Language and Ethnicity

Question 1

What does race mean?

Answer 1

Refers to a person’s physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye-colour. It is set from birth.

Question 2

What does nationality mean?

Answer 2

A legal relationship, with the person and the state. (it’s what appears on your passport)

Question 3

What does ethnicity mean?

Answer 3

A category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, history, culture, or nation.

Question 4

What does multiculturalism mean?

Answer 4

A situation in which all different cultural or racial groups in a society have equal rights and opportunities, and none is ignored.

Question 5

What does creole mean?

Answer 5

A variety that has developed from a ‘pidgin’ or trade language to become a stable language used by speakers as their mother tongue.

Question 6

What does patois mean?

Answer 6

An alternative term for creole, sometimes spelt ‘patwa’ to distance the language from apparent connections with Europe, and to suggest how it should be pronounced.

Question 7

What does resistance identity mean?

Answer 7

An identity that goes against mainstream culture.

Question 8

What does super-standard forms mean?

Answer 8

Language use that deliberately intensifies the standard forms of mainstream culture.

Question 9

What is British Black English?

Answer 9

A wide-ranging label, but often referring to a variety used by some speakers within the Caribbean community in the UK.

Question 10

What is Multicultural Urban British English?

Answer 10

A label that refers to the way in which Multicultural London English has spread to other conurbations in the UK

Question 11

What does code-mixing mean?

Answer 11

The inclusion of words and phrases from one language in another.

Question 12

What does code-switching mix mean?

Answer 12

Switching between different languages in a sustained way.

Question 13

What does linguistic appropriacy mean?

Answer 13

The way in which language choices reflect ideas about what is appropriate for any given context.

Question 14

What is the generational pattern?

Answer 14

First generation, Second generation, Third generation.

Question 15

What is the First generation?

Answer 15

First language (L1/heritage language) spoken at home or Learning of English, attempt to adopt standard forms and creation of pidgins/creoles.

Question 16

What is the Second generation?

Answer 16

Parental language spoken as L2 at home with code-switching or English as L1; code switching in certain situation.

Question 17

What is the Third generation?

Answer 17

English as L1 at home with some code switching or formation of ethnolects within English.

Question 18

What does diglossic code switching mean?

Answer 18

When many people from immigrant backgrounds have further option: they can move between two quite different languages (rather than two dialects).

Question 19

What does heritage language mean?

Answer 19

A language that is not the dominant language in the society in which somebody lives, yet it is one that is spoken at home.

Question 20

What does intersectionality mean?

Answer 20

The idea that social categorisations are all interconnected and overlapping. Someone’s ethnicity cannot be separate from their gender, social class, sexuality.

Question 21

What does style-shifting mean?

Answer 21

When speakers adjust the way they speak depending on a combination of factors such as how much attention they are paying to what they are saying, who they are talking to, or how they want to be perceived in a particular context.

Question 22

What does alveolar ridge mean?

Answer 22

The hard area behind the top front teeth.

Question 23

What does dipthong mean?

Answer 23

A vowel which starts as one sound then changes to another. For example, the /c/ vowel sound in the word ‘choice’.

Question 24

What does ethnolect mean?

Answer 24

A variety of language that is associated with a particular ethnic group.

Question 25

What does makers mean?

Answer 25

Something that stands out and is noticed as different from the norm.

Question 26

What does unmarked mean?

Answer 26

The common, regular, normal version of something that can go unnoticed.

Question 27

What does ethnolinguistic repertoire mean?

Answer 27

Set of linguistic resources that are available to be used by an individual speakers in order to signal their ethnic identity.

Question 28

What does multiethnolect mean?

Answer 28

A collection of linguistic resources combining features from a variety of languages within a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural context.