Language in the USA Part 7 pot

Language ideology and language prejudice 299 but not for all of us. Many have strong negative reactions to Korean accents, or to African American Vernacular English, but certainly not everyone does. In Hawai‘i, where there is a long history of animus between people of Japanese and Filipino national origin, one person with a foreign accent may reject a different foreign accent or reject the creole that is spoken by so many in the islands. In black communities in the Bronx (in New York City) and elsewhere, there is a great deal of tension between African Americans and recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. In other communities, some people may cringe or glower when they hear Spanish spoken on the street or spoken between sales clerk and customer, while others may smile broadly to hear Italian or Polish spoken in the same situations. The languages and language varieties we hear must pass through our language ideology filters. In extreme cases, we feel completely justi- fied in rejecting the communicative burden – and, in so doing, the person in front of us. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (specifically Title VII of that law) provides recourse for workers who are discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The scope of the law was broadened in 1980 to address trait-based discrimination (for example, language that is linked to national origin). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (abbreviated EEOC) is responsible for the overview and administration of Title VII. In its Guidelines on Discrimination because of National Origin, the EEOC currently defines national origin discrimination broadly as including, but not limited to, the denial of equal employment opportunity because of an individual’s, or his or her ancestor’s place of origin; or because an individual has the physical, cultural or linguistic characteristics of a national origin group. [Federal Register 1988: ¶1606.1; italics added] The spirit of the law is clear: an employer may not reject a job candidate or fire or refuse to promote an employee because the employee externalizes in some way an allegiance to another culture. In the case of racial discrimination, the courts have determined that no personal preference (neither the employer’s nor that of his customers) can excuse discrimination. Similarly, a qualified person may not be rejected on the basis of linguistic traits the employer or the employer’s customers find aesthetically objectionable, as long as those linguistic traits are linked to a category protected by the Civil Rights Act, and that includes national origin. In contrast to racial discrimination, however, an employer has some latitude in matters of language: “An adverse employment decision may be predicated upon an individual’s accent when – but only when – it interferes materially with job performance” (Civil Rights Act of 1964, §701 et seq., 42 U.S.C.A. §2000e et seq.). Let’s return now to the story we began with at the head of the chapter. Florence Kyomugisha lost her job at the University of Wisconsin in part because of alleged communication difficulties with her supervisor, Ms. Clowney. It is important to note that after its independence from Great Britain, Uganda adopted English as its 300 rosina lippi-green official language. English is the language of government and commerce and the primary medium of education; official publications and most major newspapers appear in English, and English is often employed in radio and television broad- casts. Ms. Kyomugisha, a fluent speaker of Runyankole and Luganda, is also a native and fluent speaker of Ugandan English. As the chancellor of the univer- sity acknowledged in 1996, while Ms. Kyomugisha does not speak “Wisconsin English, she nevertheless speaks perfectly fine English” (Kyomugisha v. Clowney, complaint filed October 16, 1997). In her complaint under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Ms. Kyomugisha claimed national origin discrimination linked to language traits. This is a subject her attorney explored during the deposition of her supervisor, Ms. Clowney, who is also an attorney. (A deposition is testimony taken under oath as part of the preparation for a trial.) The attorney uses the term animus to refer to prejudice or malevolent ill will. a ttorney: You know about discriminatory animus from your pro- fessional preparation in the field of affirmative action and discrimination law; isn’t that correct? youwere respon- sible for doing the investigations of discrimination at the university, and you need to know what the law is about that, correct? clowney: Yes,sir. a ttorney: And you know about the sociology of discrimination, right? clowney: Yes. a ttorney: And you would agree that the process of communication between two individuals involves a degree of burden shar- ing between the two individuals for purposes of making each other understood, correct? clowney: Sometimes. It depends on the nature of the two individuals. Iwould agree that the burden is more on an investigator to be understood in an university community than employ- ees. The burden is more so on the professional than the nonprofessional. a ttorney: Now, I’m speaking