Language Diversity - Ethnicity

Question 1

Early research into language and ethnicity in the UK was conducted by who in 1990?

Answer 1

Sebba’s 1990’s study into the Catford Girls

Question 2

What did Sebba find?

Answer 2

young girls who were born in London, but had jamaican parents, had adopted a new dialect of English, which he called London Jamaican.

Question 3

What did Sebba find?

Answer 3

young girls who were born in London, but had jamaican parents, had adopted a new dialect of English, which he called London Jamaican.

Question 4

What influenced this accent?

(what did it include?)

Answer 4

grammatical, phonological and lexical influences from RP, Cockney and Creole

Question 5

Give an example of a word in London Jamaican:

Answer 5

For example, he found that the preposition ‘with’ was pronounced in a variety of different ways by these girls, such as the /th/ sound from RP, the /v/ sound from Cockney, and the /d/ sound from Creole.

Question 6

What did Sebba’s Research demonstrate?

Answer 6

Sebba’s research demonstrated that the speakers of this dialect could code-switch appropriately and that linguistic identity is fluid rather than fixed and that different variations of language can be created.

Question 7

What did Sebba’s Research demonstrate?

Answer 7

Sebba’s research demonstrated that the speakers of this dialect could code-switch appropriately and that linguistic identity is fluid rather than fixed and that different variations of language can be created.

Question 8

who found that ethnicity had an impact on language use but suggests that this impact has influenced young people beyond their ethnicities

Answer 8

Sue Fox

Question 9

What did Fox’s Research involve?

Answer 9

young people across the whole of London and therefore gathered wider information about different ethnic communities, rather than just jamaican

Question 10

What did Fox term this variation of ethnic communities in London?

Answer 10

Multiculral London English

Question 11

What did Fox say Multi Cultral London English had?

Answer 11

it had strong characteristics of of a variety of cultures and languages, notably West Indian, West African, and Bangladeshi

Question 12

Give an example of a MLE feature:

Answer 12

Speakers of this dialect often use the -dem suffix as a plural marker, which is a grammatical feature that comes from Jamaican Creole.

Question 13

What does recent research about MLE propose?

Answer 13

it suggests that the MLE dialect is the fastest growing dialect and will be the dominant dialect that Brits will all be speaking in some form within the next 50 years.

Question 14

What do prescriptivists say about ethnicity and language?

Answer 14

suggest that the popularity of the MLE dialect renders young people unintelligible

Question 15

Give an example of a prescriptivist’s viewpoingt

Answer 15

For example Lynsey Johns, whose Evening Standard article entitled Ghetto grammar robs the young of a proper voice, stated that “speaking streed Patois is a spectacular own goal” and “their street slang makes them sound stupid and uneducated”.

Question 16

Give an example of a descriptavist viewpoint:

Answer 16

descriptivist linguist Rob Drummond contradicts these views by claiming that so-called street slang “has its own unique sophistication and complexity” and that it is “no less rich and expressive than so called standard English”.

Question 17

Who concieved substratum theory and what is it?

Answer 17

Sarah Thompson.

The theory suggests that language can change due to interaction with other languages and cultures.

Question 18

Give an example of the Substratum theory

Answer 18

For example, English has many borrowed words like the concrete noun coffee, which comes from Arabic and the concrete noun Beef which comes from French. These words likely have been bought about by wars and immigration.