400.mi,ion people fl,f,:l,ll-tely speak Englishas their tirsr tunguage. English The second section in this chapter explores English as a global language-one is.rhe.tirst runguage fbr the majority of citizens of the United stntes, the united lhat reflects the multicultural influences in a common tongue. The section begins Kingdom, canada, Australia, stutn arri"u, New zealano, rr"ronJ, ,nd the many with an essay by one of the leading linguistic authorities on the topic of the global- islunds in the caribbeal. throughout tt. *orrJ a, u p.ere*ed izntion of the , David crystal. crystal explains the factors that second language, lausht "*t"nriu"iy it is th.e dominant ranguaie for internationut drive a language to become global and why globalization--despite what some crit- entertainment, .o--unications, science, diplomacy, meailcini and business. fnt"r"rtingfy, ics may claim-could be good for the planet. His piece is countered by another countries in some where English i: preferred spoken noted language 1?r_,1" language, it is the official ran- authority, Barbara wallraff, who argues that English is not really guuge, including the Marshail Islands, philippines, cam"roon, the and Zimbabwe. lhe global language, at least not in the way many people think. There are different This chapter takes a croser look at "linglishes" English usage rocally in the United states, and they are not all the same, posing a challenge to true universal un- und globally around the world. Is .arr".i"., there ,ulr, u tt ing a, nrgurt ,,r ena tlcrstanding. carla Power explores how nonnative English speakers are changing what about other "Englishes"? Is one form more correct than another? How is English the language. If English becomes truly global, no one "owns" it-and it is evolving influencing global communication, poritics,ano commerce? Is the dominance of us a global community brings its own ways of using the language. The final piece the English language u g.o:d thing, moving'o, towurd broader and clearer under- in this section questions what globalization of language might mean for American standing, or invasive, pushing othei tanguajes and nations away? students in the future. Globalization, asserts Douglas McGray, means that Ameri- can students should be taking more foreign language classes rather than fewer. The What ls,,American,, English? lcasons why may surprise you.

The united States is comprised of people with many different racial origins, eth- nic identities, religions, and ranguager. ou, nuironal motto, e pluribus unum (,,ort of many, one"), bespeaks the pride we feel I wHAT ls,.AMERlGAll'! EIGLISH? in our multicurtural heritage. our I unity is predicated on like-minded moral values, politicar and economic serf_ interest, and, perhaps' a common language. The first section of this cnapter ex- olores this common language and how it unities and divides us. The section opens with a discussion of American by Robert MacNeil rr;oo vou sp"uk Do You Speak American? A'merican?" MacNeil sets out to understand why the English spoken in one part Robert MacNeil rf the country can differ so much from that spoken in another. Even common vords and expressions can be vastly "Hoagie," "grinder," "bomb," "spukie," "po-boy," ,,hero,,-so different, begging the question, what exactry or many different s '"? Linguist names for pretty much the same thing, depending on where you place your loh, Erting'"rplores the way accents influence rur perceptions of others order for a sub-sandwich. While politicians may argue for or against the idea and ourselves in "dveryone Has an Accent rssay, but Me.,, His of a standard, national language, English-speaking Americans is followed by an engaging discussion ty Bilt across the ,,Good n.yro, o, l,irt ,"f,ut i, country are busy keeping the language vibrant and diverse. Robert MacNeil SoolL' a1d "bad,, English in English and Bad.,, sets out to discover "why is the English spoken by lobstermen so differ- The last two readings in the section-udd."r, Engrish as a national language ent from that spoken by cowboys in Texas?" How are regionalized words cre- he for United States. First, Mauro E. Mujica, ated? MacNeil traveled u chit"un immigrant, exprains why he across the nation to try to find answers to these ques- cels it.is vitalty important that tions and to better understand the uniteo States adopt English as its the evolving and colorful language that is uage official lan_ in "why the U.S. Needs an official Language.,, "American English." Then, writer Julia ortiz pBS's )of'er explores the difficulties nonnative Robert MacNeil is the former co-anchor of Emmy Award-winning rp"ut"., face in a country where Engrish i the language of power. MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. He is the author of several books, including Do You Speak American? (2004) and The Story of English (1986). This f irst appeared in the January 2005 issue of USA Today Magazine. MacNeil ngllsh as a Global Language wrote this essay as a companion piece to his PBS documentary, co-written by Bill Cran, "Do You Speak American?", which explores the country,s linguis- nglish is often referred to as the "lingua fraflca,,, or worrd ranguage tic diversity. turld' of the is the most often taughl second tunguage around the world. with so nny difTerent people from- diverse r on columbus Avenue backgrounds ,p"ukirg Engrish, the in New York, a young waitress approaches our table and ll' ianguage rt- is changing. It absorbs the influences asks, "How are you guys doin'?" My wife and I are old enough be her grandpar- ir aim"r"r, curtures, ,"ith diff"."nt dialects, to l'lcctions, usage, and meanings. ents, but we are "you guys" to her. Today, in American English, guys can be guys, girls, or grandmothers. Girls call themselves guys, even dudes. For a while, young 144 r 66ap1er3 / AWorldof Language MacNeil / Do You Speak Americ an? . 145

women scorned the word girls, but that is cool American again, probably because African- , The enemies for Simon are the descriptivists, those content to describe women use it and it u" ,"ar cool-even empowering_to whites language as it actually is used. They include the editors of great dictionaries who, borrow black talk, like the worA"u, cool.-ti to ",:XTffi Simon charges, have grown dangerously permissive, abandoning advice on what is setves queer, on"" u hared homopn;;;; Tt ::.r:J correct and what is not. He "a shifting scene of gender ffi1,;: ffl fr"fr calls descriptivist linguists curse on their race." attitudes i, tr," rv rearity ..Queer Straight show, Eye for the rr One such individual is Jesse Sheidlower, American editor of the august Guy." As.society changes, ;; ;;", language, una a-iii"un society Oxford English Dictionary. Does he believe the language is being mined by the changed enormousry in recent has d;;; tutor"or",, when new no,,ns great informality of "No, f"*"_1, language often are resented or American life? it is not being ruined at all," he replies. is the target or resentment. Sheidlower believes that Simon and other language conservatives actually are z How we use the English luiguug""i;#i"* u""u-" a hot topic during complaining remains so today-a the 1960s, and it that linguists and dictionary writers no longer are focused on the lan- charged ing."aiJrr ln th" cutrure disputed as ;r, ;l;,".;sely studied and guage of the elite. They look at the old days and say. "Well, everything used to be anv other pait ;;;i;;v rr,* r, upp.op.iut";;;urr" more central "f ";. norhing is very proper, and now we have all these bad words and people are being careless, to our identity and sense of who ," u* ura'*rr"i""ri" o"tonr. .Aside and so forth." In fact, he insists people always have spoken that way. "It's just from a person's physical upp"urun"l, that irr"'n.rt tning someln"^riiio":raged you howie or she talks,,,maintaLs by is didn't hear them because the media would only report on the language of the firgririO*nis Baron. 3 Many feel that educated upper middle class," Sheidlower points out. "Nowadays . . . we see the tlre qrowins iniormality of American standards ("the life, the retreat frorn fixed language of other groups, of other social groups, of other income levels, in a way march of casuJizati or," york ii, New ri*"r'r"""ritv cared that we never used to. clothing' manners, sexuar mores-is ."R""t"a it)-in it' They i, ou. tunguug'"-uio i, r "Language change happens and there's nothing you can do about it." To which see schoors.l:i *r.lirg g."mmar "o.rrptrng accepted io.r, and hear nonstandard forms Simon replies, "Maybe change is inevitable-maybe. Maybe dying from cancer is in broadcasring, p"oritics, 1e_yspapers, and adverrising. They berieve also inevitable, but I don't think we should help it along." slogan "winston tastes. good the rirc a is so embeJded psyche that few Americans "iga.itie-shourd,, in the national r Helping it along, to Simon, would mean surrendering to the word "hopefully," one ,"outo ,J* uutt u, ,r," ..as,,) because "rl* use;i:ii"ulJilrr,"uo of of his pet peeves. "To say, 'Hopefully it won't rain tomorrow'-who, or what, is filled that usage is fast becoming ir," ,trnaura. they hate such changes with hope? Nothing. So you have to say, 'I hope it won't rain tomorrow.'But you the language and they despair fo, orrr.rl;;. in can say, 'I enter a room hopefully,'because you are the vessel for that hopefulness." + others' however, believe turguug" ir it riving-as inventive and Sheidlower replies English was in the time vigorous as r that modern computer databases make it possible to check of the BrizlauJtrransland they engine ,"" a-".i"u, English as the texts back over the centuries: "We see that 'hopefully'is not in fact very