G301 Notes by Catey Giblin

November 9, 1999

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The first thing we did in class was to give feedback (anonymously) on the amount of time we feel we should spend in class on:

• lectures
• whole group discussion
• small group discussion

Next, we watched the movie American Tongues.

We needed to think about and try to answer the following questions:

1) What attitudes about language are reflected in the movie?

a) attitudes about peoples own language?

b) attitudes about language variation?

2) Collect examples of language variations.

a) Phonology: sounds (accents)

b) Syntax: word order/ sentence structure

c) Lexicon: vocabulary

After the movie, we had a large group discussion about the previous questions.

We came up with a few questions that we felt the movie failed to answer:

• Where is the "phone lady" from?
• What about the dialects of Black English?
• Are these people really having the problems they think they are because of the way they speak?

Cultural Generalizations (which may or may not be accurate—but they were observed in the the film)

• some cultures (Black, Appalachian) are less straightforward in addressing issues
• some cultures (New York) are extremely straightforward and to the point when addressing issues
• a marked accent is generally considered a "bad" way to talk (Black English, Southern)
• anyone, if asked the question "Who speaks correctly or normally?", will undoubtedly think that they, and those who speak the same way, do.

Some positive associations with an accent (n.b. which conflicts with the view above, that “accents” are a problem—smh):

• hospitality
• integrity/ honesty
• charm
• social power
• sense of community
• natural
• salt of the earth
• easy to relate to
• more believable

Our task (which is an impossible one) is to temporarily separate language

and culture.

To separate language from culture, ask questions like:

• What language traits tend to be stigmatized? (Use of "ain't", "he don't",
• "I seen", etc.)
• What language traits tend to be valued by a particular group?

To separate culture from language, ask a question like:

• What cultural features are valued?

Things to remember:

• Dialects are not caused by a lack of education.
• Dialects have a history which can serve as an explanation as to why things are the way they are. The history is usually two fold. Language history (which may be somewhat arbitrary) and cultural history (which may contain some social history, too). For example, immigration is a large part of many dialects cultural (and social) history. It may have been a forced immigration (slavery) or a voluntary immigration (settlers).

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