Language And Ethnicity Flashcards
Rampton (1991, 1995 and 2005)
- studied 2nd and 3rd gen south Asian adolescents in working class areas of South Midlands.
- varieties of south Asian English influenced informal speech amongst interracial groups in playground interactions and classroom context
- this was to challenge white dominated social hierarchy of Britain, to joke amongst themselves and to rebel against teachers
Fox (2005)
- emergence of Multi Ethnic Youth Dialect (MEYD)
- spoken by white, black and Asian communities
- share similar socioeconomic background and the same interests and subcultures so they converge to share identity
Examples of MEYD
Blud = mate, nang = good
Dray and Sebba (2001)
- recorded 40 participants in Manchester
- creole was used by a range of multi ethnic social networks (not expected)
- due to common lived experiences in the inner cities and common interest in hip hop culture
Sharma and Sankaran (2011)
- focussed on the pronounciation of the retroflexive “t” (Indian pronounciation)
- 1st gen used retroflexive t 35% of the time
- older 2nd gen used it 16% of the time (downplay Indian and pass as English to survive in school and public)
- younger 2nd gen used it more at the beginning of the word with a “fortis” (energetic) phonetic quality (race relations less hostile so didn’t need to pass as British, can signal their British Asian identity)
Sebba (1993)
- proposed Black British English (BBE), a mixture of local vernacular and Jamaican and different varieties of creole
- used in uk by children of immigrants from the Caribbean to assert black, group and personal identity and solidarity
Jamaican creole features
- no s on plurals
- “fi” instead of “to”
- multiple negatives
- no verb endings on past tense
- omission of auxiliary verbs
Cheshire, Fox, Kerswill and Targerson
- studied grammatical and phonological variation of two groups - Hackney (inner London with wide variety of ethnicities) and Havering (outer London predominantly white) with 100 people aged 16 to 19 both working class
- ethnicity is a crucial determiner of phonetic and grammatical variables in inner London
- friendship networks are responsible for ethnic features becoming majority groups
- MLE forms act as an act of identity and allegiance to youth culture.
What is a resistance identity
Diverging your language away from majority group to create group identity, usually out of feeling discriminated against
What is a pidgin
A simple temporary language formed between two languages that need to communicate using simple grammatical structures (usually coloniser and colonised )
What is a creole
When a pidgin is passed down to the next generation becoming their first language
How is a creole different from a pidgin?
- consistent grammar system
- stable vocabulary
- acquired by children as a native language
Gary Ives Bradford Study (2011)
- Bradford school with 95% Pakistani students, looked at 8 3rd gen teen boys
- only used Punjabi swear words with certain people to form a secret language and create social identity
- all peers used similar slang e.g “sick”, “bare” swag”
- distinction between postcodes in using Punjabi English e.g. BD8= street BD22= posh
- staff confirmed code switching and inclusion of Punjabi in everyday talk
What is MLE
A mixture of Cockney and Jamaican Creole and other varieties of ethnicities which transcends ethnicity
David Starkey attitude towards MLE
- prescriptivist
- “white people are becoming black”
- MLE promoted gang activity, violence and criminality