new. . . . It driving what is now a global frrgrrg". goes back hundreds of years, and it has been very common even in highly educated s The controversies, issues, anxieti"rluri ur_1'L-ltions swirring around language speech for much of the time." today [can be] highly emotional *o poiitr*t. why are black anJwhite r This battle-the stuff of angry skirmishes books, speaking less and less like Americans in magazines, and seminars- otrr".z oo"s Hispanic immigration English ranguage? "a.t threaten the is only one part of what makes our language news today. Other findings may surprise Is our exposure to national media ences and wiping out regional differ_ many people because they challenge widely held popular conceptions, or miscon- causing us alr to speak the same? Is the language ceptions, . decline? Well, we rea,y in serious about the language. . . have quite a debate uUo* ifrur. r While computers, information technology, globalization, digital communica- o The peopre who believe ro u.. tro* as presc.iptivists: those obey prescribed rules.of who want us to tions, and satellites have revolutionized how we work, equally potent revolutions grammar. irr"y a, ,", mind and they being have occurred concerning the home, family structure and marriage, sexual mores, arternate between preasure ana despair-preasuie"utt"a'.u.*udgeons in tr,"i, the role of women, race relations, and the rise of teenagers as a major consumer and despair that thev r,Jp "o.r""tirg ::i"r:r:'.*H:: """' the tanguage from going to helr in marketing force. With this has come alterations in our public manners, eating habits, clothing, and tolerance of different lifestyles-all of which have been swept The Prince of prescriptivists by a tide of informality. z one of the leading curmudgeons of our time-he Prescriptivists-is has been called the prince of John Simon, ,r,"",". york ,.Do New Magazine, andhe Linguists Spring into Action to do ba*te in you Speak A_";;;i;'SlT:r.sees"ri,i"i", comes the language rs observing how these rapid social changes have altered "unhealthy, poor, sad, depressing, today as our language have been the fairry hopeless,,, a new book, The Dictionary "rJp.J"ury rnlhe tbreword to linguists, whose new branch of the social sciences really came into its own in the oy-Oirrgirroii'nrgtirn, he writes: ,,N

couched in technical language difficult for nonlinguists to understand. Dozens of Dialects linguists have lent their skills to help us translate Black and White their findings, and marry their how similar scholarship zr Reviewing the speech of Smalley and others, the linguists were taken by to our sampling of the actual speech of ordinary Americans in all its it was to the speech of rural whites of that time and place, but now dissimilar to the variety, vitality, and humor, drawn from the widest social spectrum. They include speech of blacks today. Features characteristic of modern black speech, what waitresses, cowboys, hip-hop artists, Marine drill sergeants, Border patrol agents, Iinguists call African-American vernacular English-such as the invariant "be," as Mexican immigrants, cajun musicians, African-American and Hispanic bioad- in they 'be' working," or the deleted copular, leaving out the auxiliary verb in "they casters, and Silicon valley techies (who try to make computers talk like real people), working"-were absent. as well as writers and editors, teachers and teenagers, surfers and snowboard"rr, u"- are samples of modern speech of African-Americans in large cities: tors and screenwriters, and presidents and politicians. 22 Here 16 Did they all sound the same? one of the most common assumptions is that our ,,When the baby be sleep, and the othe'kicJs be at school, and my husband be total immersion in the same mass media is making us all speak in a similar manner. at work, then . . . I might canfinally sit down." Not true, claim the linguists. we are not talking more aliki but less. ,,she told Davicl they Mama had went to chicago to see her sister and her 17 One of the enduring themes in American life is the pull of national against sister's new babY." regional interests and regret for local distinctivener. in the relentless march ".urrd of uniformity. It surfaced in the song "Little Boxes" by pete Seeger, about people These examples show the invariant "be," and the construction "had went." Bailey put into ,.ticky little boxes of identical houses made of tacky', ana wrro all come out and Cukor-Avila say that these features did not exist in black speech before Wor1d the same. Today, with more and more national franchising of basic elements-food, War II. They conclude that, after the great migration to the North from World War I mobile homes, clothing, hotels, recreation-the U.S. can seem like one giant theme to the 1970s, blacks were segregated in urban ghettoes, had less contact with whites park endlessly