Gee, James article

The James Gee theory talks about different grammatical uses of the English language depending on the different social communities.

He uses the example of a seven-year-old black child and how she constructs the sentence “My puppy, he always be followin me”. He shows two different opinions about this phenomenon, on the one hand, there is people who thinks that this is because the child “attends to a poor and neglected school and comes from an impoverished home with few or no books in it, a home which gives little support for and encouragement to education” (Gee, James L.14), this is a charitable point of view. Secondly some people like some teachers explain that this is because the child is a “slow learner” (Gee, James L.19).

But James Gee disagree with these two points of view due to he thinks this is not a wrong construction but a modification of the “Black Vernacular English” grammatical constructions (we can see it in the “bare be” use that is an innovation of young black speakers.)

Moreover, in the child’s example there isn’t only innovation items but, as in the “followin” case, the “-g dropping” is because an informal use of the word “following”.

To sum up, in this case, the child hadn’t a problem in her intelligence but she uses a different dialect.

In other languages happens something similar. For example in the case of Spanish language, there is people that say “me se+verb” instead of “se me+verb”. The grammatical Spanish rules says the first combination is wrong but the people who use it they do it always, although it doesn’t means they are illiterarte or less intelligent than the other people, it only means they use a non-standard form to say “se me+verb”.

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Do accents remain stable or not? What is the attitude towards Keat's poetry and dropping aitches /h/ according to these articles?

As we can see from these two articles, the use of language is very conservative in different spheres of life. In poetry or literature, for example, it is expected that writers adhere to expected norms. In the case of Keats, who wrote phonetically without aitches, he was seen to be uneducated, or certainly not intelligent enough to be able to distinguish between written English and the spoken cockney language. Furthermore, the second article demonstrates the changing of language as a fashion, although depending on the context in which it is used can quite often cause offence or lend itself to ridicule, such as dropping aitches in the House of Commons.

What stereotypes are associated with the accent in each of these excerpts? Are you surprised by any of them? . . .

The articles here show that attitudes towards Americans from the South often centre around stereotypes of lack of intelligence, especially among the women with these accents. It has also been suggested that southern accents in general are associated with "native wit rather than intelligence." However, this is not necessarily true in every country, in England for example the Birmingham accent is associated with villainy and mistrust, to the point where conviction rates are influenced by the accent someone has. We are also shown how the perceptions of an accent change over time, such as in the case of Liverpool. What used to be seen as a savvy, street-wise, witty accent changed in a matter of thirty years or so to an accent associated with a group seen to be "sponging, untrustworthy scallies." Finally, the New York "fast-talking, sleazy, hucksterish and low-brow" and is seen as a very undesirable accent by the vast majority of Americans.

What are the attitudes towards the accents (not their native languages) of immigrants in Britain and the United States

One view of British attitudes towards immigrants is shown in the Sunday Telegraph article whereby there is an expectation that to show respect for the country in which an individual lives, the native language must be used at all times, even if it is not the native tongue of the individual who lives there. This expectation that English be used at all times, even in the home of families whose native language may be something other than English, is a little ambitious. However, a refusal to adhere to this expectation can result in suspicion or resentment on the art of the people who consider themselves the natives of the land, as if by using a different language represents something being hidden or obscured from public view.

The USA article furthers this point of view. Here it is suggested that an immigrant's usage of the host language represents an adherence to the values of that country, in the case of Britain and America, the democratic politics and the individual liberty of society.

Consequently, a refusal to learn or use the host language can be seen as a rejection of the democratic principles on which the countries society and politics are based and "a threat of subversion to the American system of government."

Read these excerpts and say what the attitudes to non-standard English are

These four excerpts clearly demonstrate the conservative attitudes of many people in England towards the written and spoken use of the language. For example, the argument of "we was" against "we were" represents the struggle of the institutionalized, "correct" form of "we were" against the more colloquial "incorrect" form of "we was". It is also suggested here that the incorrect use of language has the ability to "[condemn] an individual to his class or ethnic ghetto than an inability to communicate clearly and logically in English." Correct use of the English language has come to be seen as more than just a distinction between social classes, but as a basic tool of survival. Furthermore, we are shown that it is a struggle for teachers in elementary schools to work against the prevalent social forces influencing people's language outside the classroom.

However, there is an argument presented in these extracts, Thomas et al (2003), that although it is quite easy to classify written English as either good or bad, correct or incorrect, this classification is not as simple in spoken language. In this instance, it is said that a certain form of language or dialect can't be incorrect, just inappropriate.