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    Socio Chapter 3

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    Sujatha Menon
    This chapter deals with language and ethnic group. It is summary of chapter 3 of the book by Trudgill.

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    Socio Chapter 3

    Uploaded by

    Sujatha Menon
    72 views3 pages
    This chapter deals with language and ethnic group. It is summary of chapter 3 of the book by Trudgill.

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    This chapter deals with language and ethnic group. It is summary of chapter 3 of the book by Trudgill.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    72 views3 pages

    Socio Chapter 3

    Uploaded by

    Sujatha Menon
    This chapter deals with language and ethnic group. It is summary of chapter 3 of the book by Trudgill.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 3

    1

    Unit Three: Language and Ethnic Group

    An ethnic group refers to a speech community (a group of people speaking


    a particular language) that follows a common cultural background. A
    language or dialect spoken by a group usually provides information on its

     Social class
     Race and culture

    The Experiment in USA:

    Once, an experiment was conducted in the US to find the race of the


    speakers (whether they were black Americans or white Americans) based
    on tape recordings. The results revealed that it was difficult to find out
    because some black Americans spoke like the white Americans and vice
    versa. This was due to the following reasons:

    The black Americans who lived among white Americans spoke like the
    Whites. Similarly, the white Americans who lived among the black
    Americans spoke like the Blacks. So, language is not a defining feature of
    a person’s ethnic group (race, culture).

    The way a person speaks is not because of race but because of learned
    behaviour (his or her surroundings).

    Views about 'Pure Language' and Race

    The Indo-European Parent Language

    At first, people believed that only people who belonged to the pure Aryan
    race spoke the original Indo-European language. But now, this view is
    considered wrong. Any human being can learn any language depending on
    the environment.

    The Nazis' View towards German

    Dr. Sujatha Menon


    2

    Hitler and his Nazis believed that they were a superior Aryan race. So,
    they wanted to have a pure German language. Hitler felt that this 'pure
    language' should have no loan words from other languages.

    The Case of Serbo-Croat

    Yugoslavia consists of six republics. Originally, it was a multilingual


    republic. In four republics, Serbo-Croat was the official language. It
    came in two different forms – Serbian and Croatian. Serbian is based on
    the Cyrillic alphabet and is based on eastern dialects of Yugoslavia.
    Croatian, on the other hand, is based on the Latin alphabet and is related
    to western dialects of Yugoslavia. Serbians, Croatians, and the muslims in
    Bosnia spoke this language.

    But in the 1990s, Yugoslavia faced a break-up (Each republic wanted to be


    an independent country). After that, the governments of Serbia and
    Croatia wanted their people to speak/learn pure Serbian and Croatian
    respectively. As a result, all mixed words were removed from the
    vocabulary of these languages. In other words, a Serbian or Croatian is
    identified by the language he/she speaks.

    This case of a 'pure language' affected the muslims of Bosnia. They could
    not choose between Serbian and Croatian. So, they changed the name of
    their language to Bosnian or Bosniak or Bosanski.

    AAVE

    AAVE is the abbreviation of African American Vernacular English. As the


    name suggests, it is the English spoken by the lower-class African
    Americans. It is different from the English spoken by the native
    Americans.

    Characteristics of AAVE

    1. Many AAVE speakers do not have –s in present tense third person


    singular. Eg: He go.
    2. AAVE does not have the verb is or are in the present tense. Eg: She
    not American.
    3. AAVE uses the word be instead of the verb is or are. Eg: He be nice.

    Dr. Sujatha Menon


    3

    4. AAVE syntax does not follow the subject-verb agreement. It also


    omits the auxiliary verb. For example: We was eatin' – and we
    drinkin' too.
    5. AAVE does not invert questions. For example: I asked Mary where
    did she go.
    6. AAVE uses it instead of the word there. For example: Doesn't
    nobody know that it's a God?
    7. AAVE uses double negatives. Eg: Can't nobody do nothing about it?

    Dr. Sujatha Menon

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