Language and Ethnicity Flashcards
Ethnic Identity
Ethnicity = an aspect of an individual’s identity which is often assigned on the basis of descent. It also
includes the subjective experience of belonging to a culturally and historically distinct social group.
When a group of people shares a common culture, language, ancestry, etc. they are said to belong to the
same ethnic group.
Nationality has a strong link with ethnicity, as citizens of a country often share the same social factors related
to ethnicity (culture, languages, religion, etc.). However, there can be multiple ethnicities within one
nationality. (e.g., In India, there are multiple ethnicities: Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, etc.).
Language Contact
When people who speak different native languages or language varieties come into contact, they will often adapt in
order to communicate. Language contact refers to the interaction between two or more languages that mix and
influence each other.
Intense language contact over a short period of time leads to the formation of language varieties
called creoles and pidgins.
The emergence of pidgins and creoles is linked to trade relations or colonial situations.
→ These language forms often reflect the history of a community.
Pidgins and creoles are studied as a subfield of sociolinguistics, which is labelled “Pidgin and Creole
Linguistics” or “Creolistics.”
Hymes (1971) has pointed out that before the 1930s pidgins and creoles were largely ignored and considered
“marginal” at best → absence of records regarding their history and development.
However, “these languages are of central importance to our understanding of language, and central too in the
lives of some millions of people” (qtd. in Wardhaugh 53).
PIDGINS
Pidgin = a new and simple form of language that arises out of language contact between two or more groups of adult people who do
not have a common language; it is spoken as a native language by neither one of the two groups
Example: Chinese Pidgin English
= a trade language between the British and the Chinese which emerged in the 17th century
first used in Canton (China) and later in other Chinese trade centers (e.g., Shanghai).
The Chinese were discouraged from teaching the British their language
The British found their trade partners’ language too difficult
→ they invented a 700-word language for business purposes only.
lexically based on English, but influenced by a Chinese substratum.
the word “pidgin” is believed to be a modification of the Cantonese pronunciation of the English “business” → “pigeon” = “a
species of bird” + “an object of special concern” (e.g., Tennis is not my pigeon.)
As the nature of China’s trade with England changed, more Chinese people chose to learn standard English, and pidgin became
negatively associated with interactions between foreigners and their Chinese servants; Chinese Pidgin English is now extinct.
PIDGINIZATION
According to Keith Whinnom (1971), pidginization occurs in situations of contact between 3+ languages, whose speakers
do not have a common language.
L[anguage] 1 = target language (dominant language)
L2 and L3 = mutually unintelligible substrate languages (non-dominant languages)
→ Pidgin = L2 version of L1 + L3 version of L1
The “Whinnom formula” partially explains: a) pidgins in trade contexts (Chinese Pidgin English also used by Chinese traders who spoke mutually unintelligible language varieties)
b) pidgins in colonial contexts (enslaved people deliberately drawn from a variety of language backgrounds to avoid mutinies)
British linguist Ian Hancock (1977) distinguishes among various pidgins which derive in part from colonial languages; in his
view, there are at least three English-based varieties (Cameroon Pidgin English, Tok Pisin, and Chinese Pidgin English)
(qtd. in Wardhaugh 63).
Although the original trade and colonial context is no longer present, some pidgin varieties have crystallized (= stabilized)
and are still spoken today.
Nigerian Pidgin English
Nigeria = highly mercantile society with major urban centers before the arrival of European merchant ships in
the 15th century
→ L of Urban center 1+ L of Urban Center 2 + … = one or more pidginized varieties before trade contact with
Europeans
Portuguese merchants arrived first (+ some Portuguese words; e.g., “saber” → NPE “sabi”)
British traders came later (+ some English words)
the British Empire colonized Nigeria and missionaries (ex-enslaved people) founded European education
institutions (+ more English words)
NPE is most likely a combination of all the factors above.
GRAMMATICAL FEATURES
- Preverbal markers of aspect:
“dey” used to show that something is ongoing (= continuous aspect).
e.g., “Girl, na you dey make my temperature dey rise”
- Preverbal markers of tense:
“go” used to express futurity
e.g., “Without you, I go give all my life”
- Preverbal negation with “no”
e.g., “Your body […] / No be silicon” - Relative pronoun “wey” (= that, which, who…):
e.g., “Love nwantiti / Wey fit [can] make a bad man sing”
Nigerian Pidgin English exists as both pidgin and creole.
spoken either as L2 in an expanded form (e.g., people who speak, say, Nigerian Standard English at work and
Nigerian Pidgin English at home and in the market): cca. 116 million speakers.