of two people who speak with each other, who have divergent accents. You agree that you have an accent, correct? clowney: At times I might. I don’t know if I do or not; you tell me. a ttorney: Well, isn’t it true that all people have an accent of one kind or another? clowney: Not all people, some people. My mother is a schoolteacher and she doesn’t necessarily have an accent. Language ideology and language prejudice 301 a ttorney: Well, do you think somebody from another part of the coun- try who speaks with a different intonation would say that that person in fact has an accent? clowney: Possibly, yes. a ttorney: And communication between two such people involves the acceptance of a certain responsibility for burden sharing between each other in order to effectuate communication; isn’t that correct? clowney: It can. It depends on the relationship between the two indi- viduals. a ttorney: One of the factors in that relationship that could make the communication difficult is when one individual refuses to accept burden, a burden in connection with effectuating comprehensibility; isn’t that correct? clowney: How about the burden on the other person to go and take courses and study and to be understood as well. What about –why should the burden–Ialso understand diversity, but why should the burden be on the recipient rather than, I mean, if you look at modern-day diversity studies, we’d be here all day. There’s a double burden; there’s a dual burden. I’ll – I’ll say there’s a dual burden. a ttorney: Isn’t it true that in some conversations where one person has a racial animus of one type or a national origin ani- mus of one type that person refuses to accept a burden, any burden for effectuating the communication and thereby make – makes the allegation that the person is incomprehensible? clowney: I’m not going to answer that. I’m not an expert on com- munications skills. I’ve written papers on communication skills and racial animus. I can’t say that. You’re – you’re asking me to draw inferences here and I can’t say that. There are people I know that are trained who don’t have any kind of animus; and if they can’t understand someone, they get frustrated, and then have nothing to do with race, sex, religion, whatever. But the bottom line is that, you know, it’s – you have to listen a little bit carefully, but, you know. a ttorney: Do you feel like you accepted your portion of the burden in trying to understand Florence’s oral communications? clowney: Yes. 302 rosina lippi-green a ttorney: whether you feel that you accepted your portion of the burden to comprehend what Florence was saying to you when she was orally communicating with you? clowney: Yes, I do. a ttorney: Do you feel that you made a reasonable good faith effort to understand Florence? clowney: Yes, I do. a ttorney: Is it your testimony that notwithstanding that effort that was not enough and you still had oral communication problems with Florence? clowney: Yes, I do. Subsequent to this deposition, the university decided to settle this case before it came to trial, and Ms. Kyomugisha received compensatory damages, back pay, and the attorney’s costs she had incurred. The university’s lawyers did not disclose the reasons the university decided to offer a settlement, but from her deposition there would seem to be some question about the true origin of Ms. Clowney’s communication difficulties with Ms. Kyomugisha. She asked, “How about the burden on the other person to go and take courses and study and to be understood as well whyshould the burden be on the recipient . . . ?” After Ms. Kyomugisha had worked successfully for four years with three other supervisors, it would be difficult to justify a claim that her accent was a bur- den or barrier in any general sense. As Ms. Clowney herself seems to acknowl- edge, racial or national origin animus can raise a barrier of its own to successful communication. Ms. Kyomugisha was knowledgeable about the law, and she had the strength of will necessary to pursue her legal rights. She was successful, but many others are not. Everyday in the USA, individuals are taught that the language they speak marks them as less-than-good-enough. Some turn away from them, pretending not to understand their language. The repercussions of such linguistic rejection are vast, because our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. [Taylor 1994: 25] Linguists are interested in the process of language subordination – how it works, why it works, and why we let it work. Standard language ideology is introduced by the schools, vigorously promoted by the media, and further institutionalized by the corporate sector. It is underscored and underwritten in subtle and not so subtle ways by the judicial system. Thus, it is not surprising that many individuals do not recognize the fact that, for spoken language, variation is systematic, structured, and inherent, and that the national standard is an abstraction. What is surprising Language ideology and language prejudice 303 and deeply disturbing is the way that many individuals who consider themselves democratic, even-handed, rational, and free of prejudice hold on tenaciously to a standard language ideology. Suggestions for further reading and