Non-standard Dialects Research Articles

The impact of linguistic bias upon speech-language pathologists’ attitudes towards non-standard dialects of English

ABSTRACT Dialectal variations are present in all languages, originating from cultural, geographic and socioeconomic diversity. This study investigates speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) linguistic bias towards non-standard language forms and dialects, and factors that may impact on these attitudes. Language attitude studies reveal that negative attitudes towards variation can lead to bias against speakers of non-standard dialects. If SLPs hold linguistic bias towards speakers of non-standard dialects, this has the potential to impact upon their clinical judgement of difference vs. disorder and lead to inequality of service provision. A total of 129 Australian SLPs completed an online survey, which involved ranking 28 attitudinal statements regarding language variation on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The survey data were analysed using a factor analysis in SPSS to identify latent factors that identified attitudes towards non-standard dialects followed by inferential analyses to investigate how attitudes were related to the demographic data of participants. Results identified five key factors from the survey, these were (1) Use of non-standard English, (2) Language impurity, (3) Diversity in form, (4) Social acceptability, and (5) Prescriptive language rules. SLPs held generally positive attitudes towards the use of non-standard forms and the socially determined acceptability of language. SLPs were more neutral in their attitudes towards diversity in form and the need for prescriptive rules and generally held negative views towards language purity (e.g., the use of “youse” as a plural form of you). A significantly positive association was found between professional development (PD) on cultural and linguistic diversity and positive attitudes towards Factors 1 and 3. Years of practice were significantly related to Factor 2, with less experienced SLPs holding more negative views relating to language purity. While many SLPs identify the value of language variation and its reflection of a person’s cultural and linguistic diversity, negative attitudes towards non-standard forms and variation in school and occupational settings have the potential to negatively impact differential diagnosis, goal setting and the delivery of culturally responsive speech-language pathology services to speakers of non-standard dialects.

Are learners ready for Englishes in the EFL classroom? A large-scale survey of learners’ views of non-standard accents and teachers’ accents

The adherence to Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA) as standard models in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) education has been challenged in recent decades. Scholars have advocated (1) using a wider variety of accents as input for EFL listening and (2) intelligibility over nativelikeness in EFL pronunciation. However, learners’ views of these advocacies and their views of whether EFL teachers need or need not speak with RP/GA have remained under-researched. This large-scale survey explored Hong Kong secondary-level learners’ views (n = 1300) of non-standard accents in EFL education and EFL teachers’ accents. Participants’ self-rated English proficiency and prior exposure to different accents were also included in the analyses. The results show that, surprisingly, the participants were only slightly favourable towards teachers with RP/GA and they were slightly against the notion that those without RP/GA are inappropriate EFL teachers. With regard to incorporating non-RP/GA accents in EFL listening, they were neutral towards including other L1 accents and slightly negative towards L2 accents. Differences in views were found when the participants were categorized into groups of different proficiency and prior exposure. This article ends with a discussion of these findings and their implications.

German V2 and Doubly Filled COMP in West Germanic

The paper addresses the issue of Doubly Filled COMP effects in embedded interrogatives in West-Germanic languages, with particular attention paid to German: in these patterns, an overt interrogative operator co-occurs with an overt complementiser. Such configurations are ruled out from standard West-Germanic varieties, while they are attested in non-standard dialects. The paper argues that there are both theoretical and empirical arguments against the postulation of a Doubly Filled COMP Filter, proposing instead that the insertion of a visible complementiser in non-standard dialects in fact follows from the properties of the general syntactic paradigm in which empty complementisers are generally not possible. It is shown that doubling is not restricted to embedded constituent questions, but it may occur in polar questions as well. Further, the finiteness feature can be checked off by verb movement, as is the case in V2 patterns in German (and generally in Germanic, including historical English) and in T-to-C-movement in English. In this way, the property of V2 is linked to Doubly Filled COMP; in either case, there is no need to postulate a cartographic template with multiple projections but a minimal, merge-based model is sufficient and in fact favourable. The proposed model aims at accounting for the possible correlations between the properties of the head element and the properties of the fronted element merged as a specifier (if there is any). Finally, the observed syntactic differences between standard varieties and dialects in West Germanic can be attributed to minimal lexical differences.

