And now, we continue with our regular programming. So this second entry is entitled "South Side Story Part 2". I'm going to attempt to describe a study that I think is really interesting. This study was conducted by Betsey Sneller, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. For the sake of appropriately recognizing Betsey's work and perspective, I have included a link to a published manuscript by the researcher herself describing the same study. The link can be found at the bottom of this page.
Do you remember the last time you were in Philadelphia or talked to a native of the Philadelphia region? Anyone who knows Philly personally, has friends/ family from Philly, or even resided there is probably familiar with Philadelphia's unique regional dialect. Perhaps, if you are an outsider like me, you too have been confused when someone offers you "wooder" at dinner instead of "water". Or maybe you start scanning the stadium for some sort of fantastic beast when a local football fan chants in favor of their beloved "Iggles". Yes, the pronunciation of vowels by Philadelphia natives is a notable feature that without a doubt adds to the city's character. But, differences in accents emerge within clusters of neighborhoods in Philadelphia too, distinguishing sub-groups of that population and accounting for even more variability. Betsey Sneller is a member of a group a the University of Pennsylvania that studies variability in language use among speakers from different neighborhoods in Philadelphia. One of the goals of the group is to document language changes and shifts. Some researchers, like Betsey Sneller, focus specifically on sound change. Sneller was interested in whether speakers from different social groups within a neighbor borrow sound features of their neighbors. It is probably not surprising that speakers from different social groups would adopt some of the patterns from a neighboring group. However, Sneller was interested in a particular pattern in South Philadelphia prominent in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), but not commonly used by residents who aren't African American in the South Philadelphia community. The sound pattern she was interested in is called Th-fronting. In words that contain the letter sequence th, the th is pronounced like an f . To observe speakers outside of the African American community use this feature in the neighborhood Betsey examined would be interesting. This is because extreme boundaries exist between Whites and African Americans residing in this neighborhood. Because African Americans and Whites are physically segregated into each zone, they rarely interact. In addition, informed via interviews and socio-historical representation of the neighborhood, Sneller hypothesized that there is tension between the groups. This tension is speculated to have caused negative perception of the AAVE sound patterns. Based on these observations, you wouldn't expect TH-fronting in White members of the South Philadelphia neighborhood. To test her hypothesis, conducted two waves of studies. In the first wave, she used a field method approach. Sneller collected information about TH-fronting via informal interviews with members from one South Philadelphia block. To get participants to open up, she asked them about everyday experiences that mattered to them. Using this technique, she found that White residents were using TH-fronting at a rate that exceeded mere chance. In the second wave of her study, she used an experimental approach to determine what sort of factors influenced whether speakers would borrow a new sound feature. In particular, this study had the potential to reveal why speakers who had "antagonistic contact" with another group would choose to adopt a feature from that other group. To examine these questions, Sneller constructed an artificial language used by two alien groups. Participants were taught vocabulary in the two aliens languages and were shown images of members from the alien groups. The groups were called Burls and Wiwos. The Burls were drawn to look physically tough. The Wiwos were not tough looking. Once the participants learned the language, they played a game as opponents working against each other to get the most resources. You could either barter for resources or challenge someone to a fight. Participants could communicate with each other before every challenge. This enabled Sneller to analyze the sound features she was interested in. The important finding in this study was that, if the context involved a pressure to be tough, the participants who were assigned to be Wiwos borrowed the sound features of the Burls. To clarify, when the game allowed fighting as a means to get resources, there was borrowing of features from the tough group. When there was no fighting allowed in the game, there was no linguistic borrowing. In addition, the informal interviews revealed that speakers who had the most antagonistic attitudes about the other group were most likely to use TH-fronting. However, attitudes about the opposing alien groups were not explored in the laboratory. These findings are interesting and beg even more questions. Through other researchers' work on the larger Philadelphia dialect, we know that most neighborhoods in Philadelphia are shifting sounds in the same direction. One question that I find interesting is how does the relative extent of interaction between speakers of different ethno-dialects within a neighborhood influence that neighborhood's tendency to be in the "new" middle? One way to understand this may be to focus on AAVE speakers and non-AAVE speakers who work together for their occupations, but who live in physically-divided neighborhoods. Another question that I have concerns how this type of borrowing manifests in young children. It is my, perhaps naive, belief that young children are less likely to be affected by negative social perceptions carried by adults. However, it would be insightful to know whether it is possible, even at young ages, where the concept of race may not be strong, to see a different/similar trajectory in language borrowing. The next generations are coming into what I believe to be a more biased, racially charged United States of America. I wonder what role these subtle linguistic changes will play in shaping interactions across communities. Link to Betsey Sneller’s Research: https://news.upenn.edu/news/penn-linguists-investigate-language-borrowing-in-field-and-lab
1 Comment
This is part one of my first blog post and I'm truly excited to share. While I love to share what I think about the cognitive aspects of language use, lately I have been inspired to talk more about sociolinguistics. Naturally, there is a link between bilingualism and sociolinguistics- the study of language as it relates to social constructs such as race, ethnicity, social class, age differences, gender differences, regional differences, etc. In the United States, if we asked the question of what defines Hispanic or Latino heritage, would it not conjure ideas about language identity or bilingualism as well? Perhaps less present in most Americans minds is the influence of social constructs on communities that speak a single, dominant language. There are a number of conventions in language that differ among native English, monolingual speech communities. We think of the vocabulary, grammar, sound inventory, and usage distributions within a community (however it is defined) as linguistic conventions. What is fascinating is that these conventions sometimes vary considerably even though they reflect the common language of the national population. We refer to the patterns language use that can be characterized in this light as a dialect.