exploration Lippi-Green (1987) exposes and indicts social institutions that instill language prejudice and discrimination, including how the spoken accents of animated Hol- lywood characters perpetuate stereotypes. Cameron (1995) is strong on politi- cal correctness, sexist language, and linguistic prescriptivism, but with examples drawn largely from Britain. Less accessible and more theoretical, Eagleton (1991) addresses ideologies from a Marxist point of view. Gee (1996) begins his excellent analysis of discourse and literacy from a moral perspective. McKay and Wong (1988) gathers in one place descriptions of contemporary language minorities in the USA, particularly Hispanic and Asian groups; some chapters offer a histori- cal perspective and others address educational implications of language diversity. Herman and Chomsky (1988), relying on case studies, propose a propaganda model of the press and argue that the press is manipulated by government and corporations into playing a role in shaping events, rather than fairly reporting them. Fairclough (1992) gives good representation to analyses of critical lan- guage awareness and critical discourse analysis. Crawford (1992) documents the historical roots of US language policy (with pieces by Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, among many others), the official English movement and the issues surrounding it, and the symbolic implications of language conflict. Woolard and Schieffelin (1994) reviews and analyzes the literature on the subject of language ideology. Foucault (1984), in a classic treatment, addresses questions of who has the right to speak and be heard and the implications of the answers to those questions. Bourdieu (1991) is a classic treatment of the role of symbolic power in social life. References Alatis, James. 1970. “Linguistics and the Teaching of Standard English to Speakers of Other Languages or Dialects.” In Alatis’s Report of the Twentieth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies.Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Associated Press. 1992. “Debate Over Teachers with Accents,” New York Times. July 5, Sec. 1, p. 12. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Ed. and intro. by J. B. Thompson. Trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London and New York: Routledge. Card, Orson Scott. 2003. http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/restaurant/utah/gardenwall. shtml Crawford, James, ed. 1992. Language Loyalties: a Source Book on the Official English Con- troversy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: an Introduction. London: Verso. Fairclough, Norman, ed. 1992. Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman. 304 rosina lippi-green Foucault, Michel. 1984. “The Order of Discourse.” In Language and Politics, ed. Michael Shapiro. New York: New York University Press. Pp. 108–38. Gee, James Paul. 1990. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourse. London and New York: Falmer. Herman, E. S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media.New York: Pantheon. Kyomugisha, Florence G. v. Charmaine P. Clowney and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Case No. 97C1089. Deposition taken July 7, 1998. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge. McKay, Sandra Lee and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, eds. 1988. Language Diversity: Problem or Resource? A Social and Educational Perspective on Language Minorities in the United States. Boston MA: Heinle. Oprah Winfrey Show. November 19, 1987. No. W309. “Standard and ‘Black English’.” Produced by D. DiMaio; directed by J. McPharlin. Park, Kee Y. v. James A. Baker III, Secretary of the Treasury, EEOC No. 05870646. 1988. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct.New York: W. W. Morrow and Co. Sledd, James. 1972. “Doublespeak: Dialectology in the Service of Big Brother,” College English 33: 439–56. Spicher, Lori Lea. 1992. “Language Attitude towards Speakers with a Mexican Accent: Ram- ifications in the Business Community of San Diego, California.” Unpub. Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin. Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Woolard, Kathryn A. and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1994. “Language Ideology,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 23: 55–82. Xieng, Phanna K. et al v. Peoples National Bank of Washington.Washington State Supreme Court, opinion dated January 21, 1993. No. 59064–8. Zentella, Ana Celia. 1996. “The ‘Chiquitafication’ of US Latinos and their Languages, OR Why We Need an Anthropolitical Linguistics.” In SALSA III. Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium about Language and Society, eds. R. Ide, R. Park, and Y. Sunaoski. Austin: University of Texas: Texas Linguistic Forum 36, 1–18. 