Emergent features of young Singaporean speech: an investigatory study of the labiodental /r/ in Singapore English

ABSTRACT Amongst the variety of /r/ allophones is a labialised variant commonly described as the labiodental approximant [ʋ]. This seems, in recent times, to have become quite a common variant for young British English speech and is ‘established as an acceptable feature of mature speech in non-standard accents in the south-east of England’. Deterding and Kwek have also reported the existence of the labiodental approximant [ʋ] in the speech of some young speakers of Singapore English, presenting preliminary impressionistic findings of its existence and attitudes of Singaporeans towards its use. This article further substantiates these previous claims by providing acoustic evidence that the labiodental approximant [ʋ] is indeed present in Singapore English and that it can be differentiated from the more common post-alveolar approximant [ɹ] by comparing the nadir values of their third formants as well as the calculations of third formant rises towards the onset of following vowels. The article also provides further empirical evidence of the phonological environments that condition the realisation of this variant and also of its users. At its core, this article sets the foundations for further phonetic and phonological studies of /r/ variants in Singapore English.

The effects of speaker accent on syntactic priming in second-language speakers

Syntactic priming studies in second language (L2) have contributed to understanding how L2 speakers’ syntactic knowledge is represented and processed. However, little is known about social influences on L2 speakers’ syntactic processing and learning. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers’ syntactic priming is influenced by social factors, specifically different accents of English speakers and their familiarity with those accents. Korean L2 learners of English with intermediate proficiency were asked to describe pictures depicting ditransitive events after listening to sentences recorded by three English speakers with different accents: a standard-accented speaker (an American English speaker), and two speakers with non-standard accents (a Korean English speaker and an Indian English speaker). The results of the picture description task showed that syntactic priming effects in Korean L2 English speakers were significantly influenced by speaker accents and their familiarity with the accents. In addition, their priming patterns and interactions with these factors changed over time. These results suggest that syntactic priming in L2 speakers is socially mediated. We propose that priming effects in real language use can be better accounted for using a combination of cognitive and sociolinguistic models of syntactic priming and speech production.

A description of young children’s use of Australian Aboriginal English dialect in a regional area

Purpose Non-standard dialects, such as Australian Aboriginal English (AAE), are spoken across the globe, often by peoples from marginalised groups and communities. Speech-language pathologists in Australia need to be familiar with AAE in order to correctly and appropriately diagnose and intervene with Aboriginal clients. The purpose of this study was to identify the presence of AAE in the communication of pre-school-aged children in a regional area and to describe the features of AAE that these children used. Method Interactions between early childhood educators and children were videotaped for a sample of 21 Aboriginal and 21 non-Aboriginal children. From these videos specific features of AAE were coded and analysed using parametric and non-parametric tests. Result The communication of the sample of Aboriginal children differed significantly from that of the non-Aboriginal children. Several features of AAE were identified within this cohort, including: cluster reduction, zero use of /h/ and zero use of copula. Conclusion Differences in dialect exist in the communication of pre-school-aged children in regional areas of Australia. It is important for educators and health professionals to be aware of the features of AAE dialect so they can support Aboriginal children in their learning journey.

Some words about english dielects and its features

This article is written to give information standard and nonstandard English dialects, as well upto-date variants of English dialects. Among some non-English speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the adult population can converse in English-in particular: 85% in Sweden, 83% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands, 66% in Luxembourg and over 50% in Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect; a regional dialect may be termed a regiolect or topolect. The other usage refers to a language socially subordinate to a regional or national standard language, often historically cognate to the standard, but not a variety of it or in any other sense derived from it. Within England, variation is now largely confined to pronunciation rather than grammar or vocabulary. At the time of the Survey of English Dialects, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of lexical attrition has led most of this variation to die out. Scots has its origins in early Northern Middle English and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, but following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English, causing dialectalisation. Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world, and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences with Science Citation Index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in Englishspeaking countries.

A sociolinguistic perspective in the analysis of English textbooks: Development of a checklist

This study aims to suggest a checklist for teachers and researchers to analyze English as a second or foreign language textbooks from a sociolinguistic perspective. In the literature there is not a checklist or framework by which English textbooks can be evaluated considering the sociolinguistics issues raised in this study. After obtaining expert opinion and a piloting on 8 textbooks used in state schools in Turkey, a checklist consisting 6 criteria was suggested. Then, the check list was applied on the 9th grade English book ReLearn (Karamil & Birincioglu Kaldar, 2019) used in state schools in Turkey to demonstrate how the checklist can be utilized. The findings suggest that from a sociolinguistic perspective, the book in focus occasionally conforms to the sociolinguistic concerns while it needs some qualitative improvements. Improvements in providing genuine speakers of non-native and non-standard accents of English rather than using standard accent vocalizations for the speakers that are depicted as non-natives can be a primary suggestion and at the same time, the textbook should focus on different ways of life and perspectives instead of mostly providing intercultural knowledge such as cities or historic places. Finally, the textbook should pay more attention to the linguistic ecology in Turkey and adjust its contents so as to compensate for the foreign language status of English in Turkey. Accordingly, this study contributes to the literature by providing a checklist to evaluate textbooks systematically with regard to essential sociolinguistic issues and it demonstrates the application of the checklist.

