English Accent-02-p FOR WEB.qxd 8/9/11 17:38 Page 1 1 2 3 4 Glossary 5 6 7 8 9 *SAE A reference to the idea of a homogenous, standard spoken language in which the 10 * emphasizes the fact that this is in fact an abstraction that is never realized. 11 AAVE See African American Vernacular English. 12 13 Accent A set of phonological features, loosely bundled, that provide clues about the 14 speaker’s geographic origin, social and ethnic allegiances, standing, education, and 15 other characteristics that are socially distinctive in a given language community. 16 Accent hallucination An individual may decide that a speaker has a particular foreign 17 accent on the basis of physical features, when in fact the person in question is a native 18 speaker of English. This phenomenon has been documented in numerous studies 19 (Fought 2006; Kang and Rubin 2009). See also reverse linguistic stereotyping. 20 Accommodation theory In face-to-face conversation between speakers of different 21 language varieties, subconscious or conscious choices are made about whose com- 22 munication system to use and how much to accommodate each other. 23 24 Affirm To approve, agree or uphold, used primarily when a superior court reviews the 25 rulings of a lesser court and finds no wrongdoing. 26 African American Great Migration Between 1910 and 1940, roughly 1.5 million 27 African Americans left the South to escape poverty and racism (the first great 28 migration). After the interruption of WWII, another 1.5 million African Americans 29 moved north, a trend that continued until about 1970. In Motion: http://www.in 30 motionaame.org/home.cfm. 31 African American Vernacular English Also African-American English, Afro-American 32 English, Afro-American, (American) Black English, black English, Black English 33 Vernacular (BEV). A fully structured and functional variety of American English with 34 distinctive phonological, syntactical, morphological, lexical and rhetorical features, 35 spoken by a large proportion of African Americans. See also African American Verbal 36 Tradition. 37 Americans with Disabilities Act A federal statute that forbids discrimination against 38 a person with a disability. “A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits 39 one or more of the major life activities.” 42 USCA §§ 12101-12213. 40 41 Anglo American English speakers of European but not Latino descent; Caucasian. 42 Anthropological linguistics Study of the relationship and interdependency of language, 43 culture, human biology and cognition. 44 Appropriacy arguments Authorities often label stigmatized language varieties as 45 inappropriate for communication outside the home. Appropriacy arguments rationalize 46 the process whereby languages of peripheralized or stigmatized groups are simul- 47 taneously acknowledged and rejected. 48 T&F PROOFS. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. English Accent-02-p FOR WEB.qxd 8/9/11 17:38 Page 2 2 GLOSSARY 1 Asian American Americans of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Asian Indian, Korean, 2 Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Bangladeshi, Burmese, Indonesian, 3 Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Amerasian, or Eurasian ancestry, as defined by the U.S. Census 4 Bureau. 5 Assimilation The incorporation of one culture into another, more dominant culture 6 and substitutes the dominant culture’s social, economic, and political institutions for 7 its own. 8 9 Bill of Rights First ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution designed to protect the 10 liberties and rights of individuals from the government’s abuse of its power. See also 11 tyranny of the majority. 12 Bloc An alliance of governments, groups, or parties with a common purpose and 13 ideology; the dominant bloc is a reference to those institutions where political and 14 economic power is concentrated. 15 Brown v. Board of Education The Supreme Court declared the separation of races in 16 the classroom to be unconstitutional and ordered the desegregation of schools. It 17 established the principle of equal educational opportunity for all students. This decision 18 also re-affirmed equal protection under the law mandated by the 14th Amendment to 19 the U.S. Constitution and overruled the decision in Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) that 20 permitted the “separate but equal” doctrine. 21 22 Census, U.S. A count of all citizens, non-citizen legal residents, non-citizen long-term 23 visitors, and illegal immigrants in the United States. Mandated by the Constitution. 24 Chicano/a U.S. citizens or residents of Mexican ancestry. “A Chicano lives in the space 25 between the hyphen in Mexican-American” (Bruce-Novoa 1990). 26 27 Civil action A lawsuit based on a private wrong. All legal proceedings that are not 28 criminal actions are civil actions. 