Advantages And Disadvantages Of Standardization Of Language

The film “American Tongues” documents a variety of English accents that are present across the United States and highlights a lot of the opinions people have about accents and people who speak these accents. A large majority of the people who express opinions about other peoples’ accents tend to express negative views, as they see their own accent as the superior one. The film focuses on showing the array of accents found in the U.S., but also how a lot of people who speak these “inferior” accents work to learn “Standard American English” to increase their chances of getting jobs and communicating in more official domains. Although the film was made in 1988, it expresses views still present in today’s society towards different accents, as people tend to continue judging others based not only on what they say, but also how they say it.

Standard English was established so that every person of the English origin could speak on one accord of understanding and comprehensiveness. However, fast forwarding to the modern day world, English varies in many cases. Standard English, Broken English, Black English (known as slang), etc... Speaking in any other English besides Standard English you are known to be grammatically and educationally incorrect. Standard English is taught in the classroom but does not prepare for real life world experiences. Many variations of English language are spoken but many are also judged by in most cases a person who speaks Standard English.

dialect is an essential part of the culture, and the use of it in 'Our

I chose two videos with two different dialects: Cajun and Yat. I also chose to interview three people from the same area. I expected that all three people would have the same opinions on language because they were form the same area; however, this project proved me wrong. I learned that geography does not fully influence someone’s opinions on language.

Before we begin, it is very important to understand the difference between an official language and a standard language. An official languages is one that is adopted by the government for document and business purposes, this would be most native people’s second language; one that the government sees as advantageous and necessary. Most of the time a standard language could also be referred to as the native language; a common language that the high majority of citizens use to converse outside of the government. Currently there is a major push to be bilingual, to the point where countries are adding or changing the official language(s). Countries that were presented and are using English because of government ordained laws are Kenya, Zambia, The Bahamas, Jamaica, New Zealand, Ireland; an extremely minimalistic representation the total amount of countries with English as an official language. Almost every other country, especially China and India, have their students studying English. It is advantageous for further education, business, and

There are several terms in my essay that I want to explain first. Dialect is a form

Language creates spaces where linguistic features are associated with ideas that are attributed to its speakers. The previous is best recognized as language ideologies. In “Western language ideologies and small-language prospects,” on page three, Nancy C. Dorian refers to language ideologies as a vehicle through which certain languages are made unappealing by its mere association to communities of low-prestige. For example, in my hometown, Castroville, Spanish is associated to low-income farmworkers. And as a result, most of the Youth in Castroville stick to English. Despite the fact that most of their parents are Spanish speaking farmworkers, the mindset of Castroville teenagers seems to be formulated around embarrassment. Just like English is adopted in place of low-prestige languages, the opposite also occurs.

(81) An oral dialect cannot be transposed directly into a standard written language. The conversations of oral dialects evolved from using language in face-to-face situations where as written languages, must be adapted to an anonymous situations in which the writer cannot be sure who the reader will be. “ Oral dialects lack the vocabulary needed to serve the new economic, scientific, and administrative functions of the nation”(82). “Because language making has been studied more than culture making, the historical process of creating a national culture is perhaps less well understood.” A nations language can be regarded as a part of its culture, or conversely, its culture can be regarded as the totality of its language.(83). Americans need to learn not just the grammar of their language but also their national vocabulary. For nation builders, fixing the vocabulary of a national culture is analogous to fixing a standard grammar, spelling, and

The United States has many different dialects that are spoken in different areas of the country. The meaning of certain words in the Eastern side of the country have different meanings on the Southerner side of the country. The results of different dialects from different side of the country are all very unique. This reflects how people in communities within different regions have develop their own unique dialect and in many cases have travel far to other regions of the country. Dialect defines where an individual is from and reflects where they were raised as a young person.

1.1 The language in which we speak represents a true image of who we are and our social identity. From listening to a particular dialect, we automatically make assumptions depending on that alone. Through extensive analysis, it is speculated that none linguistic speakers tend to merge a specific dialect to one location. This is recognised as perceptual dialectology, the study of how non-linguistic speakers identify and perceive variation in language compared to their community rather than sociolinguists. The idea originated from Japan and the Netherlands, with studies from W.G Rensink, where the main aim of the study was to find the linguistic differences from one area to another. Once linguistics have the information from ‘folk’ linguistics and scientific linguistics, then can then compare it between social varieties to examine dialect. There are three ways to approach the perceptual data collected; what people say, how people react to what has been said, and what people say about (Preston, 1999). By looking at these factors within perceptual dialectology, we can study geography, history and sociolinguistic varieties to understand the difference in speech amongst social groups and communities. Throughout the years of the development of this study, perceptual dialectology has advanced due to research provided by the likes of D. Preston (USA) and M.Pearce (North East).

Marco Dragojevic conducted a study on language attitude changes to analyze how native speakers from California perceive and favor accents from California (CE) the American South (ASE) and Punjabi-accented (PE) speakers. Previous research shows that a positive language attitude is enhanced by external identifiers like prestige, status, and standardization. A language attitude is a social construct that makes assumptions about others based on their accent. Ingroup favoritism develops from those who prefer the same traits as those like them rather than an outsider. The guiding research question asks if Californian listeners can distinguish between ASE, PE and CE speakers relative to their status, solidarity and perceived closeness. Dragojevic hypothesizes that Californian listeners will prefer the accent closest to home (ASE when it's ASE vs PE and CE when it's ASE vs CE) in both tests because they will have a stronger sense of connection, solidarity, and status.

Language is a powerful communication tool the user holds to express their individual identity and ingroup solidarity. The use of Standard English helps to direct this, as it acts as the structure of communication, ingroup and between speech communities to effectively present a standard for mutual understanding. Outside of Standard English comes the use of slang, netspeak and textspeak, which helps to develop and enrich the language, as well as evolve with contemporary Australia and its fast paced lifestyle. Using the Standard all the time would be exclusive of the linguistic freedom formed by the world beyond Standard English with varying ethnolects, but is also a

of a sentence as well as the structure of verbs. Auxiliary verbs came into use,

Among the most important concepts to emerge are those relating to dialects and language standards. Sociolinguists have documented the presence of dialects in every language. These dialects, all of which are legitimate, are associated with educational, economic, social and historical conditions. Hence, even if an individual scrupulously studies all the possible dictionaries of a random language, he would still be somewhat of a stranger to that language since he is unaware of all the dialectal changes.

As an aspect of study of the relationships between codes and social structure, diglossia is an important concept in the field of sociolinguistics. At the social level, each of the two dialects has certain spheres of social interaction assigned to it and in the assigned spheres it is the only socially acceptable dialect (with minor exceptions). At the grammatical level, differences may involve pronunciation, inflection, and/or syntax (sentence