English with an Accent

Best laid plans and a free book

I have been absent for a while but here I am again to say that the revised second edition of English with an Accent is now on sale.

Textbooks are outrageously expensive. I wish there was something I could do about it, but as there is not, I’m giving away a copy of the softcover edition, which costs something like $45. If you leave a comment here in about a month’s time I’ll draw a name at random and send you the book. I’m leaving this open for a whole month because things are rather quiet here and I need to drum up some traffic.

Linguapax

Linguapax is an organization that promotes language diversity. There was a post earlier this month about discrimination against college professors with accents and steps taken to address the problem at a university in Iowa. You can read about it here.

Portland, Linguistics, and Papa Haydn’s

I finally bit the bullet and registered for the 2012 annual conferences for both the LSA  (Linguistic Society of America) and the ADS (American Dialect Society), which is in Portland this year. A five hour drive, about. Now I get to sort through all the abstracts and try to decide where I’m going to be and when.

Once thing that is true of all academic conferences: people look at your badge before they look at you. They want to know if (1) they’ll recognize your name and (2) what university you’re at. I admit it’s odd for me to be listed as an independent scholar, after so many years with big-name schools on my badge.

Small bonus: I adore Portland. It’s my favorite city on the west coast, and I would love to live there. Probably will never happen, but a girl can dream. While I’m there I will pay a visit to Papa Haydn‘s for some Boccone Dolce.

Looking for examples of language focused discrimination

… from everyday life, as in the examples below. If you come across something,  please contact me  (link) with the information and/or link, if one is available. I will not use what you send me without consulting you, and you will remain anonymous unless you specifically request not to be.

I’m especially interested in incidents on college campuses. Even if you are unsure of the details, I’d like to hear from you. I will always check and double check any information provided for accuracy by going to primary sources.

Examples (and these are all real-life)

Newspaper headlines:  “We likee Hirally! She best quality!”

One-off definitions (this one from the Urban Dictionary): Ching chong bing bong: The language of those born to the Asian countries. It is the root of all evil and when heard for an excessive amount of time, causes one to vomit uncontrollably. Excuse me, I can’t understand your ching chong bing bong, please try English when you are in America.

News stories (television, print media, internet, radio are all great):

Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two jobless auto workers because  they had mistaken  him for Japanese. According to the police report, a bystander heard one of the two men of say to Chin, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work.”

San Jose, CA: A 58-year-old Latino speaking on his cell phone in Spanish was punched in the face by a 28-year-old Anglo male, who shouted “Speak English!”

Connecticut, 2010: A study of traffic tickets issued by the East Haven police department over an 8-month period established that while Latinos/as make up less than 6 percent of the population, they accounted for more than 50 percent of tickets issued. In addition, the study found that police officers routinely misrepresented the race of the person receiving the ticket in their reports.

Parodies (from the Princeton student newspaper, this fake letter): Hi Princeton! Remember me? I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring bells? Just in case, let me refresh your memories. I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me.

Rumors (which I will validate before using) Two students at (college) gather signatures to present to the administration with the goal of having a professor who graded too harshly fired. They cited his foreign accent as the biggest part of the problem.

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Or anything else you come across. I would VERY MUCH appreciate any help that comes my way.  I’d like to set up a database, which will be made available to students and  researchers who are interested in language discrimination.

Tags: examples, prescriptivism

letter to the editor: for posterity, and because I lose things

As is quite common, there was an opinion piece in the local paper in which someone argued for English Only legislation. Here’s the letter I wrote in response — which they offered to print if I could cut it down to 200 words. I declined, as I was already over my weekly time allowance for language-related outrage. It would have required too much effort to make it shorter (and yes, I am paraphrasing Ben Franklin). This all happened a few years ago but I’m posting it now because I ran across a draft of the letter (which I had not saved anywhere).

—————–

To the editor:

Mr. xxx of Bellingham writes to encourage readers to work for the passage of official English legislation in Washington. He believes legislation establishing English as the official language of the state is necessary, and that without it national unity and well being are at risk.

Across the country, calls for similar legislation rely on the same myths, hyperbole and lack of historical fact and logic. What Mr. xxx cites as good and necessary can also be seen as xenophobic, mean-spirited, restrictive, discriminatory and protectionist. The reasons cited most often in support of such legislation are all transparently false.

• English is not threatened in any way: it is the predominant language of trade globally and of all spheres of public life in the U.S.
• The proportion of non-English speakers was larger at the turn of this century than it is now (the 1890 census recorded 4.5 times as many non-English speakers than did the 1990 census). In 1910 the census recorded that no English was spoken by 23 percent of foreign-born whites, 39 percent of Japanese, 41 percent of Chinese, and 66 percent of other immigrants. In 1990, only 10 percent of foreign born residents spoke no English.
• All immigrant groups have gradually become Anglicized but this process was not legislated; it came about as a part of the larger process of assimilation.

Facts like these are never countered with similar hard data by proponents of language protectionist legislation or English Only. They provide anecdotal evidence and unsupported claims founded in racism and xenophobia. Such groups would like to cut federal services, restrict access, and deny legal protection on the basis of language, but they conveniently overlook the fact that some 40,000 people are on waiting lists for English as a Foreign Language classes in California alone. As has been pointed out time and time again, laws making English the official language do nothing to increase or fund language classes, nor do they teach a single person English.

The simple fact is, the status of English as the majority language was much more of a question in earlier times, but it survived without intrusive legislation. Official English legislation violates the first amendment as well as the fourteenth, which forbids abridging the privileges and immunities accorded to naturalized citizens.