reduplicated, the triumph of the cookie cutter culture and its distinc- than they had in places like Springville, and their speech began to develop new fea- tive art form, the national TV commercial. tures, as all human speech does when people are separated culturally and have little 18 Paradoxically, however, language is one fundamental aspect of our cultural communication. identity in which growing rate homogenization is a myth. While some national trends are 2s This has serious consequences in efforts to reduce the school dropout apparent, regional speech differences not only thrive, in some places they are becom- among blacks. Not only white teachers, but many African-American instructors, ing more distinctive. Local differences, pride, and identity ,1th plu." are asserting despise the "street talk" or "slang" as they call it, and often treat the children as if themselves strongly, perhaps judge ruled that an as instinctive resistance to the homog enizingforces o-1 they were stupid or uneducable. In 1979, a Federal in Detroit globalization. one remarkable example is the speech of urban African-Americans, Ann Arbor, Mich., school, ironically named after Martin Luther King, Jr., was dis- which is diverging from standard mainstream English. After decades of progress in criminating against black kids because of their language and ordered the school to civil rights, and the growth of a large and successful black middle class, African- remedy it. Yet, the prejudice lives on elsewhere. American speech in our big cities dramatically is going its own way. 24 It 1997, Oakland schools tried to get black speech recognized not as a dialect 1e Two linguists, Guy Bailey, provost of the university of rexas at San Antonio, of English but a separate language, Ebonics, to qualify for Federal money to teach and Patricia cukor-Avila of the University of North rexas at Denton have docu_ English as a second language. That backfired amid furious protests nationally from mented this. For 18 years, they have studied a small community in East central black and white educators. Texas they named colum- "springville," which appears to live in a time warp from a cen- 2s What is shocking to linguists is the manner in which many newspaper tury ago, when it was the center for local cotton sharecroppers, black and white. nists excoriate black English, using terms such as "gibberish." In the linguistic Little remains now but the original general store. During th" tut" 1930s, the works community, black English is recognized as having its own internal consistency and Progress Administration recorded the voices of elderly blacks, some former,slaves, grammatical forms. It certainly is not gibberish (which means something unintelli- some the children of slaves. gibl"; b""uore it works effectively for communication within the urban community. one 20 of them, Laura Smalley, was born to a slave mother. She was nine at the 26 One of the first to give black English this measure of respect was William time of Emancipation in 1863. She told how the slave owner kept them ignorant of Labov of the University of Pennsylvania, who testified at a Senate hearing during Lincoln's Proclamation . is not a for six months. 'An, I thought ol'master was dead, but he the Ebonics furor in 1997: "This African-American vernacular English . . wash'. . . . He'd been off to the war an' come back. All the niggers gathered aroun' set of slang words, or a random set of grammatical mistakes, but a well-formed set to see ol' master again. You know, an' ol' master didn' tell, you kno*, they was of rules of grammar and pronunciation that is capable of conveying complex logic free. . . . They worked there, I think now they say they worked them six months af- and reasoning." ter that, six months. And turn them loose on the 19th of June. That,s why, you 27 To linguists, the fault lies not in a particular dialect, but in what attitudes others know, they celebrate that day. Colored folks celebrates that day.', bring to it. Steve Harvey, an African-American who hosts the most popular morn- ing radio show in Los Angeles, told us: "I speak good enough American. You know, t ttrint thOrO't variations of speaking American' I don't think there's any one set / DoYou Speak Americnl'f r l{r 148 I Chapter3 / AWorld oflanguage MtcNcil

