Codeswitching article summary:
In the article written by John Mcwhorter, representative of some of the most multiethnic neighbourhoods in the US, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is being known by critics to be using 'verbal blackface' who are clearly linguistically misreading her as suggested by the writer who claims she is not, it is just code switching between Latina (North America origin) and Black English; and this is somehow not acceptable due to her race so her speech must be some sort of 'act', despite the fact she is Latina and grew up around it so it was bound to be in her repertoire to some extent. This happened because she supposedly 'spoke in an accent she never uses' when she sprinkled some Black English into her speech when stating 'I'm proud to be a bartender. Ain't nothing wrong with that.' by stretching 'wrong' out a bit, intoning in a way sometimes described as a 'drawl' which is used in Black English. Apparently she did this to connect to her black audience but if language was designed for connection there should be nothing wrong with that, especially as the dialect is not non-native to her and it was only codeswitching, not speaking like that continuously.
This example of a codeswitching dialect is similar to Gary Ives 2014 study as the theorist also draws links between two language individuals use as their second languages to code switch between; English and most commonly, Punjabi. Ives supports John Mcwhorter's ideas here that location or environment can be a big factor in code switching; he interestingly found that students offered a distinction in their language based on postcode, referring to some language choices as 'street' or 'BD8' and how 'BD22 language would be different and posh'. It can also depend on who you're speaking to as in the article it suggested AOC used black English more commonly with black audiences, and the 8 Bradford boys from School A in Ives study stated 'we might speak English with Mum and Dad but with our friends we add in Punjabi'; they code switch to fit into different areas of society or to create a well defined social identity.
Another accent article to possibly mention for wider reading:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_d_fXYBMZxR9K-ht7i6VEvWdKbQuq7aE/view
Further Summaries:
- Milroy's 'Belfast' study:
- Members of a speech community are connected to each other in social networks that may be relatively 'closed' or 'open'.
- Closed network: Where a person whose personal contacts all know each other belong to. High density
- Open network: Where an individual whose contacts tend not to know each other belong to. Low density
- The links between people may be of different kinds - relatives, friends but where individuals are linked in several ways eg. job, family then network ties are multiplex.
- Relatively dense networks function as norm enforcement mechanisms and in language, meaning a closely knit group will have the capacity to enforce linguistic norms.
Aim:
- She investigated the correlation between the integration of individuals in the community and the way those individuals speak.
Procedure:
- To do this she gave each individual a Network Strength Score based on the person’s knowledge of other people in the community, the workplace and at leisure activities to give a score of 1 to 5. 5 is the highest Network Strength Score.
- Then she measured each person’s use of several linguistic variables, eg. (th) as in mother and (a) as in hat, both had standard and non-standard forms. She found a high Network Strength Score was correlated with the use of vernacular or non-standard forms.
- In most cases this meant men whose speech revealed high usage of vernacular or non-standard forms were found to belong to tight-knit social networks.
Findings:
- Conversely, vernacular or non-standard forms are less evident in women’s speech as the women belong to less dense social networks.
- However, for some variables, the pattern of men using non-standard and women using standard forms was reversed.
Eg. In the Hammer and the Clonard more women than expected tended to use the non-standard form of (a) as in hat. Milroy’s explanation for this finding is based on the social pressures operating in the communities. The Hammer and the Clonard both had unemployment rates of around 35% which clearly affected social relationships.
- Men from these areas were forced to look for work outside the community, and shared more in domestic tasks. The women in these areas went out to work and especially the young Clonard women all worked together - meaning they belonged to a dense and multiplex network; they lived and worked together.
-Young Clonard women belong to the tight knit network that clearly exerts pressure on its members, who are linguistically homogeneous.
-Over and above gender and class differences, Milroy discovered it was how closely or loosely knit a social group a person belonged to that determined their use of the local dialect forms. The covert prestige of such forms works in a more complicated way that previously thought.
