Language and race: 12 Flashcards
What is the folk theory of race, and who was is proposed by?
Proposed by Jane Hill, it states that race is a basic category of human biological variation, combined with the belief that everyone has to be assigned a race.
What are some objections to the folk theory of race?
- Human populations are not unambiguously, clearly biological distinct groups
- There is a lot of genetic varaition within so-called racial groups (94%) than between them (6%) - There is a gradual rather abrupt physical variation (ex: skin colour)
- Physical traits (skin colour, hair type) are independent from one another
Why is race a social fact?
- It influences people’s perceptions/identities
Rather than existing biological essence, it is better thought of as radicalization
- The concept of race provides us with insight into the cultural and social meanings people attribute to perceived/actual biological differences (skin colour, hair type) - The parameter of racial classification is not a biological given:
- People cannot be grouped into racial categories based on a physical set of features
Race means something different in each society because it is a social construct/varies from place to place
Why is race tied to power and inequality?
societies use race as a construct to establish systems of power, forming “dominant languages and cultures”.
What was the AAA statement about race?
the human capacity for achieving, and functioning within present-day cultures is blocked by so-called “racialized groups”.
- Their biological inheritance is a product of historical and contemporary circumstances.
- Due to this and the SLI race and biology cannot be socially separated.
What is the standard ideology of race?
the bias of race is idealized and homogonously spoken by dominant institutions which name and model language (stated by lippie-green)
- this is primality modelled by the upper middle class.
What is the standard language ideology (SLI)?
The belief that one language is the “correct” or “best” and that other varieties are “incorrect” or less valid
- Language as apolitical
- One language- one nation ideology
Why do people buy into SLI?
a. Markedness: not speaking the standard stands out, it is marked
b. Language as capital: speaking the standard comes with a reward
What is the accommodation theory?
Social psychology theory that explains how and why people change their communication style based on the situation
- The accents we hear go through our language ideology filters (the human minds method of detecting language and accents, and determining if they are good or bad)
Why does education develop racist ideologies?
Children are socialized into specific prejudices and are directed into the language ideology of the middle class.
what is AAE? And how do people perceive it?
African-American English
- Their language is often perceived as a messy language with slang and grammatical mistakes
- Often perceived as Indexing/signalling something about the speaker
How is the AAE similar to other languages?
a. Rule governed: has its own phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.
Like “socially expectable English”, AAE has regional variation.
b. AAE is learned in a particular social setting (like any language):
- People easily code-switch between Black English and other varieties of English, depending on social context (accommodation theory).
What is another example of how the AAE is similar to other languages?
Invariant or habitual “be” (they are the same, but are used to describe the differences between “regular English”, and AAE).
- This grammatical position is used to indicate whether something happens consistently or not.
- Does grammatical work: indicate habitual behavior or the usual state of being
- She was happy vs. she is happy
What are the double negatives, and why has it been stigmatized?
A statement which contains two negative words
- EX: I can’t get anything done
- This Existed before and was even common in Shakespeares’ time
- Throughout history, it became stigmatized because people in higher classes stopped using them, it is seen as something that can make language unclear.
What are examples of double negatives being used in other languages?
French: je ne veux rien