minority dialects and correct english

Minority dialects and correct English | Murray Keeler | April 25th, 2000

Dear All,

In the opening paper of Advances in Written Text Analysis (Ed Coulthard) Coulthard writes:

"There were, of course, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, important sociolinguistic reasons for emphasizing the validity of difference and denying the inherent inferiority of minority dialects. However, this battle has long since been won, following research into West-Indian English in Birmingham by Wight and Sinclair and into black English in New York by Labov." (Coulthard p. 1).

There are a few questions I'd like to ask and points I'd like to make about the above.

1 Does anyone know more about the research of Sinclair and Wight, in particular?

2 I feel that to dismiss minority dialects as inherently inferior is, at best, unhelpful to the advancement of the study of language. What does 'inferior mean' in this context? How about 'minority'?

3 If I were to go into work tomorrow and get into conversation with a couple of the Aberdonian (N E Scotland) oil riggers working here in Azerbaijan and happen to mention that the way they speak, and perhaps write, is inferior to the way that I speak and write (I'm from S E England), what would their reaction be?

4 Isn't it possible to see Aberdonian, 'West-Indian' and Black American dialects as being the most appropriate form of communication for a particular social context/group of people and as being superior rather than inferior in that context?

5 Many of the students we teach here have to be able to understand Aberdonian/Glaswegian dialect as they may line manage or be line managed by someone from one of these cities who does not speak 'standard English'. You're probably just as likely to hear an Azeri/Russian rigger say 'Aye' as 'Yes'.

6 What is your opinion of teaching students the language they need to be able to function in possibly 'inherently inferior dialects'?

Best

Murray Keeler

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Simon Cole | May 3rd, 2000

I'm not familiar with Coulthard's quote, therefore I can't engage in an informed way about the "inferiority of minority dialects", but I am, as you seem to be, highly suspicious of the notion. On the other hand, I'm not particularly sympathetic to dialect-speakers who expect to be understood in international contexts, either. As an Australian, I usually find it necessary to speak in a "neutral accent" simply because the lingo from down under is not widely understood. Don't assume I have a grudge, though, if students have to work with Glaswegians who say 'Aye', not 'Yes', then practicality dictates that they better know something of the dialect.

Simon Cole

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Tom Bloor | May 8th, 2000

Hi y'all,

As there has been only one response to the important questions that Murray raised about non-standard English, I thought I should post to the list the reply that I initially sent only to him (I've added two references); I assume Murray won't mind.

Tom Bloor

Dear Murray,

You make some very good points about dialect, but are you misreading Coulthard's meaning? He is on your side. He says that it was important to DENY the inherent inferiority of minority dialects (ie to deny the idea that minority dialects are inherently inferior); granted, he could have been clearer. The rejection of the inferiority notion is the position of almost all serious linguists, which is why he says that the battle is won. Of course, that claim does not cover the vast majority of non-linguists or politicians or journalists or others, including many teachers, who still believe that the standard language (whatever that might be) is intrinsically better than other variants.

The reason it was particularly important to make this case against irrational prejudice in the late 60s and early 1970s is that a lot of influential people in education and psychology, notably Bereiter & Engelman in the US were arguing that African American children (speakers of so-called 'Black English Vernacular') were failing educationally because they were suffering from a 'language deficiency'. This position became known as the Language Deficit Hypothesis. Labov debunked the idea very effectively as did others (see eg Labov W 1972 Language in the Inner City Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press); Labov W 1969 'The logic of nonstandard English' Georgetown Monographs on Language and Linguistics, 22, pp1-22 and frequently reprinted in collections. The ideas are by no means dead, though. On a visit to the USA a few weeks ago, I talked with a recently retired educational psychologist, who trotted out the same ideas about children 'without proper language'. To be fair, these people were not precisely talking about dialectal variation as such, but that was the way in which it was frequently understood.

Also prevalent at the time (especially in UK) and geared to the same question of the statistically relatively poor performance in the education system of working class children (including those with high IQ measures) was the sociologist Basil Bernstein's notion of restricted and elaborated codes; he at first seemed to argue that workers were limited to restricted codes (situation-based, heavily interpersonal, more inferential, less explicit, etc). A lot of his supporters (including Halliday, Hasan and some other leftwing linguists and Bernstein himself) defended Bernstein and argued that he was greatly misunderstood (almost certainly true in that the Bereiter and Engelman types were keen on citing him and he explicitly denied the 'deficit' idea - at least later in his work). The Bernstein faction said that he was not talking about dialectal variation, anyway, and Bernstein later amended his claims about class distribution of the codes quite considerably.