.black,,,' ..black,,, phrase: ..old senior citizens living on one and way, because America's so diverse." He added, "You do have to be bilingual in this then the complete .,block" like "black." Similarly, another you it was apparent that ,[" ;; pronouncing country, which means can be very adept at slang, but you also have to be adept means what sounis like "bosses." The full sentence reveals she at getting through the job interview." woman mentions .bosses, ..buses:,, ..t we had with the antennas on top.'' Now, without fanfare, some Los Angeles uugu"ly ,"*.-u". when schools have been trying a more "u, sympathetic approach to help minority students become bilingual-by teaching ll3Whenone,o*"t'"t,u,ges,sodotheneighboringones:..caught,,shiftstoward .,cot,,, .,cot,,toward ,,catl, ,,Ja{, or "keeyat." Labov thinks these changes them the differences between African-American Language, as they call it, and toward.,kit" of view as linguists' we want to understand Mainstream American English. We visited PS 100 in Watts to watch fifth-graders are quite important. "From our point play a "Jeopardy"-like game in which they won points for "translating" such whypeopleshouldbecome"to'"diff"t"'tftomeachother'We'reallwatchingthe sentences as "Last night we bake cookies." sameradioandtelevision;welivesidebyside'Andit,simportanttorecognizethat way'" people don't always want to behave in the same Teacher: "What language is it in?" are women, the primary 34 Labov has a theory that, behind changes like these, less economic than men' Student: 'AAL." transmitters of language. Traditionally enjoying -power offered by words' Labov believes women are Teacher: "It is in African-American Language. What linguistic feature is in women rely on the syribolic power AAL?" moreaptthanmentoadopt"ptestigeforms"oflanguageandsymbolsofnoncon' ..stigmaiir"d a kind of "covert prestige." fbrmism_new or for*r,, that can acquire Student: "Past-tense marker-ed." forceful in employing the new social Labov writes that wo#n are quicker and more Teacher: "Past-tense marker-ed. That's cool! And how do you code-switch it symbolism,whateveritmaybe.Workingonhislandmarkstudy,..ThePrinciplesof to Mainstream American English?" woman-working class, well- Linguistic change,,, he identifies a parti-ular type of Student: "Last night we baked cookies." establishedinhercommunity-whotakespleasureinbeingnonconformistandis Teacher: "You got five hundred more points." Big cheers from the kids. Strongenoughtoinfluenceothers.Heseesparallelsbetweenleadershipinfashion andlanguagechange'Mostyoungwomenarealerltonoveltyinfashion;somehave 2s So, four decades after the passage of landmark legislation outlawing racial to induce others to follow' the confidence to embrace iiana trre natural authority discrimination, the news is that it blatantly survives in language. Columnists would l|5Thesearemysteriousforcesworkingonourlanguagefromunderneath,asit not dream of describing other attributes of being African-American with epithets from homogenizing our speech, were, and proao"inf ,iartling changes that, far like "gibberish." They could, however, get away with it in writing about black lan- forces of global and national unifor- actually create morJdiversityl Despite all the guage, which remains to do their own thing a significant barrier to success in school and ultimately in the mity in products and trends, Ameiicans clearly still want job market and housing-pathways to the American dream. local dialect, or Pittsburghese' is linguistically. an is Pittsburgh_, where the 30 Ironically, as much as it is despised, black English is embraced and borrowed "ru*pt" a commodity. They know themselves celebrated, co.rstuntly i'urc"a uuoot, and made by whites, especially young whites in thrall to the appeal of hip hop music. There .,yinzers,,, .(inr;, ,,you," or "you ones." They use "slippy" for as t o* the plural of just ;.tidy 'Anymore, there's so are divergences as dramatic within the English of white Americans. Around the .,slippery,,; ..red up,,Leans to up"; and "anymore" as in Great Lakes, people are making what Labov believes are "revolutionary changes in manynewbuildingsyoucan,ttettwtrict'iswhich','IndowntownPittsburgh_..Jeet the pronunciation of short vowels that have remained relatively stable in the lan- ..out',tut,, ,-tt'e ..Did eatyet?,, Sounds like jet?', If pronounced question' you guage for a thousand years." you haven't, the response is, "No, 'jew?' " 3r Labov is director of an effort to determine the boundaries of different dialects pittsburgh, thinks the pride in their local 36 Barbara Jotrnsine, a linguist from within American speech. Traditionally, that was achieved by comparing distinctive pittsburghJrs who they are and what it means to live speech is a way tor to talk about local or regional words people used for every day things. One surviving example where they come from, or where there. people treasure theiriocal accents, because is the different terms for the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, cheese, and theyfeeltheybelong,stilldoesmatter.InthewordsofCalifornia.linguist,Carmen lettuce-a grinder in some parts of New England; a wedge in Rhode Island: a spuky ,.people want to be like." This contradicts Fought, *uii,o talk like the people they in Boston; a hero in NewYork; a hoagie in Philadelphia; a submarine in Ohio and far- thecommonassumptionthatmediaexposureismakingeveryonesoundthesame. ther