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December 05, 2005
The Skin that We Speak: Chapter 5
The study of linguistic stereotypes that is investigated in this chapter reminds me a lot of John Baugh's work. In 1971 experiments were held in Britian in which people listened to the same speaker put on different accents and were asked to describe that speaker. The subjects said that the person speaking standard English was more intelligent, when reality it was the same person who was speaking the less proper English. This is similar to the recordings we heard in class. We too made assumptions about the person speaking, when in reality we were listening to John Baugh everytime.
The transcript of a conversation with a young British girl I think brings up a good point about our perception of language. The young girl perceives another person as being uneducated because they use improper terms such as "sort of," when she herself uses that exact same term. This shows that people shouldn't criticize or judge others based on their use of language because no one uses language perfectly. Everyone is at least somewhat grammatically incorrect, therefore criticizing others becomes hypocritical.
Another important point that this chapter stresses is that of all the languages and dialects out there, none are superior over others. There are "culturally learned notions" which suggest that one dialect is more "proper" than another, but these notions are only based upon the wealth and prestige of the people who use that dialect, not the actual language itself.
I find the parts about linguistic profiling by teachers to be very interesting. The author seems to suggest that often time a teacher's perception of a student is based more on how that students appears and speaks, rather than how he or she actually performs academically. The author points out however, that teacher should not be so quick to judge students based on their use of language becuase they only get to see one style of a pupil's language. Teachers do not get to see how that pupil speaks to his or her friends or family, therefore they should not judge a pupil on something that they themselves do not have full access to.
Something I realized when reading this chapter is that we often think that people who speak what is considered to be an improper form of language are the victims of linguistic profiling, as they are assumed to be uneducated and of lower class. However, people who speak their language properly are also many times victims of linguistic profiling. Such people are assumed to be snobby or stand-offish, when this may not be the case at all. So speaking both proper and improper forms of a language has its advantages and disadvantages.
Some questions I had about this chapter are: The author states that prescriptive grammars are no longer around, and today most grammars are descriptive. If this is the case then why are people still criticized for using evolved forms of a language? Why does the author seem to focus on the language of young children, which is constantly changing and developing, rather than that of adults? Does there exist one style of a language that can be appropriately used in all situations (for example with friends, family, superiors, etc.)? Why do higher class dialects have more consistency despite geographic location than working class dialects, which vary greatly from region to region? Does being in an educational setting as a child merely hinder childrens' abilities to form their own individual style of language?
Posted by lcissullivan at December 5, 2005 08:53 AM