Criticism of Bernstein also came mainly from the Left. Coulthard wrote a very good critique of Bernstein's code model in the early 1970s (Colthard M 1969 'A discussion of restricted and elaborated codes' Educational Review 22/1: pp38-50, reprinted in Cashdan A & Grugeon E (eds) Language in Education: a Source Book Open University; also the British educationist Harold Rosen wrote a powerful pamphlet attacking the code model and the whole deficit notion. Halliday and others still cite Bernstein's work favourably, which I find puzzling though there are points of interest; Halliday actually advised Bernstein during the development of his theory. Whatever the merits of Bernstein's model, its social effect was pretty disastrous and it spawned a mass of ridiculous and very reactionary beliefs, which must have embarrassed Bernstein considerably. I once attended a course for school heads and educationists, where one primary school headmaster claimed that his (native speaker) pupils arrived in school without any verbs or adjectives; they could only use nouns, he said. Come on!

The German sociolinguist, Norbert Dittmar, gave a good account of the Deficit debate in Dittmar N 1976 (translated) Sociolinguistics: a Critical Survey of Theory and application London: Arnold. Probably out of print, but in many libraries.

This mish-mash of misunderstanding and (mad?) theories all helped to reinforce the general prejudice against non-standard language. People are always keen to seize on what they think is scientific support for their prejudices, even though they simply dismiss the experts' opinions when they are not compatible with their own. The self-styled linguist, John Honey, who argues that schools should enforce RP on all (native-speaker) children, is much loved by the media, but regarded as a bad joke by other linguists. He argues that there is a conspiracy of linguists aimed at lowering standards. I have despaired of hearing in the media much sense talked about language. One of the main items on yesterday's BBC radio news programme, 'Today', was a discussion of 'the disappearing definite article' (sic) in English. They were talking about the fact that journalists often say 'Foreign Secretary Robin Cook', instead of 'the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook'. In an interview, THE President of the Queen's English Society (!), an ignorant buffoon, blamed this usage on teachers for not maintaining proper English standards.

I think your questions about teaching non-standard forms to non-native speakers raise a whole new debate, but I've gone on long enough.

I don't know about Wight & Sinclair's work, I'm afraid. I know Sinclair was involved in L1 - teaching related projects during that period. Odd that Coulthard gives no reference.

A good book on this subject is Milroy J & Milroy L 1985 Authority in Language: Investigating Prescription and Standardisation London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. I'm not sure if it is still in print. Also Milroy J & Milroy L 1993 (eds) Real English: the Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles London & New York: Longman. Also the first few chapters of Bex address this issue: Bex T 1996 Variety in English: Texts in society: society in texts London: Routledge.

Best,

Tom Bloor

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Jonathan Clifton | May 9th, 2000

Picking up on some of the recent discussions of non-standard English and when to teach it in the classroom. I'd like to offer this little anecdote:

A few years ago I was teaching a fairly advanced level group from a large supermarket chain for a 30-hour course on negotiation. I taught them all the lovely textbook phrases form the standard textbooks (E.g. if I were to, could you possibly offer a discount of, etc). At the end of the course the students thanked me and said it was a nice course but in fact they dealt a lot with Asian suppliers who often had limited English and so all they really had to say was "How much" and "when can you deliver" and the real problem they had was understanding Asian suppliers speaking English (often badly).

A dilemma for the teacher: What do you do, take on the role of a Asian supplier speaking pidgin English for the role plays (very Monty Pythonesque) or ignore the student's real needs in English and teach (as I did) a lot of phrases that could be used for negotiation but probably are not and probably were not later used by this particular group of students.

I suppose it is the perennial problem we face as teachers of English; what English do we teach?

Furthermore I don't think my boss would be too happy if I said to potential clients that they don't have to improve their English because it is good enough as it is for dealing with Asian suppliers.

Is anybody else out there faced with similar dilemmas???

Best wishes to all,

Jonathan

France

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Simon Cole | May 13th, 2000

Jonathan's anecdote about the dilemma teachers face trying to meet the needs of non-native English speakers (in this case, advanced, French learners - correct me if I'm wrong, Jonathan) communicating in an international context with other non-native English speakers (in this case, non-proficient Asians) illustrates the problem that 1) the TESOL/Applied Linguistics profession has delivering English as an International Language (EIL), and 2) the problem that learners of English have acquiring a native language significantly different to their own and using it in international contexts.

There was nothing you could do, Jonathan, because your students were asking you to, in a sense, teach them the kaleidoscope of interlanguage (IL) that millions of Asians use to get by in international commerce. If the real problem was "...understanding Asian suppliers speaking English (often badly)", what can you do about it? Well, one answer is to familiarize them with the characteristics of Asian languages. That might help them understand some of the IL they are hearing.