“Since when does the Midwest have an accent?”

Abstract Folk ideologies about regional variation often depend on the consideration of certain varieties in contrast with the idea of a linguistically unmarked, standard way of speaking (Preston 1996; Lippi-Green 2012). This study analyzes the relationship between those abstract ideologies and in-the-moment reactions to linguistic input. Examining this question with respect to American English, a listening task manipulated where speakers were said to be from and whether the speakers used regional speech varieties linked to those places. Listeners were asked to make social judgments about speakers with varying degrees of local accentedness said to be from Southern, Northeastern, and Midwestern locales in the U.S.; these locations were selected to target highly enregistered nonstandard dialect areas versus more linguistically “unmarked” regions. Results indicate that while pre-existing sociolinguistic stereotypes about these three locations in some cases trumped the actual linguistic input that listeners encountered, effects of accentedness also varied in place-specific ways related to expectations for each locale.

Language abilities of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in their first year of school

Purpose: Concern exists about the cross-cultural appropriateness of existing language assessments for non-mainstream populations, including Indigenous children who may speak a non-standard dialect of the mainstream language. This study therefore aims to investigate the language skills of Indigenous Australian children in comparison with non-Indigenous children, with a view to exploring the cultural appropriateness of language sampling assessment methods.Method: The performance of 51 typically developing Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children was compared on a standardised assessment and a spoken narrative protocol using language sample analysis measures. All children were in their first year of school and from the same regional city.Result: While the Indigenous children attained significantly lower receptive vocabulary scores than the non-Indigenous children, most language sampling measures from the spoken narrative protocol were similar across the two groups of children.Conclusion: Flexible, naturalistic language sampling approaches using a spoken narrative protocol are thus recommended for Indigenous children from the under-researched Australian context. However, normative data for language sampling are lacking, and further research is needed to explore the cultural validity of assessment and diagnostic procedures for Indigenous Australian children, as well as the influence of socioeconomic and family factors on language skills.

Language ideologies, intervarietal conflict and their repercussions on language and society: the case of the Hispanic dialect complex

Abstract In this paper, a phase of language divinisation is posited as the deeply-rooted origin of the standard language/variety ideology, which devalues the nonstandard dialects thus causing a permanent sociolinguistic conflict. Present linguistic standardisation is seen as the form divinisation has taken in the course of the history of humankind and it is justified by the search of stability and functionality for organised speech communities, which is not objectionable as such for some aspects of social life. The sociolinguistic conflict emerges because the first stage of the process requires the selection of usually one variety (or more than one in some cases) out of the dialectal complex of any natural language, generally responding to class-related interests allied to power and prestige. It is evidently, an ideological issue. Our approach to this problem is based on data from the Spanish-speaking world, analysed mainly on a minimal unitary phonetological approach (MUPA) in search of different dialectal dimensions and parameters. MUPA is justified and possible because of the great cohesiveness of Spanish varieties. When attention is paid to this extensive linguistic dominion, one finds that the notion of the inevitability of the weakening of regional varieties has to be revised.

Skewed Sociolinguistic Awareness of a Native Non-standard Dialect: Evidence from the Cypriot Greek Writing of Greek Cypriot Students.

Over the last 50 years, sociolinguistic research in settings in which a regional, social, or ethnic non-standard linguistic variety is used alongside the standard variety of the same language has steadily increased. The educational implications of the concomitant use of such varieties have also received a great deal of research attention. This study deals with regional linguistic variation and its implications for education by focusing on the Greek Cypriot educational context. This context is ideal for investigating the linguistic profiles of speakers of proximal varieties as the majority of Greek Cypriots are primarily educated in just one of their varieties: the standard educational variety. The aim of our study was to understand Greek Cypriot primary school pupils’ sociolinguistic awareness via examination of their written production in their home variety [Cypriot Greek (CG) dialect]. Our assumption was that, because written production is less spontaneous than speech, it better reflects pupils’ conscious awareness. Pupils were advised to produce texts that reflected their everyday language with family and friends (beyond school boundaries). As expected, students’ texts included an abundance of mesolectal features and the following were the ten most frequent: (1) palato-alveolar consonants, (2) future particle [ená] and conditional [ítan na] + subjunctive, (3) consonant devoicing, (4) CG-specific verb stems, (5) final [n] retention, (6) [én/ éni] instead of [íne], (7) CG-specific verb endings, (8) [én/é] instead of [ðen], (9) elision of intervocalic fricative [ɣ], and (10) CG-specific adverbs. Importantly, in addition to the expected mesolectal features that reflect contemporary CG, students included a significant and unexpected number of basilectal features and instances of hyperdialectism (that are not representative of today’s linguistic reality) which rendered their texts register-inappropriate. This led us to conclude that Greek Cypriot students have a skewed sociolinguistic awareness of variation within their first dialect and a distorted impression of their own everyday language. We argue that the portrayal of CG in its basilectal form was performed intentionally by students in an effort to distance themselves from a socially constructed identity of a rural, uneducated, and stigmatized non-standard-dialect speaker. The study is of international relevance as it deals with sociolinguistic issues that pertain to all bidialectal speakers.