west. By drawing lines around places where each term is used, linguists can form maps of dialect areas. Many such regional terms are dying out because old craft skills Local Accents Prevail are replaced by products marketed nationally. Labov leads a new method in which the of how their own speech Sounds to oz Yet, amusingly, people often are quite unaware different ways people pronounce words are recorded with colored dots on a map of about people in Texas or coastal North others. Linguists *" *", were fulf of stories the U.S. Connecting the dots produces the Atlas of . CarolinawithstronglocalaccentswhowereconvincedtheysoundedlikeWalter s2 Labov and his colleagues found startling pronunciation changes in cities such province of Nova Scotia' so Cronkite. tt t upp".r""d to me' I grew up in the Canadian as Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit and New York State's Rochester and Syracuse. my childho odwordstruck Even in my fhscinated with words that I called a mimoir of On a computer in his office in Philadelphia, we heard a woman say the word I50 ! Qhaplcr3 / AWorldof Language MacNcil / Do You Spoak Amcricsnl r l5r

own family, I often heard the same words said differently. My grandthther, f.rom Nova 43Theirspeechhasbeengivenahugeboostbytheriseofcountrymusic,no Scotia's south "garridge" ,,gar-aghe.', "sing country," shore, said while his daughter, my mother, said longer a regional craze,but anational phenomenon. Those who 38 Until I first came has become a kind to the U.S. in 1952,I was unaware how different my speech whJrever they come from, "talk country" and "talkin'country" and was even from that of neighboring New England. I was 2l and (briefly, thank bod!) of default way of speaking informal American. It is considered easygoing no disadvan' an aspiring actoq thrilled to be working in a summer theater in Massachusetts. The friendly. President G"o.g" w. Bush has made it his trademark, with first ..you doin'? time I stepped on to the stage and opened my mouth, the director said, tug. politi.ully because, like him, a gteat many Americans say"'Howya can't talk like subject agree that." I was stunned, not knowing until that moment that I was pro_ Doini f,rne!" and they ale not more particular than he is about making nouncing "out" Korea'" to rhyme with "oat," and "about" with "aboat"-still the common with verb in sentences such as, "There's no negotiations with North many Nova Scotian pronunciation. Anxious not to close any career doors, I immediately 44 The economic rise of the South has had another startling result. So began trying to modify the "oat" sound, but 50 years later, when I am tired or back AmericanshavemovedintothesouthandSouthwestandhappilyadopted6'I" ('a11"' with my as not the brothers in canada, I still slip into the pronunciations I grew up with. Southernisms-such as "y'all" and "fixin' to" and pronouncing 3e What appears ,,eye-ee"-fi1at of Southern than to be the determining force in whether regional dialects survive Northern more Americans now speak some variety or disappear is not media who believes that, influence, but rather the movements of people. we talked any other dialect. That is the conclusion of linguist John Fought, to 'r-full' John coffin, a lobsterman in South Freeport, Maine. once a quiet fishing and asih" populution shift to the Sun Belt continues, "In time, we should expect ship-building harbor but now a bustling outlet shopping center, the town has southern to become accepted as standard American speech'" attracted so many generations to new visitors and residents that Coffin fears the Maine way of 4s That news will come as a shock to Northerners conditioned over speaking-with its characteristic "ayeh" ..I and backwardness' In the for "yes"-is disappearing: think in this despise southern talk, considering it evidence of stupidity to his area it's going to be a lost thing," and that makes him sad. "I'd like to think my film .,Sweet Home Alabama," G good ol' boy played by Josh Lucas says children and grandchildren doesn't mean I'm talk that way, whether people laugh at you, wherever Northernized wife, Reese witherspoon, "Just because I talk slow, we go-whatever." Do people laugh at his ? "oh, yes, lots of times. stupid." The context leads the audience to believe him' when I was in the military, and South with his they made fun of me wicked." "wicked,, is a typical 46 The comedian Jeff Foxworthy still fills huge theaters North Maine word, meaning "very," ,,.wicked, towards it' He as in good.,' hilarious routine ridiculing Southern speech and Northern attitudes This homogenizing 40 trend is obvious on some of the islands, like ocrakoke, off kills them with his list of Southern "words:" the coast of North Carolina, home of the Hoi roiders, people who pronounce .,high here tonight"' tide" as "hoi