You and me and discrimination

This last example is especially interesting for us, as second language speakers. It is very easy to assume that someone who does not speak a language very well is not intelligent. You all speak English very well, but if you go to an English speaking country, like the U.S. or Britain, you may find yourselves discriminated against to some extent because of your accent or because of minor mistakes you may make in speaking the English language.

I am in similar circumstances as a non-native speaker of Russian here in Ukraine. There is no doubt in my mind that I have been discriminated against in small ways—thankfully nothing big—because I do not speak the language well and people consider this some sort of mark against me. Or, another example, if I do not learn the language in the amount of time people expect me to—that is as fast as they think I should, then I also may not be considered very intelligent, even though it is well known that it takes a very long time to learn a second language and that people learn some things in a language faster than others.

This is a very important consideration in the study of sociolinguistics and you could write an interesting paper on it, if you should so choose.

Linguicism or linguistic discrimination can also, at times, be combined with other forms of discrimination. One particularly well know example of this in sociolinguistics is the language discrimination against speakers of AAVE, African-American Vernacular English.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Again, to review: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)—as we discussed last week—is used by many African Americans, particularly those from working-class or inner-city areas. Black English clearly differs from other varieties of English in its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, but simply attaching it to one population group oversimplifies a complex situation.

Many African Americans do not speak Black English all the time and have an excellent command of Standard English; many non-African Americans who live in inner cities also speak AAVE. Complicating matters further, African American influence — music, fashion, and language — on American culture is very strong. As a result, some white American teenagers from the suburbs consciously imitate Black language features, to express their own group identity and shared opposition to mainstream culture.

Many people — African American or not — look down on Black English as an undesirable or ignorant form of the language. Others see it as a proud and positive symbol of the African-American experience. A few political activists or Afro-centrists insist that Ebonics isn’t a dialect of English at all but rather a separate language with roots in Africa. And many people accept Black English as an important social dialect but argue that its speakers must also master Standard English in order to succeed in America today.

Sociolinguistics has show that increasing segregation in cities of the United States are depriving the black community of its basic resources, and is in danger of creating a permanent underclass.

This is true in every city in the country: while the white dialects are continuing to develop and diverge from each other, the black community of the inner city holds aloof from all this, and has developed a nationally uniform grammar that is more and more distinct from that of the surrounding white dialects.