16 Ebonics and its controversy JOHN BAUGH Editors' introduction This chapter explores the origins and definitions of the term Ebonics, and the linguistic, educa- tional and sociopolitical implications of the Oakland school board’s 1996 resolution recognizing Ebonics as the primary language of its African American students. The controversy sparked by this resolution was both intense and international. It was one of the biggest linguistic brouhahas in the USA in the twentieth century. In this, as in other recent work (Baugh 1999), John Baugh emphasizes the links between the language of African Americans and their linguistic and educational legacies as slave descen- dants – people who, more so than other Americans, were not allowed to maintain their ancestral languages or have equal access to education and justice. As he notes, the African American linguists who first defined Ebonics in the 1970s saw it as a continuum, including “the com- municative competence of the West African, Caribbean and US slave descendants of African origin” (Williams 1975: v). This international and multilingual connection was implicit in the Oakland school board’s December 1996 resolution, but less so in their January 1997 revision, which portrayed it primarily as an American variety of English, in concert with the supportive resolution of the Linguistic Society of America. Baugh presents other definitions of Ebonics and discusses the reactions to and policy implications of recognizing the legitimacy of the vernacular of African Americans, including its potential role in developing fluency in standard English. Orientation Ebonics came to global attention on December 18, 1996. That was the day the Oakland, California school board passed a resolution declaring Ebonics to be the “predominantly primary language” of its 28,000 African American students. That linguistic assertion did more than label the speech of every African American student attending public schools in Oakland. It also set off a chain of political and research events that continue to reverberate in communities where people of African descent speak English. Some of these people are native English speakers, often residing in the Caribbean, Great Britain, or the United States. In other coun- tries, such as Tanzania, South Africa, or Haiti, speakers of English who trace their ancestry to Black Africans may have learned English as a secondary language. 305 306 john baugh Strong emotional reactions to Ebonics occurred as its proponents attempted to embrace the term, while detractors were quick to denounce it. As is typically the case with any complex social phenomenon, the true story of Ebonics is not dichotomous. It does not fall neatly into racial categories, nor does it coincide with divisions in wealth, education, or residence. Ebonics continues to be greatly misunderstood, owing substantially to a plethora of definitions that have evolved among well-intended social scientists and educators who have tried to label the linguistic legacy of the African slave trade. Today few public figures dare speak of Ebonics, largely because of the scorn and ridicule heaped upon Oakland’s educators who tried unsuccessfully to embrace the term. This chapter does not presume familiarity with Ebonics, nor does it assume that readers are fully knowledgeable about the diversity of African American language, education, or culture. It does presume that readers know that African slaves and their descendants were historically deprived of access to schools and to equal justice under law. Oakland educators were keenly aware of these historical circumstances, but they were unprepared for the political, educational, financial, and emotional reactions that would greet their notorious linguistic resolution. Long before 1996, when Oakland’s school board began their quest, the educational prospects of the vast majority of African Americans remained dim, and today they still lag far behind the vast majority of other US students. One scholar who tried to strike a balance between linguistic evidence and the educational needs of African American students was John R. Rickford, who among other contributions was the primary author of a resolution on the Oakland Ebonics issue that the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) passed in January of 1997: Whereas there has been a great deal of discussion in the media and among the American public about the 18 December 1996 decision of the Oakland School Board to recognize the language variety spoken by many African American students and to take it into account in teaching Standard English, the Linguistic Society of America, as a society of scholars engaged in the scientific study of language, hereby resolves to make it known that: a. The variety known as “Ebonics,” “African American Vernacular English” (AAVE), and “Vernacular Black English” and by other names is system- atic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. In fact, all human linguistic systems – spoken, signed, and written – are fundamentally reg- ular. The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronuncia- tion patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as “slang,” “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning. b. The distinction between “languages” and “dialects” is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones. For example, different varieties of Chinese are popularly regarded as “dialects,” though their speakers cannot understand each other, but speakers of Swedish Ebonics and its controversy 307 and Norwegian, which are regarded as separate “languages,” generally understand each other. What is