Language in the Real World

Language in the Real World: An introduction to linguistics challenges the traditional approaches taken to linguistics to provide an innovative introduction to the subject. By rst examining the real world applications of core areas of linguistics and then addressing the theory behind these applications, this text oers an inductive, illustrative, and interactive overview for students. Key areas covered include animal communication, phonology, language variation, gender and power, lexicography, translation, forensic linguistics, language acquisition, American Sign Language, and language disorders. Each chapter, written by an expert in the eld, is introduced by boxed notes listing the key points covered and features an authors note to readers that situates the chapter in its real world context. Activities and pointers for further study and reading are also integrated into the chapters and an end of text glossary is provided to aid study. Professors and students will benet from the interactive companion website that includes a student section featuring comments and hints on the chapter exercises within the book, a series of ash cards to test knowledge, and further reading and links to key resources. Material for professors includes essay and multi-choice questions based on each chapter and additional general discussion topics. Language in the Real World shows that linguistics can be appreciated, studied, and enjoyed by actively engaging real world applications of linguistic knowledge and principles and will be essential reading for students with an interest in language. Susan J. Behrens is Professor of SpeechLanguage Pathology and Audiology at Marymount Manhattan College. Judith A. Parker is Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Mary Washington.

Language in the Real WorldAn introduction to linguistics

Susan J. Behrens and Judith A. Parker

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Selection and editorial matter 2010 Susan J. Behrens and Judith A. Parker Individual chapters 2010 the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Language in the real world / [edited by] Susan J. Behrens and Judith A. Parker. 1st ed. p. cm. 1. Applied linguistics. I. Behrens, Susan J., 1959 II. Parker, Judith A. P129.L365 2010 418dc22 2009031835 ISBN 0-203-83981-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0415774675 (hbk) ISBN10: 0415774683 (pbk) ISBN13: 9780415774673 (hbk) ISBN13: 9780415774680 (pbk)

Contents

Alternate Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction I: Language, Education, and Cultural Change 1 Language Variation: Students and Teachers Reect on Accents and Dialects Susan J. Behrens and Rebecca L. Sperling 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 3 Teaching Pronunciation: Using Phonology in the ESL and Foreign Language Classroom Joanna Labov II: Literature, Translation, and Computers 4 Lexicography: What Dictionaries Reveal about Language and Dictionary Makers Paul D. Fallon 5 Text Translation: Approaching Otherness Mary Boldt and Esperanza Roncero 6 Machine Translation: The Challenge of Ambiguity Nan Decker 7 The N-Word, the F-Word, and All that Jazz: Race, Sex, and Transgressive Language in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture Carmen Gillespie III: Language, Power, and Identity 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 9 Gender, Language, and Power: Surname or Sirname? Diana Boxer 10 Linguistics as a Forensic Science: The Case of Author Identication Carole E. Chaski

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IV: Forms of Language and Communication 11 First Language Acquisition: Developing Native Linguistic Competence Janine Graziano-King and Helen Smith Cairns 12 ASL: A Visual Language Miako Villanueva, Deanna Twain, and Laura Leigh Wood 13 Animal Communication: The Language of Honey Bees Wyatt A. Mangum V: Language and Communication Science 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 15 Analyzing Narratives: An Example of Cross-Cultural Research Methods Cecile L. Stein 16 Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Contributions to Understanding Healthy Aging and Dementia Yael Neumann, Linda Carozza, and Anastasia Georgiou 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull Glossary Index

205 207 226 255

275 277 297

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Alternate ContentsThis Alternate Contents guides readers to chapters that cover the traditional areas of linguistic theory and subdisciplines.

Discourse Analysis 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 6 Machine Translation: The Challenge of Ambiguity Nan Decker 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 9 Gender, Language, and Power: Surname or Sirname? Diana Boxer 10 Linguistics as a Forensic Science: The Case of Author Identication Carole E. Chaski 15 Analyzing Narratives: An Example of Cross-Cultural Research Methods Cecile L. Stein 16 Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Contributions to Understanding Healthy Aging and Dementia Yael Neumann, Linda Carozza, and Anastasia Georgiou 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull 27 107

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Lexicon/Semantics 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 4 Lexicography: What Dictionaries Reveal about Language and Dictionary Makers Paul D. Fallon 5 Text Translation: Approaching Otherness Mary Boldt and Esperanza Roncero 6 Machine Translation: The Challenge of Ambiguity Nan Decker 27

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7 The N-Word, the F-Word, and All that Jazz: Race, Sex, and Transgressive Language in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture Carmen Gillespie 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 10 Linguistics as a Forensic Science: The Case of Author Identication Carole E. Chaski 11 First Language Acquisition: Developing Native Linguistic Competence Janine Graziano-King and Helen Smith Cairns 12 ASL: A Visual Language Miako Villanueva, Deanna Twain, and Laura Leigh Wood 13 Animal Communication: The Language of Honey Bees Wyatt A. Mangum 16 Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Contributions to Understanding Healthy Aging and Dementia Yael Neumann, Linda Carozza, and Anastasia Georgiou

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Morphology 4 Lexicography: What Dictionaries Reveal about Language and Dictionary Makers Paul D. Fallon 11 First Language Acquisition: Developing Native Linguistic Competence Janine Graziano-King and Helen Smith Cairns 12 ASL: A Visual Language Miako Villanueva, Deanna Twain, and Laura Leigh Wood 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull 67 207 226 277

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Neurolinguistics/Psycholinguistics 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 15 Analyzing Narratives: An Example of Cross-Cultural Research Methods Cecile L. Stein 139 277 297

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16 Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Contributions to Understanding Healthy Aging and Dementia Yael Neumann, Linda Carozza, and Anastasia Georgiou 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull

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Pragmatics 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull 27 277

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Phonetics/Phonology 1 Language Variation: Students and Teachers Reect on Accents and Dialects Susan J. Behrens and Rebecca L. Sperling 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 3 Teaching Pronunciation: Using Phonology in the ESL and Foreign Language Classroom Joanna Labov 4 Lexicography: What Dictionaries Reveal about Language and Dictionary Makers Paul D. Fallon 5 Text Translation: Approaching Otherness Mary Boldt and Esperanza Roncero 11 First Language Acquisition: Developing Native Linguistic Competence Janine Graziano-King and Helen Smith Cairns 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 16 Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Contributions to Understanding Healthy Aging and Dementia Yael Neumann, Linda Carozza, and Anastasia Georgiou 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull 11

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Sociolinguistics 1 Language Variation: Students and Teachers Reect on Accents and Dialects Susan J. Behrens and Rebecca L. Sperling 2 Speech Communities: Language as a Mediator of Messages and Perceptions Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 9 Gender, Language, and Power: Surname or Sirname? Diana Boxer 11

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Syntax 4 Lexicography: What Dictionaries Reveal about Language and Dictionary Makers Paul D. Fallon 6 Machine Translation: The Challenge of Ambiguity Nan Decker 8 Language, Power, and Sexual Assault: Womens Voices on Rape and Social Change Judith A. Parker and Deborah Mahlstedt 10 Linguistics as a Forensic Science: The Case of Author Identication Carole E. Chaski 11 First Language Acquisition: Developing Native Linguistic Competence Janine Graziano-King and Helen Smith Cairns 12 ASL: A Visual Language Miako Villanueva, Deanna Twain, and Laura Leigh Wood 14 Communication Disorders: A Personal Perspective Ann D. Jablon 17 Language of Children with Autism: The Two Worlds Underlying Verbal Communication Marion Blank and Mary Beth Cull 67 107