L1 as creole (e.g., children whose L1 is Nigerian Pidgin English; adults who only speak
Nigerian Pidgin English): cca. 4.7 million speakers
Creole
etymology: English “Creole” < French “créole” < Spanish “criollo” = “(person) native to a locality” <
Portuguese “crioulo,” diminutive of “cria” = “person (especially a servant) raised in one’s house”
→ Creoles typically arose out of enforced movements of people from different language backgrounds for labor
purposes in the colonial era.
Creole languages tend to draw their vocabulary from the sociopolitically dominant language in a community,
which was frequently a European language; hence the use of labels such as “Creole English,” “Creole French,”
“Creole Portuguese,” etc.
As far as English-based creoles are concerned, Hancock (1977) distinguishes among the following varieties:
Hawaiian Creole, Jamaican Creole, etc. (qtd. in Wardhaugh 63).
Creole = arguably, a creole is a pidgin […] that has become a full-fledged language by stabilization and
expansion (= creolization), as the pidgin acquires native speakers and/or becomes the primary language […]
for some or most of its speakers. (DeGraff, p. 5).
according to this theory, children who learn to speak an expanded pidgin as their L1 turn said pidgin into a
creole via Universal Grammar;
→ Derek Bickerton (1981), the promoter of this paradigm, argues that this theory accounts for those structural
similarities between different creole languages which cannot be attributed entirely to the dominant and
non-dominant languages lying at their foundation.
Other researchers such as John McWhorter argue similarly that pidgins sometimes develop into creoles, yet do
not attribute the process to Universal Grammar.
Pidgin vs Creole
Pidgin:
NO L1 speakers
Limited purpose
Variable, inconsistent
Limited vocabulary
Creole:
L1 speakers
Used in all domains
Systematic
Diversified vocabulary
New Theories on CREOLIZATION
CREOLE EXCEPTIONALISM:
John McWhorter (2018)
Pidgins develop into creoles
A break in transmission leads to the loss of ”unnecessary” complexity (no inflection, no tone, no lexicalization such as in the vb ”to understand”)
UNIFORMITARIANISM:
- Salikoko Mufwene (2007)
- Creoles do NOT develop out of pidgins
(they are spoken in different parts of the
world); However, they are contact languages
(pidgins < sporadic trade; creoles <
plantations) - Some features creoles exhibit are due to
founder effects (= the dominant
language lying at the foundation of the
creole was not the standard variety of that
language but a non-standard variety) →
creoles = repeated cycles of adult
acquisition of an L2.
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) = a group of varieties that developed among African American
communities in the United States.
Enslaved African people were first brought to what is now the United States in 1619; over the next 200 years,
hundreds of thousands more were brought over.
Similar to the development of English-based creole languages, AAVE developed from contact between
enslaved people of West African languages and their English-speaking masters, as well as indentured servants
(from Ireland and Great Britain).
But while AAVE has some creole-like features, it is much closer to Standard English than Caribbean creoles.
THEORIES REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF AAVE (African American Vernacular English): A Creole Language?
- AAVE arose as a result of the enslaved people learning the vernacular (non-standard) English spoken by
indentured servants (poor and rarely proficient in standard English). - It developed as a creole language but then converged with standard English via decreolization.
The most popular theory is the first one, but there was probably also some creole influence from enslaved
people brought to the US from the Caribbean.
AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR
ENGLISH (AAVE): A SOCIOLECT?
Due to phenomena such as slavery and then segregation, African Americans formed a largely separate group
(→ sociolect)
As a result, they developed their own enduring varieties, and in-group words and idioms that were difficult for
hostile outsiders to understand.
Nowadays, however, not all African Americans speak AAVE and not all speakers of AAVE are African
Americans.
→ AAVE exists on a continuum with Standard English; i.e., people mix the two together to different degrees
depending on the situation, socioeconomic status, and how they perceive the dialect.
There is also variation in AAVE based on region and generation.
Features of AAVE
See PPT
AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH
(AAVE): AN ETHNOLECT?
Ethnolects = varieties of a language that mark speakers as members of ethnic groups who
originally used another language or distinctive variety. However:
What about second-generation speakers of AAE who are not fluent in the original
varieties?
Criticism of the “Ebonics” (Ebony+ Phonetics) initiative from inside the community.
Originally coined in the 1970s, Ebonics was revived and popularised in the 1990s when the
Oakland Unified School District Board of Education passed a resolution affirming the
legitimacy of Ebonics (as they labelled AAVE) as a language system, and supporting its use
as a bridge to learning SAE.
Many African American parents were unconvinced of the benefits of using AAVE and
concerned that the time would be better devoted to acquiring Standard American English; they
expressed fears that the use of AAVE in schools was just another strategy for preventing
their children from achieving educational success.
On the other hand, many successful African Americans asserted the importance of
maintaining and giving status to AAVE.
