English with an Accent

English with an Accent has inspired generations of scholars to investigate linguistic discrimination, social categorization, social structures, and power. This new edition is an attempt to retain the spirit of the original while enriching and expanding it.

Since its original publication in 1997, English with an Accent has inspired generations of scholars to investigate linguistic discrimination, social categorization, social structures, and power. This new edition is an attempt to retain the spirit of the original while enriching and expanding it to reflect the greater understanding of linguistic discrimination that it has helped create.

This third edition has been substantially reworked to include:

• An updated concept of social categories, how they are constructed in interaction, and how they can be invoked and perceived through linguistic cues or language ideologies

• Refreshed accounts of the countless social and structural factors that go into linguistic discrimination

• Expanded attention to specific linguistic structures, language groups, and social domains that go beyond those provided in earlier editions

• New dedicated chapter on American Sign Language and its history of discrimination

• QR codes linking to external media, stories, and other forms of engagement beyond the text

• A revamped website with additional material

*English with an Accent* remains a book that forces us to acknowledge and understand the ways language is used as an excuse for discrimination. The book will help readers to better understand issues of cross-cultural communication, to develop strategies for successful interactions across social difference, to recognize patterns of language that reflect implicit bias, and to gain awareness of how mistaken beliefs about language create and nurture prejudice and discrimination.

Autorentext

Rusty Barrett is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky. His research is in Mayan linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics. He is author of From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures, co-author of Other People's English: Code Meshing, Code Switching and African American Literacy, and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality.

Jennifer Cramer is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky. Her research is in perceptual dialectology, with a specific focus on dialect variation in Kentucky. She is the author of Contested Southernness: The Linguistic Production and Perception of Identities in the Borderlands, co-author of Linguistic Planets of Belief: Mapping Language Attitudes in the American South, and co-editor of Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology: Global Perspectives on Non-Linguists' Knowledge of the Dialect Landscape.

Kevin B. McGowan is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky and Director of the University of Kentucky Phonetics Lab. He is a phonetician, and his research primarily focuses on speech perception and the ways in which the creation and perception of social identities influence our ability to understand each other.

Klappentext

Since its original publication in 1997, English with an Accent has inspired generations of scholars to investigate linguistic discrimination, social categorization, social structures, and power. This new edition is an attempt to retain the spirit of the original while enriching and expanding it to reflect the greater understanding of linguistic discrimination that it has helped create. This third edition has been substantially reworked to include: An updated concept of social categories, how they are constructed in interaction, and how they can be invoked and perceived through linguistic cues or language ideologies Refreshed accounts of the countless social and structural factors that go into linguistic discrimination Expanded attention to specific linguistic structures, language groups, and social domains that go beyond those provided in earlier editions New dedicated chapter on American Sign Language and its history of discrimination QR codes linking to external media, stories, and other forms of engagement beyond the text A revamped website with additional material English with an Accent remains a book that forces us to acknowledge and understand the ways language is used as an excuse for discrimination. The book will help readers to better understand issues of cross-cultural communication, to develop strategies for successful interactions across social difference, to recognize patterns of language that reflect implicit bias, and to gain awareness of how mistaken beliefs about language create and nurture prejudice and discrimination.

Zusammenfassung
English with an Accent has inspired generations of scholars to investigate linguistic discrimination, social categorization, social structures, and power. This new edition is an attempt to retain the spirit of the original while enriching and expanding it.

Inhalt

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

The International Phonetic Alphabet

Preface to the Third Edition

Chapter One: The pronunciation of difference

Reproducing inequality

Discourse structural racism

Language ideologies

Red summer

Where we are headed

Discussion questions

Chapter Two: Language, categorization, and social identities

Fifty shades of grue

Only skin deep

Sorting humanity

Categories and cognition

Is that a sandwich?

Some basic semiotics

Language and racialization

Discussion questions

Chapter Three: Things linguists know about language

Facts about language

Linguistic potential

Variety is the spice of life!

Are you a robot?

So-called Standard English

Communicative effectiveness depends on variation

Discussion questions

Chapter Four: Language subordination

Reading a textbook: roles and responsibilities

Rejecting the gift: the individual's role in the communicative process

Hesitance and uncertainty?

Standard language ideology

Confronting ideologies

Discussion questions

Chapter Five: Place-based variation in the American context

The social meaning of place

Regional varieties of American English

Spread the word

Vowels on the move

Regional variation in morphology and syntax

OMG! There's, like, so much more variation!

Structured variation: the hidden life of language

Discussion questions

Chapter Six: Language, racialization, and racism

No MSG

Race, ethnicity, and linguistic variation

Ethnicity-indexing variation: words and sounds

Ethnicity-indexing variation: sentences and meanings

No MSG, no lazy grammar

Language, interaction, and ethnic inequality

Language, race, appropriation, and whiteness

Language is love

Discussion questions

Chapter Seven: Language diversity in the United States

Estados Unidos no tiene un idioma oficial

Language abundance

Stolen childhoods

Language ideologies and English public space

Embracing bilingualism

Discussion questions

Chapter Eight: American Sign Language and deaf culture

How people communicate

What it means to be hearing

Deaf culture

Sign languages and American Sign Language

Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

Oralism vs. manualism

Language ideology and deaf culture

Ideologies within the deaf community

Discussion questions

Chapter Nine: Putting language on the map

How we see the language around us

Perceptual dialectology

Linguistic landscapes

The linguistic perception of the American South

Kountry Livin'

What it means to sound Southern

Perceptions meet strategies of condescension

Discussion questions

Chapter Ten: A history of 'r' in the United States

Meaningful, important, and arbitrary

The remarkable letter 'r'

Rhotics: variety, terminology, and symbols

American is wei(r)d

Where did American come from?

From non-rhotic to rhotic: American sound change in the first half of…