139 180 207 226 277

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Acknowledgments

The publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material: Denition of Red Copyright 2006 by Houghton Miin Harcourt Publishing Company. Adapted and reproduced by permission from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Shonna L. Trinch, Managing euphemism and transcending taboos: Negotiating the meaning of sexual assault in Latinas narratives of domestic violence, in Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 21:4, Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001, pp. 567610, Table 1: Spectrum of directness for Latina womens reference to sexual violence, pp. 582583. Red from the New Oxford American Dictionary (2005) and Explode from Oxford English Dictionary (1989), edited by Simpson J. and Weiner E. By permission of Oxford University Press. Denitions from The World Book Dictionary, 2007 World Book, Inc. By permission of the publisher. www.worldbookonline.com. All rights reserved. Denition of amity Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1987) 2nd ed. New York, Random House. With kind permission from Studio Editions. Signed instruction spread from Clercs school throughout the country. Lucas and Hogue 2004, used with permission of C. Lucas and R. Hogue. The British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) manual alphabets. http://www.ngerspellingalphabet.com/graphics/asl_ngerspelling_alphabet.pdf Gary, N. E. (1992). Activities and behavior of honey bees, in The Hive and the Honey Bee, ed. Joe M. Graham. Dadant and Sons, Hamilton, ILL. Replot of von Frisch (1967) Reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees by Karl von Frisch, translated by Leigh E. Chadwick, pp. 64,296, Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1967, 1993 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Stein, C. (2004) Narratives of Bhutanese and rural American 7-year-old children: Issues of story grammar and culture. Narrative Inquiry, 14(2), pp. 369394. Produced with kind permission by John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. www.benjamins.com Every eort has been made to trace the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the rst opportunity.

ContributorsSusan J. Behrens, Ph. D., Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. Marion Blank, Ph.D., Co-director, Developmental Neuropsychiatry Program, Columbia University, New York, NY. Mary Boldt, Ph.D., Associate Professor of German, York College of Pennsylvania, York, PA. Diana Boxer, Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics, University of Florida at Gainesville, Gainesville, FL. Linda Carozza, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Assistant Professor of Speech, Communication Sciences & Theatre, St. Johns College, Staten Island, NY. Helen Smith Cairns, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Linguistics and Speech and Hearing Sciences, the Graduate Center, and Linguistics and Communication Disorders, Queens College, the City University of New York, New York, NY. Carole E. Chaski, Ph.D., Institute for Linguistic Evidence, Inc., ALIAS Technology, LLC, Georgetown, DE. Mary Beth Cull, Developmental Neuropsychiatry Program, Columbia University, New York, NY. Nan Decker, Ph.D., senior linguist, Logovista US, Inc., Belmont, MA. Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, Ph.D., Director of Doctoral Programs in Multilingual, Multicultural Studies, New York University, New York, NY. Paul D. Fallon, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Mary Washington, Frederickburg, VA. Anastasia Georgiou, M.S., CCC-SLP, Jersey City, NJ. Carmen Gillespie, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. Janine Graziano-King, Ph.D., Associate Professor, English, Kingsborough Community College, the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY. Ann D. Jablon, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. Joanna Labov, Ph.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of TESOL, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, New York, NY. Deborah Mahlstedt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Womens Studies, West Chester University, West Chester, PA. Wyatt A. Mangum, Ph. D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA Yael Neumann, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Communication Disorders, Queens College, City University of New York Queens, NY.

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Judith A. Parker, Ph.D., Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA. Esperanza Roncero, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Spanish, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY. Rebecca L. Sperling, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Social Work/Sociology, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. Cecile L. Stein, Ph.D., Adjunct Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. Deanna Twain, Adjunct Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. Miako Villanueva, Ph.D., Instructor, Department of Linguistics, Gallaudet University, Washington, DC. Laura Leigh Wood, MA, St. Louis, MO.

SB: To Tony, of course JP: For Gladys B. Parker, my beautiful mother

Introduction

Language in the Real World: An introduction to linguistics is a dierent kind of book. It approaches linguistics by examining how the various branches of the discipline are put to use in the real world. This book oers an introduction to the traditional areas of linguistics and linguistic analysis in an inductive, illustrative, and interactive way by examining and telling stories about real world applications. This text conveys the immediacy and enjoyment of reading about and studying linguistics and conducting research into language. The books tone is one of discovery as readers become more linguistically aware as they work through the chapters. Most traditional linguistics texts rst lead students through linguistic theory, with applications relegated to the nal few chapters. Many of these texts reect a belief that theory must precede application and inform the work of beginning linguistics study. Other texts that focus on the application of linguistics seem narrow in scope, often directed to the specic needs of a dierent population: teachers of English as a Second or Foreign Language. Our text challenges these beliefs and practices. From our experiences in the classroom, and commitment to student-centered, authentic tools for learning, we have developed a text that takes a more inductive approach to uncovering linguistic phenomena. Readers do indeed encounter linguistic theory, but they do so in ways that embed theory in everyday phenomena. In some courses, this textbook will stand on its own, satisfying the needs to engage students in metalinguistic study and the examination of linguistics. The book will serve well, and be especially exciting to, students new to linguistics, with its richly varied chapters covering introductory and more advanced levels; its helpful interactive exercises; and the resources both in the book and on the books companion website. Linguistics professors might also choose to use one of the many ne traditionally oriented texts on the market in conjunction with our text to help students connect real world events and issues with the many facets of language study. One of the strengths of this book is the variety of approaches to the study of language. Each part has a broad introductory chapter followed by chapters that narrow in focus. While broader chapters provide an overview to readers, other chapters present a particular aspect of a eld of linguistics. No text covers everything; our chapters are carefully chosen and arranged to give readers many avors of what the title promises: language in the real world. In addition, each chapter is written by a scholar or group of scholars who share their experiences of linguistics. While this format oers readers a variety of voices across chapters, we (the editors) have worked to ensure a consistency of level and style to make the readers experience of the book smooth.

Who This Book Is ForOur book aims to reach two main types of readers: students studying the discipline of linguistics and those in related elds that are informed by language issues. Readers might encounter this book because they have chosen Linguistics as a major or minor. Then

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Introduction

again, they might be engrossed in a subject that intersects with the material in this textlanguage in its real world applicationsand yet might not have taken a traditional linguistics course. Readers might be English majors, Modern Language majors, Philosophy majors, or Performing Arts majors who are interested in language in its spoken and written forms; or studying Psychology, Sociology, or Anthropology: the sciences of our species. All these areas are informed by language and constructed through the application of language. As a discipline that touches on so many other elds of study, and has so many manifestations in human interaction, linguistics should be introduced to students as a real world phenomenon. Specically, this text will benet students studying the following areas: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Linguistics General Education/Liberal Arts and Sciences Composition Communication Arts and Theory Education English language English literature Foreign languages Philosophy Gender Studies Performing Arts Social sciences Psychology Communication Sciences and Disorders

We, the editors, each have over 20 years of teaching experience. We have seen again and again that most students get excited about linguistics when they can relate it to daily encounters and when they explore linguistic knowledge and principles through real world applications. Our philosophy is that linguistics can be appreciated, studied, and enjoyed by actively engaging in real world applications of linguistic knowledge and principles.

What Readers Learn from This BookThe lessons readers will be engaged in when they work with this book are two-fold. There is the discovery of linguistics, a discipline devoted to uncovering how language is structured and used to communicate meaning. But this book goes beyond what is already available in linguistics texts; its other lesson is that language is everywhere, and we all benet from a keener awareness of language and its application. And while a reader might be immersed primarily in one discipline, he or she will benet from a more comprehensive look at language applications in many areas. This text covers up-to-date issues of language and its applications, as seen from the viewpoint of our many contributors. To take just a few examples, readers will learn about how linguistics applies to crime work in forensics; how the novels of Toni Morrison oer a linguistic view of our culture; what autism is and how the notion of the autistic spectrum evolved; what is benecial and frustrating about machine translation software; and how linguistic analysis reveals the power dynamics of telling sexual assault narratives in dierent contexts.

