Abstract
In this essay, I will use sources and figure out what they say and do, and how their arguments connect with my ideas. In this piece, I decide which ideas in which texts are worth further attention and exploration. In this essay, I find a place to stand in relation to texts and try to piece the ideas together. I discuss how everybody has an accent, that pure English doesn’t exist, and that language discrimination has no place in society.
Essay
Dialect is a form of language that is specific to a group or an area. Accent is associated with the pronunciation of the language. A dialect is an accent that not only concerns with pronunciation but vocabulary. Dialect and accent are two words that have the same purpose and ultimately prevent people from speaking “pure” English. Many people in the United States have a dialect of the English language or accent, because the United States comprises of millions of immigrants from other nations. Learning the English language may be easy, but learning to say the language in a fluent manner isn’t. Unfortunately, people who have an accent or speak a dialect often are judged and negatively criticized. This unfair treatment of people based upon their speech is called language discrimination and it is prevalent in the United States. Language discrimination makes people with an origin outside of the United States uncomfortable of their identity. This type of discrimination makes people from the United States uneasy of their identity also. Through the use of works by different linguists, the hope is that people recognize that everybody has an accent, that “pure” English doesn’t exist, and that language discrimination has no place in society.
Whether people are from the United States or not, everyone has an accent of the language because people picked it up from the ones closest to them. Walt Wolfram, a sociolinguist and author, starts off his article “Everybody Has an Accent” with 10-year old Tanya who moved to Detroit from Kentucky. She entered into her new fifth grade classroom that consisted of new and unfamiliar faces. When the teacher asked Tanya where she was from, her response drew up curiosity and laughter from the students, not because of her looks but because of her Kentucky accent (Wolfram). Wolfram includes Tanya’s story to demonstrate that speakers with accents like Tanya don’t acquire this accent out of the blue. Rather, they adopt the features of their speech from the people that is closest to them, which are their parents. The author Rosina Lippi-Green’s The Sound House goes in depth with how our accents/dialect develop. Lippi-Green uses the analogy of a sound house to language. As a child, we “look at the Sound Houses built by our parents, our brothers and sisters, and we start to pick out those materials, those bricks we see they have used to build their Sound Houses.” (Green 46). We are always around them as they are to us, and so we build up our sound house the same way they built up theirs. Whether people are from the United States or not, the presence of accents in the way people speak is inevitable.
An argument can be brought up that there were standard rules for the English language and that people failed to follow them resulting in the creation of various dialects. Wolfram counters this argument by bringing up the history between America and Britain back when the United States were the divided British colonies. Wolfram utilizes the language that the British elites used back then, and questions how Americans, after the U.S. claimed independence, developed different dialects. The United States went through a huge wave of immigration. The first wave of immigrants was primarily from Europe and so as they settled in and learned the English language, they developed it into a way that makes it easier to communicate with. Hence, a dialect was produced in every region that was inhabited. As Wolfram says, “variation in speech is at the core of social and historical identity, interwoven into the fabric of cultural differences. Would the isolated Appalachians really be as Appalachian without the lingering voices of their Scots-Irish heritage?” (Wolfram). These dialects and accents were developed for many years. In making this comment, Wolfram argues that rather than stigmatizing the accent or dialect, we should embrace it and welcome it. Other people have feared that the English language would be diluted into another language like Spanish since there are millions of people already speaking in that tongue. In “English Belongs to Everybody”, the author Robert MacNeil argues that English cannot be diluted by another language as “it has prospered and grown because it was able to accept and absorb changes” (MacNeil). If the English language hadn’t evolved, we would be stuck here today speaking Elizabethan English using words such as “thou” instead of “you”. And although we still preserve the Elizabethan language through the reenactment of Shakespearean plays, our language has truly evolved.
Unfortunately, people get criticized for the presence of a dialect or accent in their voice. However, I feel that in comparison to other discriminations such as race discrimination and gender discrimination, language discrimination is not up there in importance to our society. This fact is very significant because it shows that language discrimination is not a big problem in the eyes of society. It shows that not a lot of people know about it. States like “California ‘outlawed’ classroom instruction in any language other than English, and this legislation in California has spurred similar initiatives in other states and bolstered a broader U.S. English-only movement” (Wright and Evelyne). In other words, California is pushing for an agenda that promotes more “Americanism”. This push for the initiative shows how the people in the Californian state government feel about the presence of accents and dialects in students in their schools. California’s action is just the beginning of the English- only movement. I feel like the prevention to speak another language besides English hinders cultural identity. Performing this action prompts kids to forget their roots, language, where they’re originally from. Language discrimination makes people uncomfortable of their identity. It prompts people to have low self-esteem of their culture, something which I believe should not be happening. This country is driven by diversity whether it’s cultural or anything else. Diversity is what makes the country take a step forward.
