3.5 Language and Ethnicity

• History of Immigration to Britain:

  • Norman Invasion in 11th century - French was main language.
  • African musicians recorded living in Britain in 1500s.
  • Slave Trade mant the arrival of more African's in 16th and 17th century.
  • Irish is largest ethnic group to move to UK and has affected Liverpudlian accent and dialect.
  • Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi are in the UK in large numbers.
• Creole - A variety that has developed from 'pidgin' or trade language to become a stable language used by speakers as their mother tongue.

  Popular in Jamaica

  Influx of Jamaican speakers in mid-20th century due to Windrush.
• Bucholtz (2001) - Studied 'white nerds' who deliberately distanced themselves from 'cooler' black speech styles.
• Ben Rampton (2010) - Stated that Creole was widely 'seen as cool, tough and good to use.'

  He went on to say it was associated with 'assertiveness, verbal resourcefulness and competence in heterosexual relationships.'
• Roger Hewitt (1986) + Mark Sebba (1993) - Identified the development of 'Black Cockney', a style used by black speakers in London,
• John Pitts (2012) - Identified that some black English speakers were rebelling against mainstream society as they felt ignored.
• British Black English (BBE) - Often used to refer to a variety used by some speakkers within the Caribbean community in the UK.
• Rob Drummond

  Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE) - Refers to the in which Multicultural Londen English (MLE) has spread to other large cities in the UK.
• Cheshire et al (2008) - Identified MLE, now described as MUBE.
• MLE Vocabulary:

  • 'Bare' - A lot / very
  • 'Beef' - disagreement / conflict
  • 'Choong' - attractive
  • 'Ting' - girlfriend or thing
• MLE Phonology:

  Most noticeable are the diphthong vowel sounds of 'face' and 'like' which are pronounced as /fes/ and /la:k/.
• MLE Phonology:

  Most noticeable are the diphthong vowel sounds of 'face' and 'like' which are pronounced as /fes/ and /la:k/.
• MLE Grammar:

  • Use of 'dem' as plural marker - 'man dem' for 'men'
• MLE Grammar:

  • Use of 'dem' as plural marker - 'man dem' for 'men'
  • 'Man' to refer to oneself - 'man paid for his own ticket'
• MLE Discourse Features:

  • 'Innit' as a tag question'
  • 'You get me' as conformation check.
  • 'this is me' as quotative - "this is me, 'Not much, just playing XBOX'"
• Jafaican - Often used to refer to MLE. There is nothing 'fake', and MLE only features a touch of Jamaican.
• Assumptions of colour - Has been suggested that anything coined as 'white' is not bad like a 'white lie'.

  One of the worst financial crashes coined 'black Wednesday' - people will begin to associate black with negativity.

  Determinism vs Linguistic Relativity?