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How to Read This BookOrganization of the TextThe length of the text is designed for a single semesters course of study. The order of chapters takes the reader thematically through the various applications of linguistics; furthermore, each part leads o with a chapter that is broader in scope than its companions, with the subsequent chapters in that section focusing in more detail on another aspect of the theme of that section. Given this design, readers can get an overview of related areas in linguistics by choosing to read initial chapters in each part, and then going back to explore the rest of the part in more depth. Since our book is designed to inform readers in various areas of study, we supplement our table of contents with one that lists the traditional areas of linguistics (phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and discourse) and the chapters that cover these areas in some depth. In addition, our chapters use examples from many languages other than English, including American Sign Language (ASL). The parts are organized in such a way that readers rst encounter a real world phenomenon they all share: being in school, especially in a new century of globalization and diverse communities (Part I: Language, Education, and Cultural Change). The book next presents another section of real world language use familiar to students: books! In this case, dictionaries, novels, and how translators work (Part II: Literature, Translation, and Computers). From there, the textbook goes into more specialized aspects of language use. In Part III (Language, Power, and Identity), we read about language analysis and what it reveals about the language user in dierent social contexts. Part IV (Forms of Language Communication) turns to what dierent communication forms look like, in young children, users of a signed language, and even in honey bees. We end with Part V (Language and Communication Science), the most specialized section of the text, exploring communication science as it assesses language development, disorders and dierences. Yet even in Part V, readers from many disciplines will benet from examining language in its clinical applications.

Organization of the PartsPart I, Language, Education, and Cultural Change, takes readers into the classroom and examines attitudes towards language diversity by college students and teachers (Chapter 1). Emotions that arise from language dierences across cultures are next explored (Chapter 2). Part I ends with a look into the philosophy and phonological training of a teacher of pronunciation to both English as a Second Language (ESL) students and native language learners (Chapter 3). Part II, Literature, Translation, and Computers, starts with an exploration of something very familiar to college students, the dictionary, and uncovers new connections between such a reference tool and human language, specically how dictionaries preserve and document linguistic trends (Chapter 4). We then look at how translators work, both the human and the machine type (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). Part II nishes with a discussion of potentially inammatory, transgressive language in literature, focusing on Toni Morrison (Chapter 7). In Part III, Language, Power, and Identity, we turn to how linguistics is used to explore ourselves and our identity, with chapters on the language and benets of telling sexual assault narratives (Chapter 8); a look at naming practices specic to gender (Chapter 9); and a discussion of the legal applications of linguistics, in a chapter on linguistics as a forensic science (Chapter 10).

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Part IV, entitled Forms of Language and Communication, looks at how we acquire our native language (Chapter 11). Next we consider American Sign Language (Chapter 12). Part IV ends with a discussion of the latest ndings from an expert on bees and probes our notions of what language really is (Chapter 13). Part V, Language and Communication Science, turns to the clinical side of linguistics, with a look at how speechlanguage therapy puts the eld of linguistics to work for people with language disorders (Chapter 14). Part V then looks at the role of childrens narratives and storytelling in our lives via a cross-cultural application of a diagnostic paradigm (Chapter 15); an in-depth look at how linguistic research can be employed to study the aging brain (Chapter 16); and discussions of language traits in children on the autism spectrum (Chapter 17). Key words appear in bold in each chapter and are dened in a glossary at the back of the book. The glossary, in turn, uses a co-indexing system to alert readers to those chapters that discuss a given term in some depth.

The Organization of Each ChapterEach chapter begins with a short list delineating the key points to be discussed. Then follows a quotation from an outside source that can only be fully appreciated by working through the chapter. Next is a note from the contributor to the reader, explaining how he or she became involved in the area being introduced and why linguistics has been a compelling force in this work. In-chapter exercises throughout are interactive and take the reader further in his or her engagement with the material. Some of these exercises can be worked out in class, while others call for library or Internet research, or even eldwork, and are more suitable as assignments outside of class. In addition, many of the exercises have companion comments that can be found on the books companion website. Sometimes serving as an answer key, or a debrieng narrative, these comments allow the reader to process the exercise, but without interrupting the ow of the text. Finally, each chapter includes a concise list of resources cited and additional sources for further exploration, such as websites and contact information for relevant organizations.

How to Read the BookThe book can be approached in several ways, depending on the readers interests, purposes, and level of familiarity with the material. The rst chapter of each part can be read for an overview of the various areas of linguistic application, and then readers can go back and read each part in full. Readers can approach parts in an order dierent from how they appear in the book, depending on the students discipline. Readers in both linguistics and other disciplines, ultimately, benet from working through the entire book. The text tells a full story of linguistics and language in our world, and while readers can customize the book by rearranging the order of chapters and parts, we hope that all readers engage in the book as a whole. To do so is to better understand the ways language is around us and develop keener critical thinking skills about those applications. In other words, while the dierent parts have been carefully constructed by theme, the chapters have also been written to hold up independently and work with a dierent arrangement of companion chapters. The overall eect, however, is a cumulative one. While students in dierent elds of study may choose to rearrange the table of contents to suit them, the book is a unied product. Those in the following disciplines might want to enter the book in the following ways:

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Linguistics While most linguistics courses tend to work with more traditionally oriented texts, our experience with many students over the years is that a companion book of applications goes far to contextualize the theory students are learning. For linguistics courses oered in departments that do not have a major in the discipline, our text would function equally well, or perhaps better, as a primary text. Students studying linguistics would nd all sections relevant and can read in the suggested order or in an order more customized to the organization of the course. An alternate table of contents is included specically for linguistics courses, so readers can select chapters as they relate to the traditional areas of linguistic study: phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and discourse, as well as subdisciplines of linguistics. Graduate students in linguistics would also encounter a full, rich array of career possibilities in linguistics. Pondering what one does with a degree in linguistics? Here are many portraits of linguistics working daily. General Education/Liberal Arts/Composition Readers who are interested in a more general view of language, perhaps for a General Education or composition course, would encounter language in its broadest applications and nd many exercises throughout the book that ask for written critiques of the issues being covered. These readers may choose to read these chapters rst, to get an overview of language in real world situations. In this case, readers would rst encounter students and teachers reecting on attitudes towards language variation (Chapter 1); then move to a discussion of dictionaries (Chapter 4); a linguistic analysis of narratives in a much dierent context (Chapter 8); how language is acquired in childhood (Chapter 11); and the diagnosis and treatment of speech and language disorders (Chapter 14). Communication Arts and Theory Those studying Comm Arts and theories of communication would benet from an exploration into other aspects of communication, such as sciences and disorders. These readers might want to start with Part V. From there, Comm Arts students could delve into the many other ways that linguistics sees communication and interpersonal interactions by going back to the suggested order in the Contents. Education Readers studying Education would certainly need to understand language in all its facets. These readers might start with Part I, and read Chapters 13, as they relate to teaching and cultural dierences. They could then go to Part IV and read about language in dierent forms: native acquisition of linguistic knowledge, American Sign Language, and how honey bees communicate as a contrasting view on human language. Continue on to Part V, for teachers of all age groups need to understand the nature of communication, its norms, range of dierences, and impairments. English English majors will already love language. This book can broaden a students thinking about written and spoken language. We suggest rst reading Part II, covering dictionaries (Chapter 4); how translators build bridges between languages (Chapter 5); issues of parsing syntax in machine translation (Chapter 6); and the use of transgressive language in popular culture and literature, specically Toni Morrisons novels Beloved and Jazz (Chapter 7). From there, read the remaining chapters in order to see the full picture of linguistics at work.

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Foreign Languages Similarly, students studying foreign languages will benet from a scientic look at language and its uses. These readers could start with Part II and then proceed in the order in which the sections are arranged. Philosophy Readers studying Philosophy and specializing in the Philosophy of Language, Logic, or Articial Intelligence will nd much to learn from this text. They could read the text in the given order or look at our Alternate Contents and explore the subdisciplines of linguistics. Gender Studies Many programs in Womens Studies and Gender Studies have been established since the 1980s. Students in these programs need to understand the linguistic dynamics of gender. These readers could start with Parts I and III, then return to the given order of the book. Performing Arts Many people in the performing arts enjoy and benet from learning more about voice, speech, communication, and language. For those in these elds, the book as a whole tells an integrated story of language as a tool of expression. Part V will provide an intensive focus on voice, language, and communication. Psychology and Social Sciences Readers in these elds are already studying cognition, behavior, systems, and norms. Language is intrinsic to all these issues. Such readers might start with Parts I and III, sections that cover a broad range of topics about language as a social marker and as a marker of identity; then proceed with the book as it is arranged. Communication Sciences and Disorders Those in the elds of communication, speech, language, and hearing sciences also deal with issues that would be informed by our text. Start with Part V (Chapters 1417) and read about speechlanguage pathology, psycholinguistic research into the aging brain, and about Autism Spectrum Disorders. From there, go back to Part I and explore the full range of language applications.Service-learning and community partnerships are taking hold in education. Some of our chapters, and exercises within chapters, supply faculty planning service-learning units with ideas for interaction with community groups.