Language discrimination prompts people to feel they don’t belong; it makes them feel excluded from the rest. The renowned actor and model Priyanka Chopra attended a pageant in England where she said, “I felt so out of place at the Miss India pageant. I had just come back from America, and I was told I needed to lose my American accent and learn the Queen’s English, so I had to enunciate my vowels and speak well and eloquently. Giving up a New York accent is pretty hard” (Chopra). Priyanka feels uncomfortable because she thought that her English was good enough to communicate her ideas in the pageant. Unfortunately, discrimination towards her accent prompted her to feel uncomfortable and excluded. These were words that described how I felt when I got placed into ESL, or English as a Second Language Program in elementary school. The irony behind my placement into the program was that I already knew how to speak English. However, it was my accent that prompted my teachers to put me in a small room filled with 4 students who actually didn’t know English and a teacher. My parents came to America from India, and so growing up I had learned to speak Malayalam, or the language of South India, while learning English. The ESL program prompted me to sit hours on end, relearning English, a language I was familiar with, and practicing how to speak English in a fluent manner. Being confined within the blue walls of that room was depressing to say the least, because I got separated from spending time with the rest of my classmates. This experience of mine shows unfairness towards people like me who have these accents and are judged because of having it in their speech. Judgement by other people towards people with accents often make them excluded and out of place.
People should know of the facts that everybody has an accent, that there is no such thing as pure English, and that language discrimination is occurring throughout the United States. Sadly, there is barely any awareness of these facts, prompting fellow countrymen to criticize each other, something that can ultimately tear our nation apart. To prevent this, one thing I’d suggest we do is sign a petition for laws outlawing language discrimination with everyone who has an accent or a dialect in New York and place it on the desk of an NYS senator so that we can get the senator to sign those laws into place.
Citations
Chopra, Priyanka. “Priyanka Chopra Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/priyanka_chopra_763810.
Lippi-Green, Rosina. “English with an Accent.” Google Books, Google, May 1997, pp. 46-50. books.google.com/books?id=NFKwTvQjVHEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=soundhouse%2B%2Bphonology&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix9vaDi9blAhWhTt8KHaOjA-QQ6AEwAXoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false.
MacNeil, Robert. “English Belongs to Everybody.” Wordstruck: a Memoir, Viking, 1990, pp.192-196.
Wolfram, Walt. “Everyone Has an Accent.” Teaching Tolerance, 2000, www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2000/everyone-has-an-accent.
Wright, Stephen C., and Évelyne Bougie. “Intergroup Contact and Minority-Language Education: Reducing Language-Based Discrimination and Its Negative Impact – Stephen C. Wright, Évelyne Bougie, 2007.” SAGE Journals, June 2007, journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0261927X07300078?casa_token=iOzvkO2r6VQAAAAA%3Ae8qC6IKc0ia9roOVg46jA8J1YFX0cQMzM3gFfkBSFpsgK4yVPlxOo5eroXc6VkUjMyXeSH42TbiN.
Cover Letter
In phase two, I learned to do an in-depth analysis in a text through the process of charting a text. To summarize it, charting a text moves away from simply summarizing a passage and focuses on figuring out what the text says and does for the author’s purpose and overall central idea. Learning this process was beneficial to me because it gave me an idea of how to properly analyze. Another meaningful insight I gained was learning to describe the argument and context an author gives in a passage in a concise manner (also known as rhetorical precis). I gained an understanding of why and how to integrate quotes into our writing and how to analyze the quotes I used. In addition, I became proficient in doing in-text citations within my writing and learned the proper format for a bibliography.
A concept that impacted my writing practice was the author’s credibility. I didn’t really recognize how important stating an author’s credibility was until this phase. I learned that stating the credibility of the author of the source you are using shows that the reader can trust the source you are using in your writing. Another concept that was impactful was evidence. Especially for the paper for this phase, evidence is needed to support my thesis. Evidence comes through statistics, quotes, speeches, books, articles, etc. I learned that how I use my evidence is important too. Evidence can be used to prove OR disprove my thesis.
One of the goals I was able to achieve through the researched exploratory essay of this phase was getting and interpreting information from sources that I found. Ultimately, I was able to use the information from my sources to prove my argument. Another goal that I achieved was using the right in-text citation. For example, I thought that the in-text citation after the quote was (Author’s Last Name). But through the process of writing the paper, I learned that the proper way to address the in-text citation is by writing (Author’s Last Name pg.#).
