NCE0-63C ERIC REPORT RESUME EC CIC C52 1C-C6-66 24 (REV) COMPLNICATION FARRIERS TO THECULTURALLY DEPRIVEC. MCCAVIC, RAVEN I. * AUSTIN,WILLIAM M. C71'09354 UNIVERSITY 3F CHICAGO CRP-21C7 GGP21135 ILLINOIS INST. CFTECHNOLOGY, CHICAGO ECRS PRICE MFESC.27 HC-..$7.16 179P. *MIDDLE CLASS, *CULTURALDISADVANTAGEMENT, *COMMUNICATIONPROBLEMS, *NONSTANCARD DIALECTS, *NEGRODIALECTS, URBAN AREAS, SOCIAL RELATIONS, PRONLNCIATION,CHICAGO, ILLINOIS THIS REPORT VAS DESIGNED (1)Te PROVIDE A MORE DETAILED ANC SOPHISTICATED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SOCIALDIFFFRENCES IN ORAL COMMLNICATION ANC (2) TO ASCERTAINTHE ACCURACY WITH WHICH SUBJECTS COLIC IDENTIFY THE RACE ANC EDUCATIONCF SPEAKERS WHOM THEY COULD NOT SEE. TO CETERMINE REACTIONSTO PRONUNCIATIONS, THE INVESTIGATORS DEVISED AN INSTRLMENT COMPOSEDOF PRONUNCIATIONS BY SPEAKERSOF SPECIFIC REGIONAL ANC ETHNICBACKGROUNCS. THIS INSTRUKNTWAS ACMINISTERED TO SOME THREE HUNCREERESPONDENTS, WHITES ANE NEGROES IN ALMOST EQLAL NUMBERS, OF VARIOUSEDUCATIONAL BACKGROUNDS IT WAS FCLND THAT DIFFERENCES BETWEENLOWER-CLASS WHITE SPEEC AND MIDDLE -CLASS TO LOWERCLASSNEGRO SPEECH ARE MUCH PORE DIFFICLLTTO DETECT THAN DIFFERENCES BETWEENTHE SPEECH OF WHITE CHICAGOANSAND SOLTHERN NEGROES. IT IS AN INTUITIVEREACTION THAT SUPRASEGMENTALS AND PARALANGLAGE ARE MORE EFFECTIVEINCICATORS OF ETHNIC BACKGROUND THAN VCCACLLARY, GRAMMAR, CRPRONUNCIATION. (a) U. 8. DEPARTMENTOF HEALTH, EDUCATIONAND WELFARE Office of Education This documenthas been reproduced person or organ:zalion exactly as receivedfrom the orig'natingft. stated do PG.r...71of viewor opinions not nezcsoarityrepresent official position or policy. Ott.ce of Education Communication Barriers to the Culturally Deprtfed Cooperative Research ;?rojeet 2107 liAlria I. LioDAVID, JR. Professor of Znglish The University of Chicago tJILLIAII L. AUSTIN Professor of Linguistics Illinois Institute of Teohnolomy 1966 The research reported herein was cupported by the Cooperative Research Program of the Office of Zduoation, Us S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Table of Contents Preface Social Dialects: Cause or Symptom of Social I. clad (MoDavid) Gatherins. the Data (Davis and NoDattid) Chicago Phonology (Davis) Phonolosical Indices of Social Dialects in Chicago (Pederson) Social Aspects of Paralanguage (Austin) Reactions to Pronunciations (14.and Co Larsen) araish and the Culturally Deprived: A3ibliosrraphy (Hoffman) Each chapter is paginated separately and is followed by its own supplementary tables, etc. if such occur Preface erma.ta.mmimeatiowno0 "wwwislireUrn This report summarizes the findings of a cooperative research project (No. 2107) in social dialects sponsored by the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Tech- nology and supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Sducation. As conceived by the investigators, the design of the project was simple. It seemed easy enough to find repre- sentatives of middle class and log er class speech, of whites and ITegroes, to codify the differences, to select characteristic utterances of each group, to dub these on tape in random order, to record the uay in which selected populations of respondents identified the racial and social status of the speaker of each utterance, and then to deter- mind the validity of such identifications* Yet from the beginning, zomplications crept in. Dialect interviewing in urban areas is difficult enough; but it was assumed that the experience of the investigators and their assistants would take these difficulties in strides So it might have been in any previous year; so it might well be in th.: future, Dut, as anyone who reads American news- papers must realize, the period from .-La summer of1963 through the election of 1964 was *ne in which there were more than usual difficulties for the interviewer ot urban inform ii wants, especially in the Agro slums. Only the persistence and dedication of the intervieuers-milelvin Hoffman,Lee Pederson, and John P. Willis.prolvided the field interviews, upon which the rest of the project depended. It*.. ~as on hoped that the data from the field lAterviers could be puton punch cards for computer analysis. However, it soon became apparent thatno program existed for treating anytYlnl but the lexical and grammaticaldata, for both of which the intuitive and informalsocial identi- fication is already accurate. Programs for phonemic corre. latiuns are !:ew; for sub-phonemic differentes in pronunoia. tion no satisfactory program has yet been 'workedout, though 2oser Shuy of ilichigan State should perfectone before the end of 1965. For suprasegmentals and pareanguage the programs are not yet conceived. Consequently, it was decided to sort the pronunciation data manually- -old fashionel and slow, perhaps, but more