Our ContributorsEach chapter is written specically for this text by an expert in his or her eld, all professionals with many years of teaching or related technical experience. There are 26 of us, from over a dozen institutions. Some contributors have specic training in linguistics, while others came to love and work with language via other routes. We are specialists in Sign Language, neurological underpinnings of language, language as a legal tool, diversity, narratives, speech pathology, autism, language development and teaching, dictionaries, translation, and even honey bees! In other words, we come from many places in the real world. We also represent colleges and universities from many parts of the United States. We work in dierent elds informed by the science and art of language. Fittingly, throughout the book, multiple languages and cultures are represented as readers explore the

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many facets that make up our real worlds, our common experiences, as well as our unique experiences. Some of us continue to work primarily in the classroom; others are now in private practice or researching fulltime, but we are all familiar with the college classroom and have demonstrated an anity for communicating complex material clearly and with enthusiasm to undergraduate students. This text is the next best thing to our visiting your classroom and engaging you in discussion about our work, about linguistics, about language as it lives all around us.

The Companion WebsiteA book such as this one calls out for an interactive, up-to-date website. The real world does not slow down. While our text is up to date as of its publication, the companion website allows readers to work beyond the printed page in each chapter. Professors and students will benet from the interactive companion website that includes a student section featuring comments and hints on the chapter exercises within the book, a series of ash cards to test knowledge, and further reading and links to key resources. Material for professors includes essay and multiple choice questions based on each chapter and additional general discussion topics.

Our ThanksAs editors, we would like to extend our gratitude to the following people for their support and eorts on behalf of this book: our valued contributors, all of whom were true professionals and true to the book through the long process of seeing it come to life; our Routledge editors in England: Louisa Semlyen, who started the ball rolling with an enthusiastic response to our prospectus; and Nadia Seemungal, who took up the day-today dealings with us once the organization was in place and became our troubleshooter, sounding board, and supporter; Ursula Mallows, Samantha Vale Noya, and Eloise Cook in England for attention to detail; Russell George at Routledge for work on the companion website; Ivy Ip in New York for supporting the project in our home town; all anonymous reviewers at Routledge, for your very detailed and constructive comments and respect for our work; Ann Marie Tevlin Peterson, a valuable reader and shaper in the early stages of this book; our professors at Queens College and Brown University for helping us get to this point; our families, for putting up with LRW talk over breakfast and dinner (as well as extended editor-to-editor calls between NY and VA): thank you, Gladys, Geo, Habiba, and Tony; our colleagues at University of Mary Washington and Marymount Manhattan College for similarly listening to our tales and tolerating us on days we were in a book head; Radmila Dym at Marymount; Tanya Budilovskaya for valuable help with references; Katharine Thomas for her work on the website and Erika Troseth for organizing our glossary; anonymous reviewers; Antonio Barrenechea, Christofer Foss, Warren Rochelle, Patricia Towle, and Stacey Schlau; and of course our students: This book is for you. We wanted to get you the best book possible, and we realized a few years back that, with a deep breath and several-year commitment, we could do that. We want to share our love of language and linguistics, and we want to show you how it matters, how it is not just a theoretical subject you study to fulll a requirement and then move on. We both have devoted most of our adult years to linguistics, and even now, see ourselves, other linguists, and the Linguistic Society of America moving beyond academic walls to talk, write, and teach about the value of linguistics and understanding how language works in our world. Hopefully, for many of you reading this right now, as your exploration begins, it will similarly take you to amazing places.

ILanguage, Education, and Cultural ChangeWe are not all the same. Our customs, lifestyles, attitudes, and norms, all differ in large and small ways. This variety includes language use. We might all speak the same language, but differences exist at many levels of daily life, in school, between different cultures, and across nationalities. Furthermore, these differences, especially the ones we dont particularly pay attention to, can have wide-ranging ramications for us. In Part I, we start out by examining the attitudes about language variation held by teachers and students. The real world includes the classroom, and the language behavior and expectations we bring into that classroom. Chapter 1, by Susan J. Behrens and Rebecca L. Sperling, introduces the idea of accent and dialect. They use this information about linguistics to illuminate what happens in the classroom when speakers of the standard and non-standard dialects of English make assumptions and limit access to voice. Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, in Chapter 2, continues the conversation about differences, this time regarding pragmatic norms, and she widens the exploration to communities and cultures in contact, sometimes living side by side in the same city. We nish Part I with a view into the world of a pronunciation teacher. Joanna Labov discusses the training involved in helping students learn the phonology of another language, and why it is important to us all to understand such a process.

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Language Variation Students and Teachers Reect on Accents and Dialects

Susan J. Behrens and Rebecca L. SperlingThis Chapter Explores:Standard Language Accents Dialects Linguistic Markedness African American Vernacular English/Ebonics Slang Style Jargon

So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identityI am my language. Attacks on ones form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment. Gloria Anzalda, 1999

AUTHORS NOTE TO READERSWe are professors at the same college but in different departments, who collaborate to teach about issues of diversity. Rebecca Sperling (RS), a social worker, designed and teaches a course called Valuing Difference, using categories such as ethnicity, culture, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, nationality, religion, and language to reect on social mechanisms that both construct and replicate socio-economic and political power, and oppression. Susan Behrens (SB), a linguist, teaches Language and Culture, an examination of the intersections between societal constructs and language forms. We began our collaboration more than ten years ago, and, with our students, continue to examine the material presented in this chapter. In our classrooms, we encourage students to reect on their use of language, attitudes about accents, dialects, the use of supposedly ungrammatical forms, and language usage in the world around us. We ask our students to challenge their years of exposure to the prescriptive approach to language study most commonly embraced in educational settings. And we collect words of our students, through freewritings and journal entries, tracking changes in attitudes. Here we try to give you a sense of our classroom work. As you read through the chapter, we ask you to refer to and work through the interactive, eldwork-like exercises we include, and keep track of attitudes you notice (others and your own) about the issues we raise.

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Behrens and Sperling SB: I became interested in the eld of language diversity while in high school. A New Yorker, I moved to central Connecticut and became the target of mockery by classmates who disliked my pronunciation of various words, or claimed not to understand me. In fact, these experiences were partly responsible for my choice of linguistics as a major in college. RS: Though several other aspects of diversity were quite important to me when I was young, I did not pay much attention to language until years later, when I rst began teaching about diversity. I dont think this is unusual for those of us who unquestioningly embrace the practice of speaking proper English, and do it with some success, as I did. After all, I reaped many rewards for writing and speaking well. It was not until I began thinking about the concepts of power and privilege that I could even entertain the notion that, throughout my life, I had eagerly conformed to a way of writing and speaking that somehow had been determined by someone to be the best, at the expense of others.