important from a linguistic and educa- tional point of view is not whether AAVE is called a “language” or a “dialect” but rather that its systematicity be recognized. c. As affirmed in the LSA Statement of Language Rights (June 1996), there are individual and group benefits to maintaining vernacular speech vari- eties and there are scientific and human advantages to linguistic diversity. For those living in the United States there are also benefits in acquiring Standard English and resources should be made available to all that aspire to mastery of Standard English. The Oakland School Board’s commitment to helping students master Standard English is commendable. d. There is evidence from Sweden, the US, and other countries that speak- ers of other varieties can be aided in their learning of the standard vari- ety by pedagogical approaches which recognize the legitimacy of the other varieties of a language. From this perspective, the Oakland School Board’s decision to recognize the vernacular of African American stu- dents in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound. At a time when the vast majority of Americans took strong exception to Ebonics, Rickford and the LSA affirmed the linguistic integrity of vernacular African American English and elevated the Ebonics controversy from a domestic US dispute to one of global proportion. It was this multinational orientation that Oakland’s educators did not fully articulate in their early resolution. The birth of Ebonics The term Ebonics was first introduced in 1973 at a conference on the psychologi- cal development of African American children. Two years later, Robert Williams published the conference proceedings as Ebonics: the True Language of Black Folks. In this book, Ebonics was defined for the very first time, as “the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the com- municative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendants of African origin” (Williams 1975: v). The scholars at the 1973 meet- ing were all African Americans, and they spanned a broad range of disciplines including anthropology, communication, comparative cultures, education, speech pathology, and social psychology. Collectively they expressed concern over the term Black English, which was prevalent in professional linguistic circles after 1969. Linguists had previously used the term “nonstandard Negro English” for the speech of the majority of African Americans. Influenced by grassroots efforts within the African American community to affirm that “Black is Beautiful,” schol- ars in linguistics and other fields began to replace “colored” and “Negro” with “Black” and “Afro-American” (see Baugh 1991, Smitherman 1991). While these efforts were intended to demonstrate respect for African Ameri- cans, Williams and his colleagues took umbrage at the term Black English, not 308 john baugh so much for its reference to blackness, but because the immediate juxtaposition of Black and English gave some scholars pause. Information about Black English has proliferated, creating a misunderstand- ing of the scope and function of the language. Ebonics as a designation for the language, usually referred to as Black English, attempts to remove some of the ambiguity created by connecting black with English. (Asanti 1979: 363) Under this interpretation, “Black” and “English” should not coexist as a socio- linguistic construct, and many educators in Oakland were sympathetic to this interpretation. One reason they embraced “Ebonics” is the fact that it provides African Americans with something that so many other Americans take for granted, namely, the ability to trace one’s ancestral linguistic and cultural roots. Ameri- cans of British, German, Greek, Italian, or Mexican heritage, among many others, often know precisely which languages were spoken by their ancestors. Because slaves were never intended to be full participants in democracy, descendants of African slaves do not know their complete linguistic heritage. It is this historical discrepancy that Williams and his colleagues pondered as they combined “Ebony” with “phonics” to describe the linguistic consequences of the African slave trade in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA. Inherent international implications Although Williams and his colleagues lacked professional linguistic credentials, their desire to classify the linguistic legacy of the African slave trade helped to confirm the inherent multinational and multilingual foundations of Ebonics, beyond English. European slave traders did not know or speak African languages with anything resembling fluency, which resulted in pervasive human contact and language mixing among blacks and whites who were associated with the capture, transport, and sale of African captives throughout North and South America. Because Ebonics was thrust upon politicians and the media through the Oakland school board resolution, government officials and journalists reacted to its con- temporary interpretation with little historical reflection, which only served to shroud the issue in a domestic web of sensitive race relations. Vitriol toward Ebonics was so extensive that Black pundits were among the first to decry its exis- tence. In a New York Times opinion piece called “The Last Train from Oakland: Will the Middle Class Flee the ‘Ebonics’ Fad?” Brent Staples (1997) asserted that “The Oakland, Calif. school board deserved the scorn that greeted its December edict declaring broken, inner-city English a distinct, ‘genetically based’ language system that merited a place in the classroom.” He was not alone in this depiction, but his linguistic castigation failed to acknowledge the unique linguistic heritage of African slave descendants as compared with any other group of American immigrants. [...]