Language and Ethnicity Flashcards
What is idiolect?
An individual’s use of language
What is dialect?
Refers to the variety of language spoken in a particular region of a country
What is sociolect?
Refers to the form of language used by a particular social group (e.g. age group, social class etc)
What is ethnolect?
Refers to the form of language used by a particular ethnic group?
What is language contact?
Refers to the interaction between two or more languages that combine and influence each other. This can happen over a short period of time leading to the creation of pidgins and creoles.
What is a pidgin?
A grammatically simplified form of a language, typically English, used for communication between people not sharing a common language, not as evolved. Pidgins can evolve into creoles.
What is a creole?
A mother tongue formed from the contact of a European language with local languages such as African languages. Creoles evolve over time and evolve within communities over generations.
What is race?
Refers to mainly physical attributes and traits for example, black or white.
What is ethnicity?
Refers to the characterisation based on a language or common ancestry and other cultural factors such as nationality and religion (e.g. you could be Asian but your ethnicity is Vietnamese).
What is nationality?
Refers to citizenship in a particular region.
Example of a creole
Jamaican patois
When does language contact occur?
When different ethnic groups have contact. For example, immigration throughout the centuries has allowed people of different ethnicities to settle in new places and have contact with different ethnic groups.
What is MLE?
Multi-cultural London English - language used by people who have migrated to London.
Who founded MLE?
Jenny Cheshire and Paul Kerswill
What is MBE?
Multicultural British English - created in attempt to replace MLE so it is not London specific.
Who founded MBE?
Rob Drummond
What is BBE?
British Black English - Language used with Black Caribbean origin but used in the UK.
Who founded BBE?
Ife Thompson
What is speech community?
A distinct group of people who use language in a unique and mutually accepted way amongst themselves e.g. have specialised jargon (e.g. families, high school students).
What did William Labov say?
People adopt different dialect and speech patterns to match social appropriation and fit in certain social groups.
What did Basil Bernstein say?
“Elaborated code” - lower class associated with non-standard dialect, higher class associated with stand dialect and middle class use higher class style to access education and careers.
What is accent versus dialect?
Accent links to the phonetics of words of a region whilst dialect links to the lexis (e.g. bap).
What is code switching?
When someone alternates between two or more languages or dialects depending on situation.
Who founded code switching?
Einar Haugen (1950s)
What is code mixing?
When someone hybrids between two languages.
Who founded code mixing?
Ronald Wardhaugh (1986)
What are the 3 types of code mixing?
Inter-sentential, intra-sentential and extra-setential.
What is intra-sentential code mixing?
The code mixing occurs in the middle of the sentence, the speaker is often unaware they’ve done it. E.g. We don’t have the dinero to pay.
What is inter-sentential code mixing?
When the code mixing occurs at the beginning or the end of the sentence - most commonly used by fluent bilingual speakers. E.g. Gracias for the lovely gift.
What is extra-sentential code mixing?
When code mixing occurs as a tag phrase. E.g. Es más difícil, you know?
Features of MLE, MBE and BBE
Monopthongism, flattening of vowel sounds (e.g. face), discourse markers, fillers (e.g. innit), hyper-local features (e.g. letter -> lettOH), deletion (e.g. nothing -> nuttin’) and substitution of pronouns (e.g. he -> man).
What is Gary Ives’ Bradford / West Yorkshire study?
In 2014, Ives looked at code switching between English and Punjabi (Bradford has a lot of people that speak Punjabi).
He interviewed 8 teenage boys, 1 girl and two adults born in UK who speak Punjabi.
Boys said code switching is natural and everyone speaks like it, but became clear it was a conscious choice.
They also said mixing them creates their own language all together, wouldn’t use with their parents.
Girl said that she’d never mix English with her second language as her social group wouldn’t understand.
OVERALL HE FOUND PARTICIPANTS CODE SWITCH TO EXPRESS ETHNIC IDENTITY.
What is Gary Ives’ West Yorkshire study?
Negatives of the Gary Ives’ Bradford study
The sample size is very small and might not reflect true representation of language in the area.
What is Gary Ives’ South London study?
He repeated his Bradford study in South London and asked participants which words and phrases ‘set them apart’ and gave them ethnic identity. They gave the following (examples of BBE):
Bare - lots of
Bruv - good friend
Calm - good
Jerk - to rob
Live - atmospheric
Neek - nerd / geek
Chatting rubbish - saying something ridiculous
A bag of man dem - a group of boys
Link me - meet me
What did Roger Hewitt say in his book ‘Black talk white talk’?