I believe that differences in dialects is a really interesting phenomenon of language. and more widespread understanding of dialect use more prove to be a powerful tool for creating social cohesion. I would be willing to bet that if we, on an individual level and societal level took more care to understand the diversity within languages as a natural and inherent factor someday we might be able to lift the stains of prejudice from institutions of learning, politics, and economics. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have encountered begrudging ideas about language accent and dialect, that range from silly stereotypes and prescriptivism to outright racism and sexism. Given this, I hope to spark some discussion about support for standard dialects and nonstandard dialects. I intend to make these posts accessible to a wide audience so feel free to read along, comment, and share. Best, Rhonda |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. And now, we continue with our regular programming. So this second entry is entitled "South Side Story Part 2". I'm going to attempt to describe a study that I think is really interesting. This study was conducted by Betsey Sneller, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. For the sake of appropriately recognizing Betsey's work and perspective, I have included a link to a published manuscript by the researcher herself describing the same study. The link can be found at the bottom of this page.
Do you remember the last time you were in Philadelphia or talked to a native of the Philadelphia region? Anyone who knows Philly personally, has friends/ family from Philly, or even resided there is probably familiar with Philadelphia's unique regional dialect. Perhaps, if you are an outsider like me, you too have been confused when someone offers you "wooder" at dinner instead of "water". Or maybe you start scanning the stadium for some sort of fantastic beast when a local football fan chants in favor of their beloved "Iggles". Yes, the pronunciation of vowels by Philadelphia natives is a notable feature that without a doubt adds to the city's character. But, differences in accents emerge within clusters of neighborhoods in Philadelphia too, distinguishing sub-groups of that population and accounting for even more variability. Betsey Sneller is a member of a group a the University of Pennsylvania that studies variability in language use among speakers from different neighborhoods in Philadelphia. One of the goals of the group is to document language changes and shifts. Some researchers, like Betsey Sneller, focus specifically on sound change. Sneller was interested in whether speakers from different social groups within a neighbor borrow sound features of their neighbors. It is probably not surprising that speakers from different social groups would adopt some of the patterns from a neighboring group. However, Sneller was interested in a particular pattern in South Philadelphia prominent in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), but not commonly used by residents who aren't African American in the South Philadelphia community. The sound pattern she was interested in is called Th-fronting. In words that contain the letter sequence th, the th is pronounced like an f . To observe speakers outside of the African American community use this feature in the neighborhood Betsey examined would be interesting. This is because extreme boundaries exist between Whites and African Americans residing in this neighborhood. Because African Americans and Whites are pretty much physically segregated into each zone, they rarely interact. In addition, informed via interviews and socio-historical representation of the neighborhood, Sneller hypothesized that there is tension between the groups. This tension is speculated to have caused negative perception of the AAVE sound patterns. Based on these observations, you wouldn't expect TH-fronting in White members of the South Philadelphia neighborhood. To test her hypothesis, conducted two waves of studies. In the first wave, she used a field method approach. Sneller collected information about TH-fronting via informal interviews with members from one South Philadelphia block. To get participants to open up, she asked them about everyday experiences that mattered to them. Using this technique, she found that White residents were using TH-fronting at a rate that exceeded mere chance. In the second wave of her study, she used an experimental approach to determine what sort of factors influenced whether speakers would borrow a new sound feature. In particular, this study had the potential to reveal why speakers who had "antagonistic contact" with another group would choose to adopt a feature from that other group. To examine these questions, Sneller constructed an artificial language used by two alien groups. Participants were taught vocabulary in the two aliens languages and were shown images of members from the alien groups. The groups were called Burls and Wiwos. The Burls were drawn to look physically tough. The Wiwos were not tough looking. Once the participants learned the language, they played a game as opponents working against each other to get the most resources. You could either barter for resources or challenge someone to a fight. Participants could communicate with each other before every challenge. This enabled Sneller to analyze the sound features she was interested in. The important finding in this study was that, if the context involved a pressure to be tough, the particpants who were assigned to be Wiwos borrowed the sound features of the Burls. To clarify, when the game allowed fighting as a means to get resources, there was borrowing of features from the tough group. When there was no fighting allowed in the game, there was no linguistic borrowing. In addition, the informal interviews revealed that speakers who had the most antagonistic attitudes about the other group were most likely to use TH-fronting. However, exploration of attitudes about the opposing alien groups was not explored in the laboratory. These findings are interesting and beg even more questions. Through other researchers' work on the larger Philadelphia dialect, we know that most neighborhoods in Philadelphia are shifting sounds in the same direction. One question that I find interesting is how does the relative extent of interaction between speakers of different ethnodialects within a neighborhood influence that neighborhood's tendency to be in the "new" middle? One way to understand this may be to focus on AAVE speakers and non-AAVE speakers who work together for their occupations, but who live in physically-divided neighborhoods. Another question that I have is how is the borrowing manifested in young children. It is my, perhaps naive, belief that young children are less likely to be affected by negative social perceptions carried by adults. However, it would be insightful to know whether it is possible, even at young ages, where the concept of race may not be strong, to see a different/similar trajectory in language borrowing. The next generations are coming into what I believe to be a more biased, racially charged United States of America. I wonder what role these subtle linguistic changes will play in shaping interactions across communities ArchivesCategories |