Linguistic Diversity & Dialect Awareness: Incorporating an - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Linguistic Diversity & Dialect Awareness: Incorporating an Understanding of Dialectal Variation Into Your Service

Emma Sunog Commonwealth Corps Member Training March 9, 2018

Intros and Icebreaker

Roadmap

• 1. Linguistics & Dialectology
• 2. Dialects of American English
• 3. Language Diversity in Education
• 4. Further Applications & Resources

Linguistics and Dialectology

What is Linguistics?

• Linguistics is the scientific study of language.
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics

Dialects

• Dialect Clip 1
• 19-year-old African American woman from Paducah, KY
• Dialect Clip 2
• 38-year-old Caucasian man from Benson, MN
• Dialect Clip 3
• 60-year-old Caucasian man from Amarillo, TX
• Dialect Clip 4
• 48-year-old Caucasian man from Brooklyn, NY
• Dialect Clip 5
• 26-year-old Puerto Rican woman from East Harlem, NY

Dialect vs. Language

• What is a dialect?
• American English vs. British English
• French in Paris vs. French in Quebec
• German to Dutch dialect continuum
• How is a dialect different from a language?

Dialect vs. Language

• Dialects are mutually intelligible
• Specific to a particular region or social group
• dictionary.com: “a provincial, rural, or socially

distinct variety of a language that differs from the standard language, especially when considered as substandard.”

• “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

Dialect Map (Robert Delaney)

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NatMap1.html

Your Speech

• Where are you from?
• What words/expressions/pronunciations/languages are

particular to the region where you grew up?

Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism

• Prescriptivism: “correct” grammar, what you “should”

say

• Don’t end a sentence with a preposition!
• Descriptivism: what people do say
• Linguistically speaking, grammar rules are arbitrary
• Based on who has power
• Official language of the United States?

Prescriptivism and Dialects

• “‘Every dialect has a grammar’ does not mean

‘everything is relative, and let’s throw away all the dictionaries, and no one should go to school anymore, and I should be able to wear a bath towel to a job interview if I damn well please.’ What it means is that all dialects, from the very fanciest to the ones held in lowest esteem, are rule-governed systems.” (Arika Okrent)

Language Discrimination

https://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/MjAxMi1mYzZkNGFiMzAyMThjN2Q2

Language Discrimination

• “The judgments about dialects are usually related to the

people who speak them and are used to discriminate against people based on their ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or place of origin.” (NC State Humanities & Social Sciences)

• Certain linguistic features are stigmatized because of the

kinds of people that use them OR are associated with them

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Socioeconomic status
• Education
• Native speaker status

Dialects of English

Boston English

• Spoken by about 15% of people in the greater Boston

area on a regular basis; about 50% use it sometimes

• Multiple varieties
• Prominent features:
• Non-rhotic (“r” at the end of a syllable is not pronounced)
• Epenthesized “r” (“idear”)
• But only when followed by a word that begins with a

vowel

• Boston accent lesson

Chicano English

• Not a “Spanish accent” or “Spanglish”; sometimes

spoken by people who don’t speak Spanish

• Originated in the speech of Mexican immigrants
• Spoken all over the country
• Prominent features:
• “Th”-stopping
• Copula deletion: “She running with a dog.”
• Multiple negative: “I didn’t have no jacket.”
• “She barely left the store.”
• Worldwide Accent Project: Chicano English

African American Vernacular English

• Spoken by about 80%-90% of African Americans
• Features:
• Copula deletion:
• She a student.
• *I a student.
• Habitual be: “She be at home on weekdays.”
• Remote time been: “I been knowing that.”
• Absence of present tense marking: “He walk to school every day.”
• Non-rhotic – like many British dialects
• The Language and Life Project: “Talking Black in America”
• Lisa Green on how to respond to the comment that AAVE is just

“bad grammar”