However, I'm got a message from your anecdote that says something like, "Hey! What are you TESOLs in Asia doing?!" Well, what CAN we do about it? Of course our MSc tutors will tell us we only hope to improve our teaching. Right? Other, more business- or philanthropic-minded individuals will tell us that access to English language materials and instruction can be improved. Right again. There are many things that can be done.

This area of interest is one I find particularly exciting. I don't know why, perhaps it's because it raises so many fundamental issues, and so many possibilities.

I'm sure access to English language instruction will continue to spread (although the future of EIL looks grim, according to David Graddol, 1999, The Future of English, The British Council), and I haven't given up on applied linguistics (or I wouldn't be doing this course), but I wonder if we ought not direct some research toward a kind of formalized IL? By this I mean, a simple form of English that meets certain conditions. They would be, that it be; 1) a learnable language for adults, 2) a sufficiently rich and diverse language that meets the needs of international interaction, 3) a language that is communicatively successful with native speakers of English, and 4) an IL or "bridging language" from which a native variety of English may be acquired with further study.

Of course another problem with this concept is whether there could be agreement about WHAT that form should be. Also, if several competing forms emerged, would the whole exercise be pointless unless EVERYone used the SAME form? Well, call me a nut-case, but I'm sufficiently excited to believe it's worth looking into. (Incidentally, even if nothing does come of it, I've learned an awful lot about English - its history, instruction, and so many aspects of the language itself - in the course of this line of inquiry, that it has already been very worthwhile). In any case, I'm not alone. Ogden's BASIC ENGLISH and Randolph Quirk's concept of Nuclear English (both in David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of English, 199?) attempt to meet some of the conditions I described above. In Japan, I have found at least two native-speaker TESOLs on the same track and another in Australia. In London, at University College, Jennifer Jenkins has researched the phonology of English with non-native speakers of English who communicate with other non-native speakers of English in mind. She published in IATEFL's newsletter (December '99 issue, I think). Her book on the subject is due out next month, I believe.

Perhaps it is because I have taught English mainly to Asians for 11 years that this alternative research appeals to me. Call me delusional, but I think TESOLs and researchers worldwide can make valuable contributions in this direction. As for me, I applied to the MSc stating that my area of interest was something like, "Teaching simplified English to adults for speaking and writing purposes in international contexts." I later proposed a dissertation assignment investigating the value of using "cardinal, or primary phonemes" as a tool for instruction. However, Julian tells me that nobody at Aston could supervise me in the area of phonology, so now I'm looking around for something else. There are, of course, lots of alternatives!- To name a few; orthography, grammar, phonics, syntax, sequencing, syllabus, etc. At the moment I'm learning about phonics for some absolute beginner (exchange) students from China with the THRASS (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) set of materials. These literacy materials are designed for native speaker children, so we are now translating basic instructions into Japanese and Chinese. Very interesting!

I wonder how many of you waded through all of that? I hope my enthusiasm carried at least a few along!?

Regards,

Simon Cole

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Simon Cole | May 15th, 2000

(Reply to Robert Salter).

Thanks for your response. It spurred me to do some very basic reading (Chomsky, Piaget) on a Monday morning working at home on the MSc (a bit more on being paid to research later).

Your enthusiasm seeing as how my views are rather different.

Maybe so, actually I can see lots of agreement. The main thing you have woken me to is seeing language from the point of view of shared meanings, culture and interaction. I feel more in tune with the faculty at the LSU.

For me, and I suppose I am pretty much alone in this sort of thinking though that is nothing new, I feel that the great barrier isn't words or grammar or phonology, but how those serve the larger area of shared meanings and unshared meanings in particular contexts. I have a great love of both phonetics and...

It's limiting to see what seem to be opposing forces as an either this or that choice. I think both are true for language learners, and they need teachers who are able to appreciate those understandings. As an adult student of learning Japanese, the broader the available resource to choose from, the better I am able to learn. (Incidentally, I'm interested in adult language learning and pedagogy for them.).

I'm interested to know how you think advances in optimality theory really bear out for folks in interaction.

I'm not familiar with optimality theory. Can you tell me what it is, briefly?

I am very hopeful for the future of language learning. I think though that as I approach the area of education more and more from the viewpoint of interaction I see that the pedagogic questions are far more important than I previously anticipated. What is it exactly that I want people to learn in my classroom?

Yes, I think this is the 'awareness' and 'consciousness' that our instructors are emphasizing. (By the way, we are all 'participants', right - as defined by Dr Edge in FND Intro Unit 1. But how do we refer to the teaching staff at the LSU? Lecturers? Instructors? Superiors? Teachers? Mentors? Esteemed?) This brings us to your point about 'agreed meanings', I guess. I'm often concerned with clarity and efficiency. You say you enjoy 'limiting meanings' which I read as something like 'defining words/phrases/idioms, etc. I sometimes find it fun, yes, but in as much as language is a means of communication, agreed meanings associated with utterances are vital.