-The idea of closed and open networks can be usefully applied to any case of language variation – e.g. the spread of MLE. Whereas in the past working class London children might've belonged to very closed networks due to changes to society - high levels of immigration, exposure to the media and greater sense of identity as teenagers as opposed to class.
- Giles 'Capital Punishment' study: http://scottenglang.blogspot.com/2017/12/howard-giles-capital-punishment.html
- Howard Giles presented 5 groups of students with an identical set of arguments about capital punishment.
-1 group received a written presentation, 4 received an oral presentation.
- One was presented by an RP speaker, one a Somerset speaker, one a South Wales speaker and a Birmingham speaker.
-First the students were asked how impressed they were with the competence of the presentations.
- RP and written presentations = deemed most impressive
- Birmingham presentation = least-First the students were asked how impressed they were with the competence of the presentations.
- RP and written presentations = deemed most impressive
- Then Giles asserted the persuasiveness of the speakers by asking the students opinions of Capital Punishment before and after the presentations.
Findings:
-Regional accents scored highest
-Those hearing regional speakers were more likely to change their mind than those hearing RP speakers or reading the printed presentation.
Conclusion:
-RP is deemed more professional and competent than regional accents although they are more persuasive than RP accents.
- Labov's 'Department Store' study (1966):
- Tested the patterns of language usage and their link to prestige and social class
- Looked at 3 different dept stores of varying degrees of prestige:
1) Saks 5th Avenue (highest)
2) Macy's (middle)
3) Klein's (lowest)
'The social stratification of the post vocalist 'r'-
-The final r sound at the end of words eg. guard, beer, fourth
-Labov tested the word 'forth' in his study and asked a question designed to elicit the answer 'fourth floor' or similar.
-He then pretended not to hear the response and asked sales assistant to repeat it. Eg. Q1) "Where can I find the lamps?" Answer: "fourth floor" Q2) "Excuse me?" answer: repeated and more careful utterance of fourth floor.
- Each employee thus could pronounce post-vocalic /r/ 4 times (twice each in fourth and floor).
Results-
-'r' in NYC was stratified by class. The pronunciation of /r/ depended on the social class membership of the employees.
- Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced /r/ more frequently than those lower.
-62% Saks, 51% Macys, 20% Kleins.
- Bernstein and Labov:
William Labov:
Context-
- Born in 1927
- Known as one of the founders of sociolinguistics
- Professor of linguistics at Pennsylvania Uni
- Interested in how social class effected language usage
1) ****** Martha's Vineyard Study (1961)- ******
Background to study:
- Martha's Vineyard: Island off the East Coast of the USA
- Popular summer tourist location for the 'summer people' who visit each holiday season and the local population - the 'islanders' who live there all year round who mostly live on the Eastern part of the island.
- 'Down-island': Populated island and 'Up-island': Less populated - location for fishermen.
- Fishermen: seen as desirable social group for the rest of the islanders - typified all the hard working, oldfashioned values and spoke with a very old non standard pronunciation - their vowel sounds were very different from standard pronunciation especially their diphthongs.
- Diphthongs: A sound made by combining 2 vowels, specifically when it starts as 1 vowel and goes to another eg. the oi sound in oil. Also comes from the Greek word 'dipthongos' meaning 'having 2 sounds'.
Findings:
- Labov found the young islanders were making a deliberate shift to using the old style pronunciation.
- Used language as a tool to reinforce their island identity and distance themselves from the 'summer people' who they didn't think were welcome.
- The islanders exploited this nonstandard dialect and even well educated islanders did this.
Basil Bernstein - Restricted and Elaborated code (1960s):
- Working class = restricted
- Middle / upper class = elaborated
- Access to these codes very much influenced a person's links to wealth, education, employment - general social mobility
Restricted code:
- Limited vocab
- Basic use of syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language
- High levels of redundancy (predictability)
- Used by people who share interests and experiences - heavily context dependent, high use of tag questions
- Reinforces group identity - pronunciations such as 'we'
- If a learner has access to only restricted code this will impair their learning ability
Elaborated code:
- Wider range of vocab especially adjectives
- More complex syntax
- Entropic (harder to predict)
- Less concerned with group relationship
- Expression of uniqueness and individuality - greater use of first person pronoun
- Important in education - most text books are written in this way and most teachers use it
Significance:
- Ability to switch between codes allows a greater freedom of language use and enables people to 'fit' into a wider range of situations.