IntroductionIt is a basic principle of linguistics that language changes. This is true when groups of people are separated. Speakers may be separated across time, resulting in historic language changes. They may be separated geographically, leading to localized language dierences; groups may also be separated socially. And language, while largely a biological faculty, is shaped by our surrounding speech communities. Hence, we sound most like our family, friends, and neighbors, locating us in a culture, place, and time. Another linguistic principle is that varieties of language are equally eective communication systems. All natural dialects are regular and logical. However, just as with factors such as race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and age, societies create a hierarchy of acceptability. Societies do this for language forms as well. There are real world consequences to having such hierarchies where elevated value is placed on one form that is then believed to be more intrinsically normal or correct than other forms. Those people associated with the normal category are rewarded nancially, socially, and emotionally; and those who fall outside the norm are disenfranchised. Conformity to the so-called normal has a pay-o, and those who conform develop a vested interest in protecting and perpetuating the hierarchy. The most highly valued language form is called the standard language. For English, it would be termed Standard English (SE) or Standard American English (SAE). A main enforcer of this form is the educational system. We are aware of this clash between the view of linguists that all native language forms are valid, and the aspect of our job as teachers that reinforces the value of the norm. When we grade papers, coach oral presentations, and even choose which student to call on and listen to in the classroom, who to give credence to, we are acknowledging users of this standard language over users of other language forms. This approach to language is called prescriptive. By extension, we decide who graduates successfully from an educational institution and who does not; and who gains power in society, and who does not have an equal opportunity to succeed. In fact, were embracing and modeling adherence to the hierarchy.

Exercise 1

Discuss the competing issues raised by the notion that (1) all language forms are equal, and (2) teachers place value on one language form over others.

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The ClassroomLinguists and educators such as Shirley Brice Heath (1983) and Jack Richards and Charles Lockhart (1994) have documented the types of language behavior teachers tend to use in the classroom: teacher-talk. For example, teachers mainly ask questions. Further, we usually ask questions without true information gaps, in that we already know the answers. Studies on teacher-talk recognize the gatekeeping function of teachers, who choose which students to call on and validate, how long a students turn should be, and what is considered the correct answer or an appropriate question to ask of the teacher. As a microcosm of how beliefs and practices about language operate, the classroom is an appropriate setting for research into the issues of language attitudes and their impact on education and learning. We have conducted research for the last 10 years, obtaining student reactions to accent and dialect variation and their responses once exposed to linguistic principles that challenge their attitudes. We gather student comments before and after we discuss the linguistic views of language variety. In the beginning, we ask our students, through free-writing exercises and journal assignments, to write candidly in response to the following prompts: Tell about a time your language was noticed. Describe what good English is to you. What verbal behavior is annoying to you? Some of the verbatim quotations from our students tell us something distinct about how our students see themselves and others in the classroom and the world around them through their language attitudes.

Student Quotations (verbatim)Coming from the South and speaking with a heavy Southern accent, I would feel different. I am a little doll that people can play with. My friend has begun to play with me and try to get me to say certain things for her amusement. At rst, I enjoyed the attention; who wouldnt? I have begun to feel like a minority. Many are constantly amused by the way I talk as if it is funny. This is me. I just wish that people would take me more seriously and listen to the things I have to say rather than interrupt my every thought with, Oh, wow, I could just listen to your cute voice all day. Notice there was a comment on my voice, not my thought. While I always knew accents were not indicators of intelligence, I somehow still judge people based on their speech patterns. For many years in grade school and high school we are taught that there is a proper or correct way to speak. In New York, people have stopped me while I am talking to tell me that I have a cute accent, or they notice me saying yall. I had a teacher once say that she thought it sounded uneducated to say yall. I mix up words because of Italian grammatical forms. People make fun of me. Plus, every day I get picked on because of my accent. Im insecure about the way I speak, and I know I always will be.

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Behrens and Sperling I think people with Spanish accents are so cute. Sometimes its really frustrating when I cant understand someone because their accent is so heavy. Some kids (in DC) dont really use good grammar. Some people call it Ebonics. I dont like that word because it sounds stupid, its like trying to cover up the fact that some children are not getting a proper education. People say to me, Wow, you have such a different accent. Its like my accent has become who I am here. I never knew I had an accent! Because I sounded like everyone else around me. Then I moved to college. I do not think that there should be a right or wrong, but there is a line that should be made when involved in education. I had a professor here who spoke very poor SAE (Standard American English) and wrote it even worse. It would take half of my test time to decode the questions he was saying. This was quite frustrating because that language barrier existed and my grade was on the line. I did realize that I was being somewhat selsh. I know that in a way (my accent) does give away that I am not fully American. We should not compromise the English language.

Now you try it.Ask ve people to identify ve linguistic behaviors they dislike. For example, are you bothered by someone pronouncing the /t/ in often? Now ask them to identify linguistic behavior they admire. Such language usage might include correct use of whom or distinguishing between eager and anxious. Ask them to explain the reasons they like or dislike the examples they raise.

Exercise 2

Language vs. Language UserWe notice that some of our students respond to the prompts in Exercise 2 not with statements such as I cant stand it when a speaker uses double negatives but rather with something like I hate people who use double negatives. Each illustration expressed in the latter fashion suggests that there are ramications to our societal attitudes about dierent language forms. The dierence between an expression of distaste for a language event and a negative evaluation of the speaker of that linguistic form is a distinction that is very easy to overlook, but it is a very signicant dierence. As illustrated in the opening quotation by Gloria Anzalda, people experience feedback about their language use as commentary on aspects of their personal identity, as a validation or critique of their cultural and/or familiar heritage, class, ethnicity, etc. The ease with which people merge their opinions of language with attitudes about the language user, and the marginalization or privilege aorded that user as a result, is a strong reason to uncover peoples feelings about language usage, and to make the distinctions explicit. At the same time, as people comment on the language of others, they position themselves as language users as well. While language biases have consequences within the contexts of each individuals immediate social exchanges, perhaps more importantly, they have collective, long-term

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social consequences. Sociologists use the notions of private and public issues to make thematic connections that explain how the lives of individuals are shaped by the social and historic contexts in which they live. Self-esteem, family and peer cultural acceptance, and social class mobility, for example, are all intricately entwined with how some forms of language are socially valued while others are not. In fact, renowned sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) has suggested that any of us who wish to gain insight into the circumstances of our own lives must develop a sociological imagination in order to see our individual beliefs and actions, in some part, as reections of the social and historical contexts in which we operate. When we can imagine our own behaviors as a sample of larger social and historical macro-dynamics, we gain some ability through such recognition and understanding to change things. Linguistic dynamics in the classroom, where unconscious language attitudes can easily interfere with learning, can be made conscious.

Standard and Non-Standard Accents: Regional and SocialTalking about language variation leads to the question, Variation from what? How does a particular language dier from speaker to speaker? One way is by a speakers pronunciation, called accent. Accent is the system of a speakers phonology: how that person pronounces his or her phonemes, the consonants and vowels of a language, and how those phonemes interact with one another. Accent variations are not random: there is a system to all accents, a regularity that linguists document. This approach to language is termed descriptive, a cornerstone of linguistics. Linguist William Labov, in the 1960s, sought to document the variation within one geographical locale (reported in Labov, 2006). He initiated a real-world-type methodology of obtaining accent data from speakers of dierent socio-economic groups. He approached clerks in three dierent department stores in New York City and, using phonetic notation, noticed the way people pronounced the phrase fourth oor in response to a carefully worded query for a product. (The /r/ phoneme after a vowel was the target linguistic variable he was interested in.) He had the speakers repeat the phrase by pretending that he did not catch the answer, thus obtaining a casual (informal, less monitored) and then more careful (stylistically formal) utterance. He chose three department stores that reected three dierent socio-economic strata of the city: working class, middle class, and upper class. What he discovered was that the higher percentage of post-vocalic /r/ utterances was associated with the higher socio-economic speakers. The speakers at the store whose target shopper was working class had the fewest post-vocalic /r/ instances. Labov thus documented a positive correlation between the more standard forms and the higher socio-economic demographic. Is there a right vs. wrong way to pronounce a word? The normal accent in Labovs study, which would include the pronunciation of the /r/ phoneme, is called the standard accent and is termed unmarked by linguists. In other words, it is a variant that we have been conditioned to treat as normal or neutral and not recognize the privileged status it represents. Not pronouncing post-vocalic /r/ phonemes would be linguistically marked, that is, more noticeable because it is a deviation from the norm. The unmarked forms are valued more in mainstream aspects of society. Indeed, using an unmarked accent gives the impression of being more formal. Since the academic world values and prescribes standard forms, sounding standard also gives listeners the impression of the speaker sounding more educated (note the circular reasoning here). The reverse, of course, can be true: that speakers with many marked forms sound both less formal and less educated. However, the connotations of using marked forms can go further than that. As we

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said earlier, talking about someones language use is a code for talking about the speaker. We might say such a speaker is not only lacking in education (didnt she pay attention in school?) but, more seriously, also not able to be educated; that is, unintelligent.Find recordings of speakers with different accents, or tape people you know who have different accents reading a passage from a book. You can nd accented English samples at http://accent.gmu.edu/. Play these audio samples for people in your daily life and ask them to guess what the speaker looks like guess what the speaker does for a living. Ask why they answered the way they did. Do you notice patterns in the listeners answers? What might this exercise indicate to you about the language attitudes of your speech community?