‘We don’t talk Gypsy here’: Minority language policies in Europe

Abstract The Roma constitute an ideal case of educational injustice meeting linguistic difference, racism, social marginalization, and poverty. This paper asks whether human-rights or capabilities approaches are best suited to address issues related to the language education of Roma students in Europe. These children are disadvantaged by not growing up with the standard dialect of whatever language is preferred by the mainstream population, and by the low status of the Romani language, and non-standard dialect of the standard language they usually speak. We examine language education for Roma students in Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria, describing similarities and differences across contexts. We explain weak and strong version of language rights arguments, and the ways these principles are expressed, and not expressed in education policies. Sen’s capabilities approach can be employed to generate contextualized visions of education reform that speak directly to disadvantages suffered by Roma children.

Bridging Language Attitudes with Perceived Language Notions

The current study examines students’ beliefs about languages in general, their overt attitudes towards Cypriot Greek and the status that is accorded to this variety. Results, from a quantitative research approach, show that the Cypriot Greek variety is in a process of changing status and it seems that it is appreciated more than in the past (Papapavlou, 1998, 2004, 2010; Tsiplakou, 2006; Ioannidou, 2009). Participants (university students) believe that languages are: a) a mirror of society and a robust means of communication, b) a reflection of the cultures of a given country, c) constantly evolving and adjusting to the needs of a society, and d) an image of our way of thinking and interacting in society. However, participants do not agree that language is the only factor in defining their ethnic identity. On the contrary, they believe that it is also affected by factors not related to language. Additionally, results reveal that misguided judgments about the supremacy and powerfulness of standard languages are inversely related to the views that the same speakers hold about non-standard languages and dialects. The findings of the present study suggest that the linguistic identity of young people in Cyprus is shifting, and this shift may have implications on issues related to language policy and planning, currently under discussion.

The Lexion Of The African American English In Georgia Doyle Johnson's Frederick Douglas And Loraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

To comprehend that a language belongs to a dialect, one may examine its lexicon. As it is considered non-standard dialect, the American African English lexicon is assumed to have its own characteristic different from the standard American English. Therefore, to gain a better comprehension of the American African English dialect in the view point of lexicon features, the paper will elaborate Georgia Doyle Johnsons Frederick Douglas And Loraine Hansberrys A Raisin In The Sun. This paper is descriptive linguistics rather than a stylistic study as it does not focus on literary style. The data taken was classified into linguistic elements and was tested to the theories of informal English in general; African American English in particular and Standard American English rules of pronunciation. The research findings were summarized and discussed to conclude the research. The result of the research demonstrates that African American English, a variant of informal English, is different from the rules of Standard American English. In terms of lexicon, African American English employs local and rude words. The presence of slang and colloquialisms, taboo words and swearing make it distinctively informal.

Droppings, Adding, And Spelling Deviations In Georgia Doyle Jhonson's Fredrick Douglas And Loraine Hansberry's (A Rais In The Sun)

Language is reflected by pronunciation, syntax, and lexicon. So is the American African English. A sit is considered non-standard dialect, the American African English pronunciation is assumed to have its own characteristic different from the standard American. English. Furthermore, according to a linguist, pronunciation of a community is clearly patterned and systematic. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe pronunciation of the American African English in Georgia Doyle Johnson's Frederick Douglas And Loraine Hansbeiry's A Raisin In The Sun, in the viewpoints of droppings, addings, and spelling derivations. This paper is descriptive linguistics rather than a stylistic study as it does not focus on literary style. The data taken was classified into linguistic elements and was tested to the theories of informal English in general; African American English in particular and Standard American English rules of pronunciation. The research findings were summarized and discussed to conclude the research. The result of the research demonstrates that African American English, a variant of informal English, is different from the rules of Standard American English In terms of pronunciation, African American English speakers tend to pronounce words as they like. Therefore, the pronunciations of words are very different from Standard English Words maybe dropped or shortened and some additional sounds included or changed. Words such as jes', fallin', 'em, fore', mo', yo' cap'n, yes'm, alissenin', figger, bleve, sho, enuf, wus, whut, mek, s'ed, agin, git, lak, yaw, ur, yore, etc. frequently occur and are common in African American English. Thus, African American English pronunciation is difficult to understand and strange for students of non-English speaking countries. Â

