290/350 had a sort of skill. - mechanics (85), engineers (20), electricians (13)
Showed govt gave preference to white Europeans
West Indians experience racism, difficulty finding housing and employment
Immigration act 1971- required any commonwealth citizen who was questioned about their residency to prove they were a legal citizen - hard to do
David starkey article
He is a historian, proteomes criticism after remarks made during a televised discussion about the riots on BBC 2
Starkey claims “the whites have become black”
Supportive of Enoch Powells ‘rivers of blood’ speech
Called it a “violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture”
Jenny Cheshire (2000)
Reading study, multi-cultural London English (MLE)
Relationship between use of non-standard variables and adherence to peer group norms
Measured frequency of use in boys and girls in a Reading playground, differentiating between those who approved or disapproved of minor criminal activities ‘they calls me names’
Children who approved of peer group criminal activities were more likely to use non-standard forms, those who disapproved used less frequently
Working class girls - non-standard “come”
Middle class girls - non-standard “what”
Males more susceptible to covert prestige
Features of MLE
Diphthongs
Consonants - pronunciation of ‘h’ “house” whereas cockney would say ‘ouse
Th/fronting - nuffink, fink
K-backing
‘Man’
Young Londoners use instead of cockney dialect - David Starkey attack usage
Stormy, Anne-Marie, Dizzee Rascal
Viv Edward’s (1986). Jamaican English in West Midlands
Negative attitudes of teaches towards any non-standard variety, singling out Creole speaking students
Signalled out as an important factor disadvantaging Caribbean children in British schools
Features of Creole stigmatised and develop connotations of “low academic ability”
Susan Dray and Mark Sebba (2001) Manchester multi-ethnic social networks
Utterance of 40 young participants in Manchester
Creole lang was used by a range of multi ethnic social networks, outcome not wha5 expected, expected exclusive to Caribbean heritage
Linked and spread through common lived experiences in the inner cities and interest in global hip hop music
Mark Sebba (1993) London Jamaican
Changing issues connected with authenticity and ethnicity
Multi- ethnic vernaculars have come to pre-dominate among the youth
‘Authenticity’ is achieved though practises rather than inherited ethnicity or native -like use of a specific variety
Sue fox (2005): multi-ethnic youth dialect (MEYD)
Studies speech patterns of teens
Emergence of MEYD ‘blud’ or ‘nang’
Mainly speaks by youths from black, white and Asian communities
Maybe due to similar socioeconomic backgrounds and same interest in sub cultures - close gap to shape an identity
Devyani Sharma (2011): Punjabi Indian English in west London
Pronunciation of ‘t’, whether children of immigrants begin to sound like their locally-born friends rather than their parents
More complex than this
Local pronunciation of ‘t’ is glottalised
Depending on where they were or who they were talking to, needed to signal that they belonged to a group
Gary Ives (2014): Bradford study
The way teenage boys spoke and language they used
Mix of Punjabi and English
Punjabi = friends
English = parents
Social class element or time lived in UK - call new immigrants ’freshies’
95% Pakistani background - referred to themselves as British Asian
Ben rampton (2005): south Asian adolescents
Studied south Asian adolescents and how they interacted with both their white and Afro-Caribbean peers
Found Punjabi and south Asian English used
Challenge established white dominated social hierarchy of Britain - used to joke amongst themselves and rebel against teenagers
Also used by Asian males with own ethnic groups as an identity marker
Found it influenced informal speech - playground interactions and classroom context