Exercise 3

Standard and Non-Standard DialectsLanguage users do not simply dier from one another by their pronunciation of words. They also dier by grammar, verb endings, slang, and idiom use. A certain speaker from New York City might say idear. She might also say she waits on line for coee every morning, that she dont like to wait long, and that me and my family are going to make a party soon for a friend tying the knot. This speaker has a non-standard dialect. How is dialect dierent from accent? Many use the terms interchangeably, but linguistically an accent is variation at the pronunciation level while a dialect is variation manifested at more than one language level. The examples above showed our speaker using a preposition that varies from the prescribed norm (wait on line, not in line); a non-standard conjugation (she dont); objective case pronoun in the subject position (me instead of I); a non-standard verb usage (make a party); and a idiomatic expression (tie the knot). While the example above illustrates a regional dialect, other demographics are associated with our language use. Our age, gender, ethnic group, class, and any non-English language inuences in the home will also aect our dialects. Language users tend to have access to a range of dialects, and we are pretty good about making language choices that allow us to t in with varying social circumstances. We also have a pretty good ability to violate the norms when we want to for specic eect.Go back to the accented speakers you found in Exercise 3. Did they also display grammatical and vocabulary choices that differ from your own? What aspects of their speech could be labelled accent and what was dialect?

Exercise 4

Lets return to the idea of an (ostensibly) unmarked, normal, socially unnoticed way of using our language. Linguists call this variety the standard dialect; the world of education calls it the standard language. This is the variety of a language that is valued by most mainstream aspects of society, so much so that many would not call it a variety or a dialect at all; it is commonly considered the language, and varieties and dialects are those forms that deviate from the standard. Linguists, however, consider all varieties of a language as dialects of that language family and the standard language as one of these dialects.

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Linguists also consider all dialects to be communicatively eective, regular, and logical. Despite this, the standard language is the power dialect, the preferred dialect, chosen for use in print, on the air, and in the classroom. Speaking a dialect that closely approximates the standard dialect is usually associated with middle class and upper class socio-economic groups. So, simply through the act of speaking, we convey our social class and concomitant status to those who recognize the earmarks. Bourdieu, a French sociologist, discusses the concept of linguistic behavior having a market value (Bourdieu and Thompson, 1991). Our language choices denote qualities that are valued and can be exchanged for social prestige. The standard language has a high market value, especially in formal situations, school and the workplace among them. According to Bourdieu, for successful performance in mainstream aspects of society, standard language forms constitute our societys valid linguistic currency. Given this, those who question the arbitrary nature of the standard risk scal compromise. For many people, the main factor that inuences the acquisition of the standard dialect is the amount of standardized education to which they are exposed. In fact, educational systems are the main conveyor of the message that standard = right and good, and non-standard = inferior and wrong. Outside of a linguistics book or class, we rarely encounter the messages highlighted in this chapter describing the social construction of privilege via the institutionalization of preferred language forms. As a result, it is often hard (even for those of us who understand this clearly) to believe that the standard language is simply a dialect, one of many fully functioning dialects of English. There is an educational bias towards the standard forms of a language, largely because those controlling systems of education decide on the rules. The dialect of those inhabiting academic institutions has been elevated and codied to be the proper form of the language. Those who come from a middle or upper-middle class background use a home language already close to, or at, the standard. The transition to school dialect is much easier for them (because it is tailor made), compared to those accustomed to using non-standard forms at home and having to convert to the standard at school. Those whose rst language is not English, and those from working class environments where a non-standard dialect form of English is often spoken, have to work harder to be successful in educational institutions in the US because they have two simultaneous tasks, one to learn content and the other to change their form of expression to the standard.

African American Vernacular EnglishIn the 1990s, linguistics as a discipline appeared in the news over issues of what language forms students should, could, and must not use in the classroom. In 1996, the Oakland, California School Board put forth a resolution that the home language of the majority of their African American students was not Standard English (SE) but instead Ebonics, a language form stemming from the languages of the West and Niger-Congo areas of Africa. Further, the school system proposed to instruct their teachers in the language dierences between the two forms to help the teachers better educate the students and lift test scores for the African American students in the school district. Their resolution was met with a social outcry. Students were quoted as being appalled that their school claimed they didnt speak English. Parents were outraged that teachers would be trained to teach in Ebonics and withhold Standard English from their children. All of this was a distorted view of the situation, but it highlighted the strong connection people make between mastery of the standard language and educational and economic benets. In response to the outcry, the Oakland School Board reworded its original proposal to emphasize the goal of prociency in Standard English and de-emphasize the view that Ebonics was a language separate from English.

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Theresa Perry, in a very sane book co-authored with Lisa Delpit and entitled The Real Ebonics Debate, writes:The members of the Oakland school board had it right in their initial resolution when they armed the importance of uency in Black Language and Standard English. They knew that uency in the standard code can never be the singular goal if, and this is a big if, our schools are to participate in the creation of the next generation of AfricanAmerican scholars, preachers, dramatists, writers, blues men and womenAfricanAmerican leaders. (Perry, 1998, 15)

Further, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), a national association of linguists, issued a position statement that applauded the Oakland move and armed the need for teachers to meet students where the students are linguistically. Ebonics was not a new term in 1996. The term was coined in 1973 by psychologist Robert L. Williams; linguist John Baugh had already written extensively, before Oakland, about language forms whose inuences can be traced back to slavery, calling these languages Ebonic (cf. Baugh, 2000). Linguists had already documented a variety of English spoken widely in urban working class areas, usuallybut not onlyby African American users, termed alternatively African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Black English, or African American English (AAE). William Labov wrote about the language forms logic and systematic nature in 1970. There is disagreement among linguists as to whether this variety of English is a dialect or constitutes a separate language. The original Oakland resolution took the latter view, fueling the re of the ensuing criticism. But the distinction between two dialects of the same language and two forms that should be labeled separate languages is a social and political matter more than a linguistic one. Mutually comprehensible language forms such as Danish and Norwegian are considered separate languages, while the dialects of Chinese are so dierent as to be mutually incomprehensible. Yet they share a writing system and a national identity, and those criteria go into their label of dialects. Just as the term Ebonics did not rst arise with Oakland, the idea of teachers meeting non-standard English users linguistic needs did not rst surface with this case in California. Almost two decades before Oakland, the schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were challenged to build a bridge between the language form of their African American students and the language of the classroom, Standard English. In this 1979 case, however, the plaintis were the African American families of the school children, bringing charges against the school board that teachers were not knowledgeable about the childrens home variety of the language and their culture. The judge overseeing the case ruled that the schools were remiss in not overcoming the barriers between the childrens home language variety and the Standard English of the classroom. His proposed plan for the school board, however, fell far short of the mark in breaking down these barriers, according to scholar Geneva Smitherman (1998: 169). The publicity of the Oakland resolution seemed to put the term Ebonics, and the issue of tolerance for non-standard language forms, in the national media and conversation for the rst time. Yet linguist Wayne ONeil, writing in The Real Ebonics Debate, says, Language prejudice remains a legitimate prejudice; that is, one can generally say the most appalling things about peoples speech without fear of correction or contradiction (1998: 42). The Ebonics story helps us make our point that the boundaries of the educational system reinforce the hierarchy of racial, ethnic, and class structures.