I don't know whether or not I could ever enjoy trying to limit meanings in order to satisfy the demands of business, medicine, or banking. I really hope that language teachers, especially in second language teaching, will be able to promote the learning of language that is rich in meaning and purpose. I would really enjoy teaching a book by an advanced learner's privilege? Murray Edelman to most business folks I taught in Japan. I know, it's not going to happen. And

yes, this aim and hope is rather grand, but I feel, and I suspect many people will disagree with me, that only the grandest of goals is really worth all the effort that teachers put in.

Who is the author and why do you like his materials?

My gut was always is if a cooperation wants to train people who are going to use English in their jobs then it should pay professional language types to do research, write materials, and help those who want to learn about the interaction that takes place in the field. It seems to me that there aren't many folks willing to pay the price.

I think for most teachers this is very true. To tell the truth, it is one reason I left Australia for Japan. I am eternally grateful to Japan for putting faith in my ability and paying me for it. But then, I started at a university and now have better conditions for research as this university. Sometimes, it's a matter of look around for a better job.

At the end of my time in Japan I started to feel as though what I was teaching was exactly what I didn't want to teach: yeah business, go out there and make the big bucks. No social issues, no consequences, but yeah enough English will make you rich!!!- I am not the Pinkie to help that process along. Most of my academic work on the course has been in the area of ESP, banking, medicine, and business. Now I wonder whether I really want to separate those professions, even in academic study, from the larger moral questions that surround such careers.

I don't know, but I guess many teachers of English have a philanthropic motive, to some extent. I used to joke to myself that I was doing it to perpetuate the glory of British Empire, ha, ha. But really it's because I love language, language learning, helping others, learning in general, and I'd like to think that I am contributing to society. I used to think that I was bridging barriers between what I've come to think of as "language worlds, or clouds, or spheres of awareness" and that that was good because it might prevent conflict. Now I'm not at sure. Or perhaps I've just learned more and know now that changing things take time.

Now I am starting IIC at Unit 3, the Ethnography of communication. I would REALLY love to get hold of some transcripts (for my assignment) of non-native speaker interactions. Does anyone have students or ex-students who work in import/export industries or other areas that require cross-cultural communication? Please let me know!!

Simon

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Jonathan Clifton | May 17th, 2000

Following on from Simon's message a few days ago:

I made my way through Simon's message from a few days ago (and yes it was difficult without Rob's original message). I wanted to pick up on the following lines;

"If a corporation wants to train people who are going to use English for their jobs then it should pay professional language types to do research, write materials, and help people those who want to learn about the interaction that takes place in the field. It seems to me that there aren't many folks willing to pay the price".

Yeah, I am in complete agreement. Each learner is acting in a different linguistic environment. For my students as I said a few weeks ago it could be French buyers working with Asian suppliers where the problem is really with understanding "the Asian way of speaking English" or it could be understanding the American accent, or I have suppliers who work with Ford in Daggenham and they can't understand the London accent. So the teacher should get some tapes of what is actually said. Listening materials based on recorded phone calls. Reading materials base on authentic faxes received etc.

BUT I suppose most training managers are unaware of this. And I certainly wouldn't have the time to go into each company I work for and persuade people to let me tape telephone calls or meetings or take away a pile of faxes in order to come up with a tailor made course. So, does this mean we are condemned to churning out stuff that we know isn't quite right??

This therefore answers your (Simon's) request for tape scripts of non native speaker interaction- sorry don't have any despite the fact that I work a lot with "international businessmen".

Best wishes to all,

Jonathan

France

Re: Minority dialects and correct English | Tom Bloor | May 22nd, 2000

This is regarding Simon Cole's topic "What English should we teach" and Jonathan's response.

I realize that Simon was initially talking about research for an IIC assignment and it seems that this discussion is increasingly making reference to CSD issues. And I am continuing that line. There is an excellent article from Unit 2 of CSD (Alan Waters, "Theory and Practice in LSP Course Design 1997) regarding how courses are designed in practice as opposed to how they "theoretically should" be designed. According to Waters, most materials are not written with all the necessary information (i.e. transcripts of telephone conversations, original faxes etc) but are based on, for better or worse, the intuition and experience of seasoned teachers. Having written that, any research that could be done using authentic material would prove invaluable. I am hoping that in the future there will be some technological advancement that will ease the burden of recording telephone conversations or at least make them more accessible. Something along the lines of how computers have been used for corpus analysis. It seems to me that until then, the use of authentic data will remain a research interest and not a tool utilized regularly by teachers. I do not mean to discourage anyone from trying but I do not envy anyone whose goal it is to gather such information.

Regards,

Greg Birch
Japan

 

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