Analysed speech patterns between white and black children and found in one area, girls tended to have more interracial friendships than boys, however in a second region the percentage was more evenly split.
He also found that in Black speakers code switch between their language and standard English but also white speakers did too as a symbol of ethnic identity and friendship.
What did Janet Holmes say about code switching?
Speakers can claim an ethnic identity associated with their second language and she also underlines that code switching is a sign of group membership, especially when it comes to shared ethnicity. This links to Gary Ives.
What did Viv Edwards find about language in a black community? (1986)
Observed 45 British born young people whose parents were Jamaican immigrants. By recording conversations, she found that speakers use patois often to assert ethnic identity and express ‘warmth, friendship and solidarity’. However, she found speaking patois in an academic setting disadvantaged the speakers as it was perceived to indicate poor academic ability.
What is Jafaican and who spoke about it?
‘Jafaican’ is a derogatory term for what we have called ‘MLE’ and ‘BBE’, especially for those who aren’t ethnically Jamaican. Paul Kerswill explored the increasing popularity of this term in 2014, he found it is frequently used in the media in a negative manner as a threat to English dialects and the way young people speak.
What did Penelope Eckert about ethnolects?
She explored the role of ethnicity in relation to social groups. She noted that white varieties of English are often characterised into dialects whilst non-white varieties are often collectivised.
What did Christian Illbury say about ‘roadmen’?
He argued that the term ‘roadman’ has emerged from Jamaican English to mean a man who spends a lot of time on the streets but has come to be exaggerated and stylised through TikTok.
He also noted that videos with #roadman often referenced MLE features such as TH stopping (tink) and DH fronting (dat instead of that).
What did Oxbury and DeLeeuw do?
In 2020, they observed five 11 year old girls who were all multilingual in East London to see if their pronunciation changed in different contexts.
They discovered MLE features were used extensively on the playground. They found girls style shifted, like code switching, but in different social contexts.
What did Cole and Evans say?
They explored emergence of MLE in Cockney dialect. They found rather than MLE replacing Cockney, cockney features have maintained alongside the development of MLE features.
They contradict the media outlets when they say MLE will make the cockney dialect disappear.
What did Sharma explore?
She explored the way in which language and ethnicity asserts different social identities. She specifically looked at second generation British Asians in West London. She found Punjabi social structures were retained and older men and younger women had wider social contacts and changed the way they spoke to accommodate those social groups.
What did Gordon Drummond say?
Investigated Polish immigrants in Manchester, specifically those who wanted to stay in the country versus returning to Poland. He concluded those who wanted to stay in England changed their pronunciation to accommodate the local accent. However, those who wanted to return to London made less of an effeort and kept their own speech patterns e.g. -ing as -ink (e.g. happenink)
What did Pitts say about language as a resistance identity?
He coined the term ‘resistance identity’ to mean that language was being used to express ethnic identity and they wanted to be different from mainstream. He also found that dialect in London was developing because of the increase of resistance identity.
What did Clark observe?
He observed a class of African American teenagers in Washington DC. He found they resisted standard English and instead performed ‘white linguistic stereotypes’ which they perceived as an elite way of speaking. He also found they used language as a means of marking themselves as different from the ‘white’ way of speaking.
What did Barrett investigate about style shifting and identity?
Investigated language used by African American drag queens in Texas and how it linked to their identity. Barrett found they altered their language in context of speech goals and to manifest their identity as black, African American, gay drag queens. He concluded they use style shifting so that they can express different identities all at once.
What did John McWhorter say about appropriation in language?
He discussed cultural appropriation where he depicted a SNL sketch about Gen Z slang where people believed that slang was of black English origin had been ‘stolen’ by white people. The sketch included words like ‘bro’, ‘yo’ and ‘bestie’. He then explained language comes into contact and create hybridity and concluded that white talk and black talk becoming similar in America is a sign that whites and blacks are more comfortable socially than they once were.
What did Ogbu say about language and ethnicity?
He argued black children should be taught ‘proper English’ and ‘slang English’ and he argued it was essential to remain members of their community. This is still a problematic stance as many English specification mark schemes argue that standard English is only correct but isn’t as naturally used by children today.
What did Baker-Bell say about linguistic injustice?
She argued that black students are shamed if they are black and speak black language, meaning they are linguistically dehumanised. She noted that many studies show black language is highly developed and functional yet continues to be stigmatised. She argues students should understand how Black language represents identity, heritage and culture and they should celebrate it than see it as a lesser white language.