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Exercise 5

Read the original Oakland School Board resolution at http://www.jaedworks.com/ shoebox/oakland-ebonics.html (DeVoto 1997) and the amended resolution at http://linguist.emich.edu/topics/ebonics/ebonics-res2.html. Now nd three different media reports on the Oakland resolution. Compare the overall media coverage of the Oakland resolutions and look for quotes from linguists in the news. Now read the position statement of the Linguistic Society of America at http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/8/857.html#1. Draw up a side-by-side comparison chart of the points the media and the LSA are making.

Bilingual EducationIn 1998, another linguistic item appeared in the news: California millionaire Ron Unz, not an educator, linguist, or even a parent (but instead a failed candidate for governor), was spearheading a move to block government funding going to bilingual education. The largely native Spanish-speaking school population of California had been beneting from a law that provided education in a childs rst language. Unz rallied support for a more stringent policy that moved students into English-only classrooms sooner by portraying these children as living in a non-English ghetto, kept from the rewards garnered by Standard English users. His bill was passed, and a similar bill was subsequently passed in Arizona in 2000. These two examples highlight the tremendous support Standard English has in many areas of the education world. Be it pitted against a dialect of English (Ebonics) or of a non-English language (Spanish or other native languages), Standard English should prevail.

Writing Practices in CollegeThe gatekeeping role of the teacher demands that he or she require Standard English forms in students writing. Grading rubrics used in college writing courses will most likely factor grammatical sentence structure into an evaluation of a papers grade. Such a rubric is oered and discussed by Pfeifer and Ferree, in a journal article aimed at teachers entitled Tired of reeding bad papers (2006). Their suggested rubric contains several criteria on a 15 scale, 5 being the highest. Under Criterion 3, Sentence Fluency, 1 out of 5 points is awarded for lack of sound sentence structure, while a full 5 points are given when sentences are clear and the paper is easy to read (p. 140). Non-standard grammar is equated with unclear and unreadable sentences. Criterion 4 is Proof Reading. A paper will receive 3 out of 5 points when a few problems with grammar and punctuation cause the reader to stumble or pause now and again. A mere 1 out of 5 points is awarded when the paper is replete with grammatical errors and misuse of punctuation (p. 141). A teacher, then, is unable to read or nd clear thoughts in a paper with ungrammatical sentences. (Sample rubrics can be found at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=NewRubric&section_id=5#05.) The ramications of this reduction in grade are vast in terms of progressing in the educational system. Consider these three: A student who has not mastered Standard English will not, by these guidelines, ever receive an A on a paper. Scholarship awards will be limited. Access to higher levels of education will be compromised.

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The students chances of support by a mentor are lessened. It is ironic that we spend so much time shaping our linguistic selves to conform to the standard language when in fact Standard English is highly irregular. It is also everchanging.

Standard English: Irregular and in FluxDespite being the privileged dialect, Standard English is pretty messy. Remember having to memorize all those irregular plurals and verb tenses? The most irregular words in languages tend to be the oldest and most common words. For English, consider the verb to be. We have irregularity in the present tense, the past, and little phonetic similarity between the innitive be and forms like is, are, am, was, were. At least there is some family resemblance with been and being. Speakers of dialects that use a more regular system, such as the unconjugated I be, you be, she be, tend to garner negative social reactions, i.e. are negatively marked. Just as their language is negatively marked, so are they. Another irregularity in Standard English can be found in the pronoun system. The adjectival possessives are mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs. Notice mine is the only form without a nal s. Dialects that smooth out the irregularity and use mines generate another stigmatized form. One more example of the irregular nature of Standard English involves reexive pronouns. To create reexive pronouns, the rule appears to be: take the possessive pronoun and add self or selves. So we get myself/ourselves, yourself/yourselves, herself, and itself. Following this pattern, we should also get hisself and theirselves. While these forms are found in non-standard dialects, they are negatively marked; the Standard English forms break the pattern and use the objective case pronouns him and them as the roots of the reexives. In other words, what we label as standard is not always regular. Some standard language users will take pride in having mastered all the irregularities, and might express annoyance at speakers who, supposedly, have not made the eort. We could imagine that teachers, who got ahead partly by mastering Standard English, fall into this category.Consider the following sentences: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Everyone wants their life to be easy. None of these books are available on-line. I promise to never waste money again. Who did you give that gift to? Keep this secret between you and I. Either Nancy or myself will handle the problem later. I am taking two less courses this term. We will vote for whomever lowers taxes.

Exercise 6

Now, in small groups, judge the sentences above for structure and clarity. Ask three friends or family members, and three professors at your college to judge the sentences. Ask them to discuss the grammatical structure, clarity, and logic of each sentence. Do you see any differences in the answers given by the two groups of interviewees? Now consult style guides from the 1960s (or earlier) to the present to investigate any change in the standard usage of these aspects of English.

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These sentences are all non-standard in some way. Yet they might sound ne to you. This is because the standard language is always in ux. For example, it used to be grammatically correct to use the masculine singular pronoun to refer to everyone: Everyone wants his life to be easy. In the 1970s, that usage started to be called sexist. Now some stylebooks require the non-sexist his or her, while many speakers use the plural pronoun their.

Social Indicators and MarkersSome deviations from a standard form are acceptable, even neutral, in societal terms and do not raise social eyebrows: choosing between the two pronunciations of the word either, for example, may or may not have social implications for a speaker; the same is true of choosing one of the two pronunciations of the word often. Your choice might convey some information about your social identity, but nothing that is highly marked. These varieties are called social indicators. Choosing among other varieties, however, might have largely negative associations, and these linguistic variables are called social markers. We say the pronunciation aks rather than ask is socially marked, as is the use of dont for the third person singular (she dont), double negatives, and what are called double modals (I might could do that, a form found among some speakers in the southern US). There are a few social markers that have positive connotations: using whom, for example. The social status of the user inuences the acceptance of a usage. The phrase between you and I is one that can be heard frequently in educated circles. If we wanted to play gotcha, we could say that the use of the pronoun I in the objective position in this prepositional phrase is non-standard; however, this construction seems to carry overt prestige because (1) educated people tend to use it, and (2) I is perceived as more correct than me.

HypercorrectionSometimes the linguistic insecurity of a speaker is the force behind the overuse of a supposedly prestige form. For example, non-standard use of the reexive pronoun myself is evident in the speech of those in power. Its use could stem from confusion about the dierence between I and me; it could also be that myself sounds more important. If you have any questions, ask Dr. Smith or myself is a non-standard usage, but one that is often heard, especially in academic arenas. Along the same lines, here is an example of overuse of whom: we saw a t-shirt proclaiming, I am for whomever beats Harvard. The whomever usage is non-standard in this sentence since the pronoun is the subject of the predicate beats Harvard. Such overuse of supposedly correct words, pronunciation, or structure is called hypercorrection. If you dont quite know the way whom should be used, but believe that it is more prestigious than who, you might indeed overuse it. If hypercorrection stems from linguistic insecurity, which speakers tend to be the most insecure? Remember that W. Labov found that the middle class speakers he examined increased post-vocalic /r/ pronunciation more frequently than the other populations in conditions where they were made more aware of their own speech. In other words, they were hypercorrecting, using a greater number of post-vowel /r/ phonemes in their more formal, conscious pronunciations of words than did the upper class speakers, and importantly, more than one would expect from their other pronunciations. (This is a slightly dierent meaning of the term hypercorrection as reected in the whomever usage, where the result was a non-standard form.)