toid." "May-o-naise. Man, a's a lotta people These islands have become meccas for individuals from else- ..Urinal.Itoldmybrother,.You,reinalottatroublewhenDaddygets where building vacation homes, displacing locals and their dialect. home."' 41 still, the national media are having some effect: Labov notes two sound "Wichadidja.Hey,youdidn'tbringyourtrackwithyou'didyou?" changes that have spread nationally, probably from California. one is the vowel in possibly "do," which increasingly sounds like "dew" Labov calls it "oo-fronting"; the sound 47 Northern attitudes to Southerners may be ameliorating slightly, is produced more to the you ..so,': music and the front of the mouth. also hear it in the word which because it no longer is uncool in Northern cities to like country sounds like "so-ew." Another of some dialects and trend, more noticeable among young women, but also culture that goes with it. Yet, an ingrained sense of the prestige some men, is a rising inflection at the ends of sentences, making statements such as scornforothersisverymuchalive.LinguistDennisPrestonofMichiganState "The bus station concerning is around the corner" sound like a query. one ofthe regions where University has spent years studying the prejudices Americans have "oo-fronting" is common from Philadelphia' is the South, where there are changes just as dramatic as speech different 1romit o*t . He joined us on a train west those in the Nofth. Southern ghosts ..boo,', ..bew.', "i. with other passen- do not say but demonstrating his regular technique. Establishing quick rapport The most prevalent ..r,' people spoke 42 shift is that Southemers increasingly are pronouncing the gers, he got them toioa.k on a map of the U'S' where they thought at the ends of words such as father. In part, this is due to the large migration of Iirr"."ray. Almost without they circled the South and New York to Northerners to "*""ption, york, woman told Southern cities. Partly it is the historic decline in influence of the locate the worst English. Referring to New a Pennsylvania coastal Southern ..They preston do you say?" areas that once boasted the great slave-holding plantation culture, preston contemptuotisly, say waader!,, asked, "what and the kind of r-less pronunciation we associated with languid beies posing in hoop "Water!" she declared ProudlY. ..r,, skirts on the porches of ante-bellum houses. This advancing marks the growing prestige of what linguists call Inland Southem, the speech deriving from Appalachia. That pattern goes back to the earliest days of British settlement, when people from A Distinct New York Uoice parts of England who did not pronounce the scorn' and that is "r" settled the coastal areas, while the Scots- +a preston, though, detects another emotion creeping in beneath Irish, .,r,,'moved settlers from Northern Ireland who spoke with a strong into the hills pleasure.teoplemaythinkSouthemorNewYorkspeechisnotgood,buttheyfind ofAppalachia because the easily-cultivated for instance, to coastal land already was taken. ihem charming, andihat must be partly an effect of media exposure, ryr- rErrsprErJ-. r- A Tvon(t 0rL[fllluaT6- -_"-_-MacNcll / DoYou spQaK Amoncan.r r tEit'

the sympathetic york ,.Law New characters in the TV series and order.,, Linguists IHIIIKIiIG CRIIIGATLY believe that broadcasting and the movies help all Americans understand different 1. lnparagraph2,linguistDennisBaroncomments,..Asidetromaperson'Sphysical dialects, perhaps he or she talks"' appreciating the diversity in our culture. Moreover, no matter how tne irrst thing someone will be i'dg{ by is how they themselves "pp"ur-"n"", they speak? What assumptions do you speak, Americans rearn to understand the ranguage of network Oo yo, judge people baied on how broadcasters, certain accents? How they use standard gram' which is the closest thing to an overall American standard. ,af" who have That stan- "Ooripeople you based on how you dard coincides with the mar? What judgments do you think people make about speech that PrJston's subjects inevitably identify as the best American speech-that talk? Explain. of the Midwest-because it has the fewlst regional features. difference between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics? where 4s That Midwest standard is relevant to the cutting edge of computer 2. what is the research in prescriptivists and the descriptivists stand on the current state of Silicon Valley. There is heavy investment do the in efforts to speak like do you agree? us and -ut" "o-puters American English? With which viewpoint understand us. The researchers believe they will achiwe that in 10 to prepare for his documentary, MacNeil interviewed many people' including 15 years but it is an incredible challenge. 