Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Language and ethnicity - Coggle Diagram
Language and ethnicity
Ethnicity and language have a fascinating, although often very complex, relationship. In some ways, it’s quite easy to imagine how somebody’s ethnic background will have an effect on how they use English.
For example, if somebody migrated to an English-speaking country with English as their second language, then it would be no surprise that their first language would influence the way they speak.
However, the situation is less clear when we consider the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of these same people. Second- and third-generation migrants will usually have English as a first language, yet it is often not quite the same variety of English as the local ‘native speakers’.
Code-Switching
-
When speakers who speak two or more different language switch from one to the either, often mid-conversation depending on who they are talking to or what they wish to accomplish.
-
In many cases an important influence on the way we speak speak is what’s known as our heritage language.
A typical situation in the UK would be where a teenager of Indian heritage has English as a first language, but the main language in the family home is Punjabi. At school and with friends the teen is likely to use English, but at home is likely to use a mixture of English and Punjabi.
Style-Shifting
-
When speakers adjust the way they speak depending on a combination of factors such as how much attention they are paying to what they’re saying, who they are talking to, or how they want to be perceived in a particular context.
-
There can be lots of reasons to code-switch, but the relevant reason here is that one of its possible functions is the performance of ethnic identity.
Sociolinguist, Janet Holmes, describes several examples of this kind of switching. She makes the point that speakers don’t actually need to be proficient speakers of the second language to still make use of particular words and phrases that signal and reaffirm their ethnic identity to others, thus creating a sense of solidarity.
-
The term is intended to refer to any variety related to any ethnic group, however more often than not, it is used in relation to an immigrant or minority population within a dominant white context.
This imbalance leads many to be uncomfortable with the term, as it can be seen to maintain a divide between the marked and marginalised ethnic minorities and the unmarked population.
This doesn’t mean the we shouldn’t talk about ethnolects; the term is established and used widely. It does though mean that when we do use the word, we should be aware that in some ways we are imposing a sense of stability and fixedness on something that is actually much more fluid.
Multiethnolect
-
A collection of linguistic resources combining features from a variety of languages within a multi-ethnic, multicultural context.
-
As with ‘ethnolect’, not everybody is happy with the term ‘multiethnolect’. One argument is that it still prioritises ethnicity over and above other social
-
Another is that it fails to reflect the fluidity of these ways of speaking, perhaps
-
However, there are no alternatives that everybody agrees on, so linguists tend to use the term that they feel most accurately describes what language variant they are looking at.