... policies would assist the monolingual English-speaking majority in benefiting from multilingualism? There is also room for questions from those interested in language policy simply because they love languages: What kinds of language policies would ensure that other languages in the USA can survive, given the unrivaled dominance of English? What policies would help to mitigate the rapidity of language loss?... teachers and aides [instructional assistants], who are certified in the methodology of featuring African Language Systems principles in instructing African American children both in their primary language and in English [used to transition students from the language patterns they bring to school to English] The certified teachers of these students will be provided incentives including, but not limited... Task Force on language stature of African American speech; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Superintendent in conjunction with her staff shall immediately devise and implement the best possible academic program for imparting instruction to African American students in their primary language for the combined purposes of maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language [facilitating the acquisition... School Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White’,” The Urban Review 8: 176 –206 Labov, William 1 972 Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1982 “Objectivity and Commitment in Linguistic Science: the Case of the Black English Trial in Ann Arbor,” Language in Society 11: 165–201 19 97 Testimony before the US Senate: Senate... Classifying language policies according to intents and consequences Some of the confusion that occurs in popular discussions of language policies results from dichotomizing choices regarding governmental recognition and support for languages, as if they involved only either–or choices between English Language planning, language policy, and the English-Only Movement and other languages There remains some... bilingual education and bilingual ballots has often been attacked by English-Only advocates as if they were promotion-oriented in their intent 3 Tolerance-oriented policies are characterized by the significant absence of state interference in the linguistic life of the languageminority communities They leave language- minority communities 325 326 terrence g wiley to their own devices to maintain their... included in the process as well I extend the term Ebonics to include all languages of African people on the continent and in the Diaspora that have created new languages based on their environmental circumstances (Blackshire-Belay 1996: 20) This broad view reaffirms the international foundations that Williams introduced when he coined the term Ebonics, but in striking contrast to the scientific linguistics... 1994) Linguistic minorities have always been keen to comprehend the implications of detrimental language policies, regardless of whether these policies have been official, implicit, or covert (Heath 1 976 b, Leibowitz 1 971 ) For example, in the 1880s, Indian children were compelled to attend boarding schools for the express purpose of introducing them to English and the dominant culture and providing them... present in the original resolution of December 18, 1996, but deleted in the amended version of January 15, 19 97; wording that was added at that time to replace or supplement the original wording appears in bold, in brackets; otherwise, in the words of the secretary of the Board of Education, this “is a full, true and correct copy of a resolution passed at a Regular Meeting of the Board of Education of the. .. stage at the outset of the twentieth century but had been raised even during the era of English colonization before the founding of the Republic A historical review of language planning and policy formation and an analysis of their ideological underpinnings may be helpful in understanding current debates over language policy in the USA This chapter represents a modest attempt at understanding the complexity . program for imparting instruction to African American students in their primary language for the combined purposes of maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language [facilitating the acquisition. featuring African Language Systems principles in instructing African American children both in their primary language and in English [to move students from the language patterns they bring to. linguistic brouhahas in the USA in the twentieth century. In this, as in other recent work (Baugh 1999), John Baugh emphasizes the links between the language of African Americans and their linguistic and