accurate than machinemanipulation could be. The preparation of the instrument for ascertaining sociolinguistic reactions also poseda number of technical problems, notably the finding of representativespeakers from each group whose tapeswere of high eaough fidelity to be easily duplicated in parts, the selectionof control sub- jects, and the search foran extant computer program that could be adapted to the needs of theprojecto lihatever success this part of the project has achieved is due tothe intelligence and devotion of Vernon S. and Carolyn E.Larsen, iv whose formal training in linguistics has been enriched by their knowledge of psychology and statistics, by their practical experience as test designers and publishers9 editors, and by their deep appreciation of individual human dignity. They were aided by i.arylou Lionellst by Phyllis Implant and especially by Thorns., Creswell, whose lifelong intimate experience with Chicago schools- -from kindergarten pupil to teacher of methods courses in Englishprovides in- sights into the direction which amore effective school program must take. It should be emphasized, however, that though the table of contents indicates primary credits, each investigator and research associate has discussed and examined each part and has made his contribution tnroughout. Credit is also due petty Jacobsen, editorial assistant durinrs theprepara- tion of the report, and to two groups toonumerous for specific listing: the administrative staffs of the two sponsoring institutions and the citizens of Chicago vho servedas informants, as respondents and as liaison between these groups and the investigators. The study of specific correlations between pronuncia. tions and social judgments will not stop with thisreports It vould be interesting to see whatresponses would be made in eastern or Southern communities; the conclusions here presented are valid only for the Chicago metropolitanarea, though one might expect similar reactions in other Inland Aorthern urban areas. These conclusions, tentatively ad. venced, are as follors: 1. Vocabulary reflectscultural experiences andcan be expected to changeas people become adjusted to city living* The survival of certainhumble ethnic words in ethnic neigh- borhoods, of whateverkind, is traditional; itmay even be reinforced by a feeling forin-group solidarity. 2. Grammar reflectssocial and educational advantages. Grammatical differences betweenmiddle-class and lower-class speech are easily identified. They are most striking in areas (such as the Southeasternand South-Central states) where sharp differences ofcaste and class have long been recognized. Since the Negroes of theChicago slums are nor- mally from the lower classof the lower caste of suchregions-- whether born thereor in Chicago- -it is to be expected that their speech would showstrong divergences from thegrammatical norms of middle class Chicago, and thatin turn middle class Chicagoans would identifyas "Negro grammar" features that are widely distributed in uneducatedSouthern speech of both races. The existence of thesedivergent grammatical forms has long been recognizedin the schools; the traditional treatment, however, has beenin terms of lapses,errors or deviations, with no recognitionthat they are part ofa regular system. Future educationalprograms should be de- veloped in terms of substitutingfor the grammatical system of lower-class Southern speechthe system of middle-class Chicago white speech--at leastfor those economic andsocial situations where grammaticalnorms are important. 3. In pronunciation, differencesbetween middle-class vi and loi%.;r-olass white speech or between middle-class and lower- class Negro speech are much less easy to detect than differ- ences between the speech of white Chicagoans and Southern Negroes° Loreover, the fact that middle-class white Chicagoans often identified as a Southern Negro the Southern white contrcl speaker suggests that for middle-class white Chicagoans any palpably Southern pronunciation is automatically registered as Negro, rural and uneducated though the speaker in question is city bred and the most highly educated of the speakers selected for the instrument. This kind of identification suggests that any educational application of this project should take two directions* (a) Since for the moment the strongly Southern pronun- ciation of the Chicago lower-class Negro constitutes a social handicap, it would be desirable to teach Chicago middle- class pronunciation to the children of this group, beginning with nursery school. Such teaching should be informal at the beginning, in an effort to provide a substitute for the characteristic language learning process where children arriv-A ix g from various communities pick up the local idiom from older children in their neighborhood.