3. To "waitresses,cowboys,hip-hopartists,Marinedrillsergeants'BorderPatrol 50 what these efforts demonstrate is how infinitely Hispanic complex our ranguage and agents, Mexican immigrants, iaiun musicians, African-American and understanding of it is, how and meaning turns on the suttlest in intonation, bioadcasters, and Silicon Valley techies . . . writers and editors, teachers how vast any computer "hurg", and presidentS data base must be to catch all the nuances we take for teenagers, surfers and snowboarders, actors and screenwriters, granted. How you chose these people to represent th€ do program a computer to avoid those charming e,,ors in context and p"oliticiansJ'Why do you think he which foreigners American English? Do you think he chose an accurate cross' make in perfectly grammaticar sentences? For i-nstance, linguistic trends of a sign in you from these groups? an Egyptian hotel states: "Patrons ,"Ition of people? What linguistL patterns would expect need have no anxiety about the water. It has all been passed .,Due Explain. by the management." or, this in a Swiss hotel: to the impropriety "one of the most common assumptions is that our total of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedrooms, 4. MacNeil notes that it is suggested that the media is making us all speak in a similar man' lobby be used for this purpose.,' immersion in the same mass 5l The effort to make computers ner.''Howcouldthemassmediainfluencethewaywespeak?Hasthemass understand speech raises other questions about mediabeensuccessfulincreatingastandardformofAmericanEnglish? the future of language. the will technology, andihe business imperatives behind it, Explain. create an irresistible drive toward more standard what speech? tf so, w}ich accents or va_ 5. what is Ebonics? why did it backfire in 1997 in oakland, california? rieties of American speech will that leave out? Whom will it disenfranchise because replaced the Ebonic concept, and why? of their dialect-African-Americans, Hispanics, cajuns in Louisiana? A couple of 6. LinguistWilliamLabovtheorizesthatregionallinguist|ctrendsarep.rimarily years ago, the police chief of shreveport, you or disagree, La., complained that the computer voice_ tran-smitted by women. Review his ideas and explain why agree recognition system used to route nonemergency calls did not understand the local in whole or in Part, with his theorY' accent. Researchers point out, and under- however, that if you speak like someone from the 7. MacNeil wonders what will happen if computers are able to speak Midwest, computers do you think will understand you. stand speech. ln your o*n *o'd", respond to his concerns. What 52 The emerging why? technology is irresistible for business. When United Airlines in- will happen to American English, and troduced a computerized voice-recognition system for flight information-replacing live bodies-it saved a reported $25,000,000. As thes=e systems become more sophisticated, M E1'IIS a lot of companies will want them to replace expensive warm bodies. WRIII NG ASSIG]I Inevitably, more patterns are considered more and more of our lives will invorve tarking to and being understood 1. MacNeil notes that some dialects and speech by computers. ,,correct,,than Review the results of his research and take the quiz he Being understood will be increasingly imlortant. the technol_ others. will ,,Do American?,, Web site: http:// ogy work to reinforce existing linguistic stereotypes-about describes in his essay on PBS,s You Speak your Tex. race, ethnic_ What do your results tell you ity, gender, or where you ***.pO..otglspeak/speech/mapping/map'html' live-or herp to break them down? witt ," have to talk as about your own language biases? computers would like us to in order for them to obey us? MacNeil observes that rather than sounding more alike, ss During the califomia portion of filming "Do you 2. ln his essay, speak American?,, I drove a car different than ever before. Listen to some equipped Americans are more linguistically with an elaborate voice-recognition system. speak its "Myths I a version of standard local dialects on PBS's "Oo You Speak American?" web site and review broadcast American English, and I tried to enunciate clearly. occasionarly, it worked, and Realities" section at http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarietleg' but often it did not and the pardon ol the mytha h€ car kept saying, "pardon me? me?,,and I gave it up. Before reading MacNeil's results, did you accept as true any 54 Everything in the American experience, each new frontier encountered- debunks? geographical, spiritual, technological-has altered our language. what kind of a 3.Writeanessayinwhichyouexplainwhyitisbettertosupportadescrlptlveor flrontier are we crossing by teaching computers our most fundamental human skill, prescriptive position regarding American English' that of the spoken word?

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