Finally, this legislation is short sighted and mean spirited. It does not promote national unity; it is a gatekeeping mechanism aimed at very specific populations. English Only legislation and the organizations which promote it are countered by principled resistance from other civic, religious and professional organizations, among them the National Council of Teachers of English, the Modern Language Association, TESOL, American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, the Center for Applied Linguistics, the American Psychological Association, the National Council for Black Studies, and the National Council of Churches of Christ. All of these organizations have published position papers which provide more background.

We have so many better things to do with our time and energy. Please encourage your legislators to put aside this hurtful, impractical and short sighted legislation to take up more important issues.

Tags: editorials

Princeton

There’s an editorial in a recent edition of The Princetonian pointing out that Princeton still does not have a linguistics department, but only a concentration.

I did my graduate work at linguistics — at Princeton — some twenty years ago, I can affirm this is true. At that time linguistics was embedded in the German department, and did not exist on its own. Still the case now. I doubt the administration is going to pony up the money to establish a department (they’d have to hire a slew of people) but if in fact they decide to do this, I know a linguistics PhD who would volunteer for duty. Well, not volunteer, but you know what I mean.

Tags: Princeton

NWAV 40 at Georgetown: home again

I spent 3.5 very good days at Georgetown attending the 40th annual NWAV conference, which is the big annual meeting for sociolinguistics. Listened to some excellent papers, and read one of my own papers which was based on new material from the second edition of EWA. I had quite a few people ask me about the power point slides, and so I’m posting the link here: NWAV 2011 PowerPoint  (and)  NWAV 2011 bibliography. The PowerPoint presentation is pretty big, and it may take as much as ten minutes to download.

You are welcome to use these materials in class or as a reference, but please be sure to attribute the work to me and/or provide a link to this website.

Tags: presentations

dare to ask: the million dollar question and the two bit answer(s)

Phillip Milano writes a column called “Dare to Ask,” which runs in The Florida Times-Union‘s Life section.  A recent entry: 

Why are white people so dogmatic about grammar? Good grammar isn’t linked to intelligence. — Nia C., 30, black, Chicago

Dogmatic is an apt and diplomatic word, one that shouldn’t engender knee-jerk reactions. Unfortunately, the six replies posted all demonstrate that she’s right.

And of course, she’s wrong, too.

Language subordination and gate-keeping is practiced by people of all colors, ethnicities and backgrounds. It may well be that white people lead the pack, but I can’t think of a way you’d measure something like that.

And finally: good grammar. The idea of good and bad grammar creeps in everywhere. Even in the middle of a reasonable (but not often asked) question about language use. But I admit: if you strike ‘good’ from this noun phrase, the meaning is unclear. Does it mean “People who don’t or won’t  use those grammatical constructions favored by schools are not stupid”? Clumsy, but less ambiguous. How about “Why do (white) people believe that not talking like them is an indication of low intelligence?” Still pretty clumsy, but closer to what I think is the underlying question. I wonder how this wording would change the responses.

Tags: grammar, power differential

getting tangled up in definitions for ‘grammar’

I’ve come across some … interesting definitions of ‘grammar’ over the years, but this one made my head spin. I had to rearead and reread to get any sense at all out of the passage.

Among the ordinarily resisted disciplines is that of grammar.  In some ways I’m not surprised because grammar is taught as an end when it is simply a means to clarity.  In fact, most people confuse grammar and standard usage — not saying “ain’t” is not a matter of grammar — it’s usage.  Using a double negative IS bad grammar if you’re speaking English.  Usage is convention within a community.   Grammar is the structural pattern of the sentences that guides the sense.  Unless one can at will change a participle to a prepositional phrase, a gerund to a noun-adjective combination, keep parallel structure and connect participles to their antecedents, the poor reader may have to reread and reread to get sense out of the passage.

At first glance it looks reasonable, but there’s a machiavellian twist in there that axes the double negative, which has served English speakers well for centuries.

Tags: grammar, written/spoken confusion

Taboo words, social history and power differentials

At Popular Linguistics there’s an invited column with the title The Mysteries of the N-word which was written by Janet M. Fuller,  Director of Women’s Studies at Southern Illinois University/Carbondale. Fuller looks at the relative social value and impact of words which can be both utterly offensive and a signal of affection or approval, depending on context. She is writing about nigger, for the most part, but she also brings in other examples.

We can’t leave history out of it. Power relationships matter, and we can’t escape the history of white people having more power than black people in the United States. Even if particular white speakers are themselves not more powerful than the black people they are addressing, their use of ‘nigger’ would reference a power relationship with white people in a superior position – unless, of course, a close personal relationship trumps that dynamic. To make another parallel to gender, it’s quite different if adult women refer to their female friends as ‘girls’ and if a male boss refers to female employees as ‘girls’. The first is about solidarity — and, probably, wanting to tap into the positive associations of youth — and the second is about depicting the female employees as powerless and inconsequential, part of a faceless, gendered group.

This is the kind of essay you could hand to somebody who is having real trouble understanding the importance of context.  Or you could pass on a different story, which a friend told me some years ago and which has stuck with me whenever this subject comes up.

This friend has two teenagers, and she also has two elderly parents who live in rural (let’s say, Nebraska, but fill in the state of your choice here). Visiting with the kids, her parents were shocked and upset to hear their grandchildren use the f-word, and of course, they let my friend know how inappropriate and offensive they found this.

She said to them, “You know the way you feel when you hear them say fuck? That’s the way they feel when they hear you say nigger.”

And with that, they dropped the subject and never raised it again. I’ve never come across a better example of the potential shock value of context, which once in a while hits you over the head by letting you hear yourself with all filters stripped away.

Tags: 'fuck', 'nigger', AAE, power differential