29 Civil rights Rights afforded to individuals as citizens of the United States. Most of these 30 rights are guaranteed in the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 31 Civil Rights Acts There have been ten major US Civil Rights Acts, nine of which were 32 passed between 1957 and 1991. See Civil Rights Act of 1964. 33 34 Civil Rights Act of 1964 The purpose of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was to eliminate 35 pervasive discrimination against racial minorities. Title VII provides protection against 36 discrimination in employment. Since 1964 the laws have been widely interpreted to 37 cover discrimination based on national origin, sex, age, religion and other protected 38 categories. 39 Civil Rights movement African Americans led the movement against racism and 40 segregation and for the laws that would ensure full civil and human rights. The most 41 recent civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and was in the public eye for 42 much of the 1960s. 43 44 Code switching Bi- or multilingual speakers who alternate use of languages (“codes”) 45 available to them within one conversation (and even within the same sentence) are practicing code switching. 46 47 Cognitive linguistics The study of thought, learning, and mental organization of 48 language. T&F PROOFS. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. English Accent-02-p FOR WEB.qxd 8/9/11 17:38 Page 3 GLOSSARY 3 Communicative act As advanced by Clark (1986), the cognitive model is based on a 1 principle of mutual responsibility, in which participants in a conversation collaborate 2 in the establishment of new information. This involves complicated processes of repair, 3 expansion, and replacement in iterative fashion until both parties are satisfied. 4 Communicative burden See Communicative act. 5 6 Competence, communicative Communicative competence has to do with performance, 7 and a speaker’s mastery of all linguistic subsystems as well as all sociocultural nuance. 8 Competence, linguistic In linguistic theory as developed by Chomsky, linguistic com- 9 petence is a reference to an ideal speaker/listener in a homogeneous speech community 10 whose command of the grammar of that language is not affected by factors such as 11 memory limitations or distractions. In this approach, competence is an idealized 12 capacity distinct from the production of actual utterances. 13 14 Consonant cluster reduction (simplification) When two or more consonants occur at the end of a word, the cluster may be reduced by dropping one or more of the sounds. 15 The words student and desk, for example, will become studen and des. In Chicago, when 16 a stop is preceded by a nasal, the stop is usually deleted hunter > hunner There is some 17 reason to believe that this is a vernacular universal. 18 19 Convergence Historical process in which languages in contact become more similar in 20 structure. 21 Copula ‘Copula’ is a term for the verb “to be” when it joins subject to predicate, as in 22 Maria is a physicist (Maria = physicist) or The movie was terrible (movie = terrible). 23 24 Copula deletion Copula deletion is common in many world languages. In AAVE, 25 deletion of the copula is primarily a matter of context and sentence stress. However, 26 AAVE forbids copula deletion where other U.S. Englishes would forbid contraction. For the sentence She’s not home, but George is would produce *She’s not home but 27 George’s. The second contraction doesn’t work in other varieties of English, thus in 28 AAVE, cannot be deleted. 29 30 Creole When a pidgin becomes so well established that children acquire it as a first 31 language, the grammatical structure fills out and the result is a creole, a full-fledged 32 human language. Examples are Hawai’ian Creole and Gullah. See also Pidgin. 33 Critical period A hypothesis which supposes that the human mind’s intrinsic ability to 34 acquire language without conscious effort is something that atrophies around the age of 35 puberty. Thus the critical period for language acquisition is from birth to about age 14. 36 37 Deficit theory Basil Bernstein’s (now debunked) theory that working-class children are linguistically deprived or handicapped by a language deficit in that they learn only a 38 restricted code; in contrast, middle-class children were theorized to have a more 39 elaborated code, and were free of such deficits when entering the school system. 40 41 Dialect A variety of a language that is associated with a specific geographic area (an 42 Appalachian accent) or with a social group (Chicano/a English). The difference between 43 the concept of “dialect” and that of “language” is political rather than linguistic in 44 nature. 45 Discourse/discourse analysis The study of communicative acts rather than gram- 46 matical units; meaning in a text, paragraph, conversation, etc., rather than in a single 47 sentence. 48 T&F PROOFS. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. English Accent-02-p FOR WEB.qxd 8/9/11 17:38 Page 4 4 GLOSSARY 1 Discourse markers A word or phrase that is independent of syntax and seems, on the 2 surface, to have no meaning.