- Access to the elaborated code means greater chance of success.
- Ability to shift to restricted to code is important too - understanding in all aspects ?
Criticism: Labov argues working class speech is not inferior to middle class speech, it's just as complex in many ways.
- BBC 'Voices' project:
- The project provided a snapshot of the linguistic landscape of the UK at the start of the 21st century by encouraging members of the public to contribute their words and reflect on the language they use and encounter in their daily lives.
- An online data gathering exercise carried out by BBC Nations and Regions was complemented by an audio strand: the BBC Voices Recordings.
- Between May 2004 and July 2005 group conversations were recorded in 303 locations involving 1,293 people across the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
- The vast majority of conversations were conducted in English, but the collection also includes 31 interviews in Scots, 9 in Welsh, 5 in Scots Gaelic, 3 in Irish, 3 in Ulster Scots, and 1 each in Manx and Guernsey French. The selection available here represents the entire set of conversations conducted in English and Scots.
- To ensure data was comparable across radio stations and between speaker groups, each conversation had a loose structure. This methodology was devised by researchers at the University of Leeds under the direction of Professor Clive Upton.
- In advance of a recording session, each participant was sent a ‘spidergram’ containing a set of 40 prompt words (e.g. ’tired’, ‘to play truant’ and ‘narrow walkway between/alongside buildings’). BBC audio gatherers used this spidergram to...
- initiate discussions about alternative words and to explore participants’ attitudes to language, the reactions of others to the way they speak, their reactions to other accents, the language of their parents and/or children, the role of education in language use, the influence of the media/popular culture and attitudes to swearing and ‘bad language’.
- Detailed descriptions created by researchers in the Voices of the UK project of the linguistic content of selected recordings have been created and published which presnt linguistic features in 4 categories:
Elicited lexis: a list of responses to 40 prompt words
Spontaneous lexis: glossary of spontaneously occurring words and phrases that contrast with mainstream usage and potentially reflect regional and/or social variation (e.g. ‘slape’ [= 'slippery'] or 'court' [= 'to date/go out with'])
Phonology: an auditory assessment presented in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) of (i) vowel sounds arranged according to Wells’ lexical sets; (ii) consonantal features (e.g. H-dropping: 'happy' [api] for /hapi/); and (iii) selected continuous speech processes (e.g. secondary contraction: 'haven’t' as [ant])
Grammar: an inventory of forms that contrast with Standard British English presented using neutral terminology (e.g. 'generalisation of simple past': that man’s never spoke to me from that day to this)
- British Library 'Sounds' project:
- A programme to preserve the nations sound heritage.
The nation’s sound collections are under threat, both from physical degradation and as the means of playing them disappear from production.
- Global archival consensus is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save our sound collections by digitising them before they become unplayable and are effectively lost.
The British Library is home to the nation’s Sound Archive, an extraordinary collection of over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment (1880s to the present day).
- We need to ensure that the existing archive is properly preserved, and that there are adequate systems in place for the acquisition of future sound production in the UK.
The Save our Sounds programme has been created to answer this imperative need. It has three major aims:
- to preserve as much as possible of the nation's rare and unique sound recordings – not just those in our collections but also key items from partner collections across the UK; in July 2017, the Library started a five-year Heritage Lottery Fund-funded project Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, helping to save the nation’s sounds and open them up online for everyone to hear
- to establish a national radio archive that will collect, protect and share a substantial part of the UK’s vibrant radio output, working with the radio industry and other partners
- to invest in new technology to enable us to receive music in digital formats, working with music labels and industry partners to ensure their long-term preservation.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6927109/British-regional-accents-still-thriving.html
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