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We are all inconsistent in our language attitudes. A teenager might be corrected for saying that he or she just graduated Bryant High School (where did the preposition go? Dont we graduate from a school?), but a business manager could say that this years budget will impact the new project. Would the businessman get away with using to graduate in the transitive sense? Would the teenager be admired for using impact in the corporate sense? Both verbs are being used as transitive verbs, in that these usages allow a direct object to immediately follow the verb. Both usages are relatively new, for these verbs were originally intransitive verbs and couldnt be followed by a direct object. These usages, however, do not generally have the same social impact on listeners because of the age and social context of the user. Lets look at another example of where one speaker can get away with non-standard usage and another cannot: the non-standard usage of double negatives. A student in a freshman composition course would never get away with writing the sentence The character in the play did not do nothing to inuence the plot. A politician, however, could easily use the double negative in It is not without regret that I announce my retirement. Some double negatives are acceptable, it seems. You might argue that these two phenomena are dierent: the students double negative signals a negative meaning (and hence is illogical, following the logic that two negatives equal a positive), while the politicians use of two negative words in the same sentence results in an intended (and logically) positive meaning. Both sentences, however, contain two negative words that suit the purpose of the speaker. Since the linguistic phenomenon is held constant in these two examples, then, the inuential variable must be the language user.

Other Ways We Vary Our Languageand WhyWhile the chapter so far has focused on societys privileging of standard language forms, in reality we all vary our language, and we all should. We talk and write dierently depending on such factors as our regional inuences, our level of education, and even the language use of our family and peers. And we continue to make choices about our language each time we use speechor writing or signing or instant messaging based on the people with whom we are communicating, the purpose of the exchange, and sometimes even the time of day. Style is a linguistic parameter we saw manipulated by Labov. Style is the level of formality we decide upon for our communication. Style encompasses a continuum of choices, from informal and relaxed to levels of formality that terminate in a frozen style, much like a politician or keynote speaker addressing a large audience. Style consists of choices at all levels of language: what vocabulary we select; our use or non-use of grammar-bearing morphemes such as possessive /s/ or third person singular /s/ or past tense vs. past participle (I have went vs. I have gone); syntactic decisions such as single vs. double negative; and use of simple, compound, or complex sentence types. In the informal style, we might say, Hey when greeting someone; formally, we might say, How are you today? Vocabulary associated with the informal style is called slang. Slang also tends to be associated with use by younger members of the population. In interactions with peers, which would mainly occur in intimate settings, informal style is deemed to be appropriate. Slang works to both solidify group identity and exclude outsiders. If you get the slang, you belong; if you dont, youre an outsider.

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Exercise 7

Look up terms in a slang dictionary, such as the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions (4th edn.) (Spears, 2005) or urbandictionary.com. Discuss in a small group the terms you are familiar with, and try to dene the unfamiliar terms. Compare your answers.

Exercise 8

Correspond with a student at another school. Collect slang and other words that the student believes are specic to his or her school alone.

Jargon, like slang, works to include and exclude. Jargon is the vocabulary associated with a eld of study or occupation. Hence the terms legalese and medical jargon, vocabulary that might be hard to decipher if we are not in the eld. In fact, this book is conveying linguistic jargon right now!Guess what eld these terms are from and try to dene them. black hat hacker (vs. white hat hacker) deckle gutter juvenilia kiting latching milemarker paradiddle rubric stet western blot

Exercise 9

So far, we have discussed how we vary our language. But why do we vary? Many factors play a role in our language choices. Sociolinguist Dell Hymes developed an informative mnemonic device for remembering the eight basic social factors that inuence our language choices. When we are about to speak, write, or sign, we calculate (at some quasi-automatic level) the following variables of the situation, the rst letter of each making up the acronym SPEAKING.S = the Setting: time and place of the communication event P = the Participants: participants could also include those not directly involved in the communication but present at the time, and even non-human or inanimate entities (ones pet, a family portrait) E = the End result of the event: what the language user wants to result from the event A = the Act order: the order of turns or other linguistic units, e.g. who goes rst, what is said rst, etc. K = the Key or emotional tone of the event I = the Instrument(s) used: if the communication is speech, signing, writing, e-mail: and if it is being conducted in the standard dialect, ones native language, second language, etc.

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N = the Norms of the community as to how such communication usually happens: is this communication event adhering to or breaking the norms? G = the Genre of the communication event, the type of event it is: is this event a lecture, discussion, story-telling event, joke-telling, gossip? Source: Adapted from Hymes, 1974.

It is pretty amazing to think that, given all these variables, we can so quickly make socially appropriate decisions about our language choices, or purposefully choose to violate the social norms. Everything we do, linguistically, sends a message about ourselves to the world.

ConclusionLets return to the classroom of SB and RS. Once we have worked together with the concepts presented in this chapter, we ask our students to free-write in their journals about their language attitudes. Some quotations are given in the box below.

Student Quotations (verbatim)I used to think some peoples different speech is funny. But now my attitude totally changed. Its not funny. The different aspects of it is what makes it interesting. Language is a system of advantage and disadvantage that can disenfranchise people, so why dont we study this in mainstream education the way we do racism? I am proud that my accent shows who I am and where I am from. I do not want to be the person from nowhere. For the rst time, I actually thought about what impact language has on others lives. This topic can change attitudes about language in society because, by educating people on how and why different people talk the way they do, people may be more tolerant of others who speak differently and not judge them on the way they sound. A professor I had last year had an accent . . . and often it would be hard to understand him. However, I made it my responsibility to listen as carefully as possible to what he was saying.

Some of our students agree with Anzalda: that they are their language and that to criticize a language form is to take a stand against the speaker. Some students begin to see that a standard language form perpetuates the continuation of a hierarchy, another way to judge groups of people having nothing to do with communicative eectiveness. Others continue to express the concerns they raised at the start of the exercise: that a loss of a standard will lead to a loss of communication. We hope that the concepts and issues we have raised in this chapter compel you to reect on and continue to develop more complex understandings of social, political, and economic dynamics embedded in language use and language norms, e.g. cultural identity, nancial mobility, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. As informed participants, better able to understand the consequences of language norms and attitudes (for ourselves

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and others), you have the ability to make conscious and purposeful language choices, as both speaker and listener. We hope this is your experience.What do you think? Take our Language Sensitivity Survey: Free-write on any changes you notice about your views towards language diversity after reading this chapter and completing the exercises. There may be no substantial changes. There might be some confusion for you about what you think. Just notice your thinking, especially as the semester continues and you talk to others about this class.

Exercise 10

References4Teachers.Org. (2009) RubiStar [Internet]. Available from: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ index.php?screen=NewRubric&section_id=5#05 [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Anzalda, G. (1999) Borderlands/La frontera. San Francisco, Aunt Lute. Aristar, A. R. (1997) LSA resolution on Ebonics [Internet], The Linguist List. Available from: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/8/857.html#1 [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Baugh, J. (2000) Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic pride and racial prejudice. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. and Thompson, J. B. (1991) Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. DeVoto, J. A. (1997) Oakland school board Ebonics resolution [Internet]. Available from: http://www.jaedworks.com/shoebox/oakland-ebonics.html [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Fiske, R. H. (2009) The Vocabula Review [Internet]. Available from: http://www.vocabula. com/ [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Grammar Blog. (2009) Grammar Blog [Internet]. Available from: http://www.grammar blog.co.uk/ [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Heath, S. B. (1983) Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hymes, D. (1974) Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania. Labov, W. (1970) The study of nonstandard English. 8th edn. Illinois, National Council of Teachers of English. Labov, W. (2006) The social stratication of English in New York City. 2nd edn. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. The Linguist List. (2009) Resolution of the board of education adopting the report and recommendations of the African-American task force; A policy statement and directing the superintendent of schools to devise a program to improve the English language acquisition and application skills of African-American students [Internet]. Available from: http://linguist.emich.edu/topics/ebonics/ebonics-res2.html [Accessed June 10, 2009]. Mills, C. W. (1959) The sociological imagination. Oxford, Oxford University Press. ONeil, W. (1998) If Ebonics isnt a language, then tell me, what is? In: Perry, T. and Delpit, L. The real Ebonics debate. Boston, Beacon Press. Perry, T. (1998) Ion know why they be trippin. In: Perry, T. and Delpit, L. The real Ebonics debate. Boston, Beacon Press. Perry