Lexical variation and Negative Concord in Traditional Dialects of British English

In the present paper I investigate, from a Minimalist perspective and using data from the Freiburg English Dialect corpus, the patterns of Negative Concord (NC) attested in different Traditional Dialects of British English. By arguing that lexical variation exists in the negative operator used to express sentential negation, which is truly semantic in Standard English but carries an interpretable negative feature in Traditional Dialects of British English, I explain why NC, understood as syntactic Agree between [iNeg] and [uNeg] features, is attested in the latter but not in the former. In the same vein, by arguing that in Traditional Dialects of British English two lexical entries are possible for n-words which contrast in the interpretability of the negative feature they carry ([iNeg] vs. [uNeg]), the optionality of NC in the studied Non-Standard dialects of English as well as the different patterns observed in the data can be accounted for.

Use of code-switching in multilingual content subject and language classrooms

ABSTRACTResearch literature has shown that teachers code-switched to a language which is not the medium of instruction to help students understand subject matter and establish interpersonal relations with them. However, little is known about the extent to which teachers code-switch in content subject classrooms compared to language classrooms. Using substantial data taken from a larger study, this paper examined the extent to which teachers code-switched in both content subject and language Grade 5 multilingual classrooms in Singapore and the code-switching functions used. The data for this study accounted for 23.6% of the lessons observed in the larger study and comprised 91 transcripts of science, mathematics, social studies, and English lessons. The data from the transcripts were tagged for the analysis of teachers’ use of the non-standard English dialect, Singapore Colloquial English, for the broad functions of curriculum access, classroom management, and interpersonal relations and their sub-functions. Grade 5 teachers were found to use the non-standard English dialect more often for curriculum access than for classroom management. Content subject teachers code-switched more frequently than language teachers.

The 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science presented to William Labov

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awards the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science to Professor William Labov for pioneering contributions to the understanding of language variation and change through quantitative means, and for initiating the scientific study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications.Labov is widely recognized as the founder of sociolinguistics, the quantitative study of language structure and use. Through detailed analysis of speech across dialect boundaries and over time, Labov has identified general principles governing language variation and change, while shedding light on how the mind assimilates and responds to linguistic stimuli to form internalized linguistic knowledge and representations. He pioneered the use of statistical methods in the study of language, thereby contributing to the understanding of cognition as a probabilistic information processing system. Moreover, Labov׳s research on African American English has led to the recognition of non-standard dialects as complex linguistic systems in their own right, rather than imperfect deviations from the standard variety.

The maintenance of regional dialects: a matter of gender? Boys, but not girls, use local varieties in relation to their friends' nativeness and local identity.

The linguistic diversity enduring beyond institutional pressures and social prejudices against non-standard dialects questions the social forces influencing language maintenance across generations and how children contribute to this process. Children encounter multi-dialectal interactions in their early environment, and increasing evidence shows that the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation is not a side issue but an inherent part of the general acquisition process. Despite these recent advances in sociolinguistic acquisition, children's sociolinguistic uses remain under-studied in relation to peer social networks and the ability to use dialect for identity purposes. Our study focused on a grammatical sociolinguistic variable consisting of the alternation between a regional and a standard variant of the third person object pronoun in French. The regional variant is a remnant of the Francoprovençal language and its usage by adults is strongly associated with local identity in the French Alps. We described, using questionnaires, the social networks of 117 10–11 year-old girls and boys living in the same restricted rural area. Thirteen native target children (7 girls and 6 boys) were selected from the sample, as well as 39 same-sex friends chosen according to their place of birth (native vs. non-native) and the duration of their friendship with the targets (number of years they have known each other). The target children were recorded during spontaneous dyadic conversations during free play at school with each category of friends. Target boys, but not girls, used the regional variant significantly more frequently with their long-term native friends than with their non-native friends. This adjustment mirrored their partners' uses. Moreover, with long-term native friends, boys used the regional variant twice as frequently as girls. Boys appeared thus as key actors in the maintenance and the diffusion of regional cues in local social networks.