• Code-switching

Appalachian English

• Features:
• Past tense plural “was”
• Use of “ain’t”
• “Pen” sounds like “pin”
• “a”-prefix
• He was a-huntin’.
• *He likes a-huntin’.
• *Those a-screamin’ children didn’t bother me.
• The Language and Life Project: “Mountain Talk”
• Appalachian English

http://www.arc.gov/images/regionmap.gif

Language Diversity in Education

Linguistics and Civic Engagement

• Why is this relevant?
• Educational settings
• General community engagement

Linguistics and Education

Anne Charity Hudley, UC Santa Barbara Christine Mallinson, University of Maryland Walt Wolfram, North Carolina State

Multicultural Education

• Increasingly diverse student population à greater

cultural and linguistic variation in schools à teachers need more cultural knowledge

• Writing centers: rules of academic discourse coming

into conflict with a student’s dialect or language

Language and Education

• “Language discrimination is one of the last acceptable

forms of discrimination.” (Charity Hudley 2013)

• “Research has shown that a teacher’s attitude about a

student’s speech is the ‘most powerful factor in determining the teacher’s expectations’ for any given student.” (Portland State University Communication Sciences website)

Schoolwork and Assessments

• English/Language Arts classes
• Spelling, rhyming
• Standardized testing
• The bowl of soup _____ hot.
• Speech competence
• Lack of intellectual/cognitive capacity, speech impediments,

learning disabilities

Strategies for Educators

• Check for patterns in “mistakes”
• Give students and teachers examples
• Take the time to learn about dialectal variation

Further Applications and Resources

Discussion

• How can you use this information at your host site/in

your service?

• How can you use this information in your daily life?

Some Ideas

• Copyediting/proofreading
• Teaching or tutoring English (language/literacy/

language arts)

• Amplifying diverse voices
• Talking to team members/clients/the community you

are in

Further Resources

• International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA):

http://www.dialectsarchive.com/

• Language and Life Documentary Project:

https://languageandlife.org/

• Anne Charity Hudley: https://annecharityhudley.com/
• Christine Mallinson: https://christinemallinson.com/
• Dialect Quiz:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/ dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0

• Plus more on your handout!

References

African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Portland State University: Multicultural Topics in Communications Sciences & Disorders, https://www.pdx.edu//multicultural-topics-communication-sciences- disorders/african-american-vernacular-english-aave. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. The American Accents. Dialect Blog, http://dialectblog.com/northamerican-accents/. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Charity Hudley, Anne H. 2013. Sociolinguistics and Social Activism. In Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics (812-832). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chicano English. Portland State University: Multicultural Topics in Communications Sciences & Disorders, https://www.pdx.edu/multicultural-topics-communication-sciences-disorders/chicano-english. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Dialects Aren’t ‘Bad English’—They’re Patterns. 31 Jul 2017. North Carolina State Humanities and Social Sciences News, https://news.chass.ncsu.edu/2017/07/31/dialects-arent-bad-english-theyre-patterns/. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Healy, Patrick. 2 Sep 2009. A Mannah of Speaking. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://nyti.ms/2pC6TIx. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Kentucky 4. International Dialects of English Archive, http://www.dialectsarchive.com/kentucky-4. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. The Linguistic Characteristics of AAVE. English Language and Linguistics Online, http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/ThelinguisticcharacteristicsofAAVE. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Minnesota 9. International Dialects of English Archive, http://www.dialectsarchive.com/minnesota-9. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. New York 11. International Dialects of English Archive, http://www.dialectsarchive.com/new-york-11. Accessed 9 Feb 1018. New York 26. International Dialects of English Archive, http://www.dialectsarchive.com/new-york-26. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Okrent, Arika. 31 Jul 2013. The Grammar Rules Behind 3 Commonly Disparaged Dialects. The Week. Retrieved from http://theweek.com/articles/461642/grammar-rules-behind-3-commonly-disparaged-dialects. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Texas 8. International Dialects of English Archive, http://www.dialectsarchive.com/texas-8. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Wolfram, Walt and Donna Christian. 1976. Appalachian Speech. Journal of English Linguistics 12 (1), 83-92. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/007542427801200110. Accessed 9 Feb 2018.

Thank you!