Youth, race, and resistance: a sociolinguistic perspective

Abstract

This article focuses on interethnic interactions in which adolescents of Asian descent put on strong Indian English accents when addressing Anglo teachers and adults, and it discusses the extent to which these code switchings constitute acts of resistance within a racist society. The article recognises the ambiguity in the relationship between resistance and just “messing about” (Gilroy & Lawrence, 1988: 136–137), but rather than invalidating a political interpretation, detailed interaction analysis reveals subtleties in oppositionel meaning that make the term “resistance” seem rather crude. Code switching into Indian English conjured a very specific political problematic, it provided recipients with an opportunity to display their own political position, and it could even lead to the consolidation of amicable Black—White pupil—teacher relations counterposed to wider patterns of race stratification. This article looks at how interpretive Sociolinguistic analysis can contribute to sociological discussions about youth, race, and resistance, and it concentrates on the way that Br18adults in second-languoge-learner Indian English, even though, in reality, they were fluent speakers of vernacular English. 1 When British Asian adolescents put on strong Indian accents ( stylised Asian English [SAE]) in talking to White adults, how far and in what ways were they engaged in acts of resistance? There are six sections in this article. After a brief outline of the database, the article begins with a sketch of what adolescents themselves reported in interviews. It then turns to on interaction in which this kind of code switching actually happened. What actually happened turns out to be more complicated than what got reported. That may not be very surprising in itself, but at least at first sight it does present quite a problem for extrapolations about resistance. Closer inspection, however, reveals ways in which a political interpretation of SAE remains relevant, and in the last three sections of the article, I shall try to show how the term “resistance” is actually too crude to do justice to the subtle political processes achieved through this kind of code switching. (More extensive discussion of these issues can be found in Rampton (1995), which also provides much fuller empirical evidence.)