Paper 2 : ethnic differences Flashcards
What is an ethnolect?
Lexical and grammatical differences dependent on ethnic background
What is BBE / patois?
English variation in the UK (20th century - ) spoken mainly by black people
What is a pidgin?
A form of language that emerges when speakers of two different languages communicate, in order to facilitate trade, communication, and colonisation
What is a creole / creolisation?
When a pidgin becomes the predominant language in a speech community - learnt as the mother tongue
What is code mixing?
When immigrant speech (ethnolects) blend with those of regional dialects in a host area (eg. BBE mixing with Mancunian)
What is MLE / MUE?
Multicultural London / Urban English - an evolution of BBE in urban areas of Britain
What is resistance identity?
When a code of speech with covert prestige values references cultural heritage
What is code switching in the instance of ethnic English?
Switching between SE / ‘mainstream English’ and ethnolects
How are pidgins characterised?
Very restricted in their use, limited vocabulary, simple grammatical structure (simple clauses, few prepositions)
What is Jamaican Patois / Creole?
English-based creole with west African influences, developed in the 17th century when slaves from centra and west Africa were exposed to, learnt, and nativized the dialectal forms - English was spoken by the slave holders
How did BBE emerge?
Combination of Patois, West African creole and black-British vernacular - arrived in the UK following the Windrush generation of Caribbean migrants post-war to working lass areas in industrialised cities
Examples of BBE
wagwan, mandem
Examples of Patois
‘jus a word’ (excuse me), ‘Jamrock’ (Jamaica)
Changes to creolised English / BBE in the 60s and 70s
Contact between Jamaican-English young people and white working-class neighbours meant that code mixing began to develop, mixed race relationships meant that different varieties of English were exposed to one another
Ben Rampton (KCL)’s commentary on BBE
‘cool, tough and good to use’ - linked to assertiveness, verbal resourcefulness and opposition to authority
Roger Hewitt (1986) and Mark Sebba (1993) - notes on ‘Black cockney’
Style rather than a distinct variety that emerged in London, became illustrative of how language reflects identity and belonging
Cheshire et. al (2008) - MLE
Identified new forms of English, mostly among young people, emerging out of London due to its nature as a multicultural city
How is MUE characterised?
Doesn’t have a uniform set of features therefore isn’t a distinct variety, but is instead a pool of language characteristics that can be adopted by differing degrees by its users depending on age, ethnicity, region or identity
Vocab examples of MUE
bare, beef, ting, ends
Phonological examples of MUE
Diphthong vowel sound of the word ‘face’ is pronounced /fes/
Grammatical examples of MUE
‘dem’ as a plural marker eg. ‘man dem’, ‘man’ as a first person singular pronoun
Discourse features of MUE
‘innit’ as a tag question
Relevance of MUE
-Differentiates itself from previous contact languages across the course of English as the influence of the secondary language (Ghanaian, Patois etc) is arguably more influential than the primary language (English)
-Anglicisation is less noticeable, convergence is taking place to form an authentic hybrid
John Pitts (2012) observations about resistance identity
Some young black people who feel ignored and constrained by mainstream society gravitate towards a resistance identity / covert prestige model
Lindsay Johns’ perspective on MUE
young people should imitate the language of those who can afford them opportunities, refutes descriptivist perspective by saying that liberal academics speak from ivory towers and are closed off from reality
Michael Rosen’s perspective on MUE and refutal of Johns
The term ‘slang’ is ambiguous - we can all be bi-dialectal, and this will be fostered anyways if slang is banned
Commentary from Gerrard McClendon in his book ‘Ax or ask’
Advocates for the ability to code switch, children need to have their English corrected with out the fear of being perceived a racist, usage contexts need to be better differentiated
