Term from first day reading: viz. Videlicet (L. For videre licet, it is permitted to be seen), and means "that is to say, namely
Review question: In each of the following sets, one of these things is not like the other. Which one, and why?
[b] [m] [eth]
[v] [b] [theta]
Fun with Funetiks
See the material on reserve for more information. We finished the English consonants. Tune in next Tuesday for vowels!
Why learn about the history of language?
It's easy to imagine a need to study the history of English in order to be a better informed reader of older texts. But what would it mean if we all--especially teachers--knew more about the structure, form, fullness, and richness of language? Three cautionary tales, to which we'll return later in the semester:
Story 1: From Lippi-Green, Rosina. "Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts." Language in Society 23 (1994): 163-198. In 1965, Sulochana Mandhare moved from Maharashtra, India, to the USA. Her native language was Marathi, and she had studied English for nearly 20 of her 29 years. She had undergraduate degrees in liberal arts and education.
Her accent has the following features:
full vowels in unaccented syllables
tonal patterns
aspirated fricatives
lack of distinction between initial /v/ and /w/
In the US, she got a MA in Education at Loyola University (New Orleans); in 1979 she was certified as a school librarian through a program at Nichols State University. She worked for a year as an elementary school librarian, then got a job in a K-2 school in Lagargue, Louisiana, for the 1980-81 year. She had no complaints from students or teachers.
In April of that year, she was told her contract wouldn't be renewed because of her "heavy accent, speech patterns, and grammar problems".
Official record says that Ms. Mandhare asked for a transfer to a junior high school library (which Mandhare denies--she says the superintendent forced her to do so, b/c he had promised her job to someone else). At trial, Mandhare won; she sued b/c her civil rights had been violated (on national origin). She won b/c the trial court found that there was no reason for the court not to have given her the job for which she was qualified--but there was no challenging of the original premise, that her accent was difficult to understand..
Appeals court reversed b/c they had focused on the wrong issue. The trial court had ignored the issue of language-based discrimination; the appeal court reversed it. Both courts found the premise true: that an Indian accent should keep someone out of an elementary school librarianship.
Story 2:
Richard Hoggart's autobiography, discussing a classroom discussion he recorded in Yorkshire in the 1950s:
They were Yorkshire women and to an outsider their voices would have sounded predominantly Yorkshire. But as wives of grammar school masters they belonged to the professional middle class, if to the less well-paid end of it. So their voices had acquired a slight gloss of educated gentility. Within their own heads this was what they heard; their minds filtered away the main Yorkshire strain and left them hearing the genteel elements; and those distinguished them importantly, crucially, from the body of the people around them in Goole. They believed that and so, I imagine, did the other residents of Goole with whom they came into contact; they were a bit different, posher. But the recorder, even when one had allowed for its rudimentary falsifications, told them what they voices really sounded like. Overwhelmingly, and in spite of the genteel overlay, they sounded broad Yorkshire, more like Yorkshire comics, Yorkshire pantomime dames, than grammar school wives as they had imagined they should sound, as they wished to and had assumed they did speak; and that was unbearable.
Story 3: Then, William Labov's 1966 study of NYC speech (both stories two and three are taken from Bailey, R.W.B. Images of English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 1991. :
The case of Debbie S. and Mrs. S. ends on an unhappy note,. In the discussion of (r), both mother and daughter insisted that they always pronounced all of their r's as r-1. They had ridiculed speaker LMC (Lower Middle Class) for dropping a single r-1, and they could not believe that they would make such a mistake themselves. Unwisely, I played back the section of the tape in which Mollie S. recited "Strawberry short cake, cream on top, tell me the name of my sweetheart." She could hear the consistent r-0 pronunciation in her speech, but after a moment's through she explained the situation as a psychological transference--she had imagined herself in the childhood setting, and had used a childish speech form. I then played a section of careful speech, the discussion of common sense, and also Debbie's reading of the standard text. When Mrs. S. and her daughter at last accepted the fact that they regularly used r-0 in their own speech, they were disheartened in a way that was painful to see. An interview which would otherwise have been an exhilarating experience for this lady and her daughter was thus terminated in a bitter disappointment for them both: and once the damage had been done, there was no way to restore their pride in their own speech. (both from Bailey, Images of English, x).
How might these stories be different if people understood language? What connections are there between language and identify, between language and self-image?
English spreading around the world
brings up issues about language change, language variety, and colonialism.
Where was the British Empire?
Asia: Pakistan, Indian, Burma, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand
The Americas: Canada, USA, Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, Virgin Islands
East Africa: Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa
West Africa: Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone
All these nations are ones in which English occupies a special status; see ch. 1
Some historical attitudes about the spread of English:
Theme: the spread of English is good for British interests
1801: However, my idea is, that, if the English language be cultivated as it ought to be, regulating and improving its harmony, and adapting it, as afar as can be with propriety, to the several European dialects, derived from Latin, it will ultimately supersede the French. It is already the most general in America. Its progress in the East is considerable, and if many schools were established in different parts of Asia and Africa to instruct the natives, free of all expence, with various premiums of British manufacture to the most meritorious pupils, this would be the best preparatory step that Englishmen could adopt for the general admission of their commerce, their opinions, their religion. This would tend to conquer the heart and its affections; which is a far more effectual conquest than that obtained by swords and cannons, and a thousand pounds expended for tutors, books, and premiums, would do more to subdue a nation of savages than forty thousand pounds expended for artillery-men, bullets, and gunpowder.
Theme: God likes Britain better than other nations
1847: This brief survey of the extensive use of our language must be gratifying to every person who possess it; but more especially to those to whom it belongs as their birthright. It also clearly shows the God of providence has a hand in doing it,--that he is pushing it onwards to accomplish some great purpose arising from his good-will to all men. We, as a nation, ought to be very thankful to him for exalting us to such a conspicuous situation, and for causing our language to be employed so extensively; for while every nation will be profited by the great event of its becoming universally used for international purposes, ours will reap the greatest advantage....We shall be a kind of moral sun, diffusing the light of knowledge; and by our genial influence promoting the spread and growth of every beneficial institution.
Theme: English is better than other languages
1848: In its easiness of grammatical construction, in its paucity of inflection, in its almost total disregard of the distinctions of gender excepting those of nature, in the simplicity and precision of its terminations and auxiliary verbs, not less than in the majesty, vigour and copiousness of its expression, our mother-tongue seems well adapted by organization to become the language of the world.
1856 Walt Whitman: "the English language is by far the noblest now spoken--probably ever spoken--upon this earth."
1861 (graduation address at Amherst College): It is the glory of the English speech that its idioms speak for truth and freedom, and law and religion. It grew up in the midst of struggles for religion,--in the midst of the contests of freeman,--in the midst of a people fond of nature and home. Its idioms have been dyed in the blood of martyrs, or taken their festive colors in the heart of patriots or poets; they are tinted less in the colors of fancy than in the veritable hues of sky and cloud, wood and field, and ocean, wrought into unity of meaning under the solemn and earnest gaze of imagination.
What are some of the current issues that are raised by the spread of English around the world? Look at the examples from Kenya, Canada, France. What are the problems raised? What does the spread of English represent? What attitudes have arisen? We'll tackle these questions next Tuesday.