ANT 102 Week 6.2 - Language and Race
Language and Race
Language
Three sets of questions are addressed:
How are meanings made?
Sign and signifier.
What does it mean to speak a language? Does it impact the way we see the world?
It impats the way we see the world: theories like the linguistic determinist and
linguistic relativity (used by modern day anthropologists): we have the semiotic (how does being or does being exposed to language shape us cognitive) and the syss…(how or does speaking different languages affect our perception of the world) the Hopi with their cyclic view of time (in event and not linear)
How do we learn a language?
We passively pick it up through our environment and what we are exposed to during the critical period of age 2-7
Language and social interaction:
How are interactions socially and culturally shaped?
Through langauge: the so.. and the Khalic people vs the north american type of teaching babies to talk refflects the social and cultural things needed to be picked up by the child to become a competent member of society.
Language and power, language, and ideologies:
How do differences or inequalities (e.g., gender, race, age) get created, reproduced, or challenged through language?
Disruptive way of speaking can be used in the media or in politics to paint a race a certain way as long as someone with some authority says this is what is bad and a group of the population benefits from it discrimination begins
Learning Objectives
Understand the folk theory of race and anthropological objections.
Explore connections between language and race.
Define standard language ideology, language subordination, and accommodation theory.
Understand how racism is enacted through language.
Recognize how covert forms of racism perpetuate inequalities.
Defining Race
Folk Theory of Race:
Race as a basic category of human biological variation.
The idea that each human being can be assigned to a race.
Objections to the Folk Theory:
Human populations are not unambiguously, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups.
There is greater genetic variation within so-called racial groups (94%) than between them (6%) .
There is gradual rather than abrupt physical variation (e.g., skin colour is not a binary trait).
Physical traits (skin colour, hair type, etc.) are inherited independently from one another.
These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.
Race as a Social Fact
As a social category, race is real; it influences people’s life trajectories and identities.
Rather than a primordial biological essence, it is better thought of as a process of racialization or racial formation.
The concept of race provides insights into the cultural and social meanings people ascribe to perceived or actual biological differences, such as skin colour or hair type.
Parameters of racial classification are not biologically given.
People cannot be grouped into racial categories based on a set of phenotypic features.
Race means something different in each society because it is a social construct and varies from place to place.
The selection of certain features as belonging to a particular racial category is an arbitrary selection based on the particular socio-historical context.
This is inherently tied to discussions of power and inequality.
AAA Statement on Race
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas.
Physical traits are inherited independently of one another, so knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society.
The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth.
Policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent.
Present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.
Language and Race
Examples of language-related prejudice:
"I don’t care about the color of our skin, but speak that dialect of yours someplace where it won’t insult my ears."
"You were a successful engineer in the Ukraine, sure, but why can’t you speak real English?"
"If you just didn’t sound so corn-pone, people would take you seriously. You’re the best salesperson we’ve got, but must you sound gay on the phone?"
Standard Language Ideology
Language is not apolitical.
One language – One nation ideology.
Standard Language Ideology:
"A bias toward an abstracted, idealized, homogenous spoken language which is imposed and maintained by dominant bloc institutions and which names as its model the written language but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper-middle class." (Lippi-Green, p. 67)
Education as Central in This Process
Children are socialized into particular prejudices and into the language ideology of the middle class.
Dominant institutions promote the notion of an overarching, homogenous standard language, which is primarily Anglo, upper middle-class, and ethnically white (Lippi-Green, p 68).
Reasons for compliance:
Markedness: Not speaking the standard stands out.
Language as capital: Speaking the standard comes with a reward.
Lippi-Green's Language Subordination Model
Language is mystified: Difficulties and complexities of one's mother tongue cannot be comprehended without expert guidance.
Authority is claimed: Experts know what they are doing because they have studied language and write well.
Misinformation is generated: The preferred variant is superior on historical, aesthetic, or logical grounds.
Targeted languages are trivialized: Seen as cute, homey, or funny.
Conformers are held up as positive examples: Showing what can be accomplished if one tries.
Non-conformers are vilified or marginalized: Seen as willfully stupid, arrogant, unknowing, uninformed, and/or deviant.
Explicit promises are made: Employers will take you seriously; doors will open.
Threats are made: No one important will take you seriously; doors will close.
Accommodation Theory
Focuses on who bears the communicative burden.
Who is expected to "fix" their language to be understood?
Who accommodates whom?
Accents are filtered through language ideologies.
Rejection of communicative burden:
Example: Dropping a chemistry course due to a TA who doesn't speak English natively (Lippi-Green p. 72).
African-American English (AAE)
Ideologies surrounding AAE:
Perceived as sloppy, with slang and grammatical mistakes.
Often perceived as indexing/signaling something about the speaker.
AAE is rule-governed:
Has its own phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
There is regional variation in AAE, just like in other varieties of English.
AAE, like any language variety, is learned in a particular social setting.
People easily code-switch between Black English and other varieties of English, depending on social context.
Invariant or Habitual "be"
"She be happy" vs. "She is happy"
Indicates habitual behavior or usual state of being.
Example: "What you be talkin’ about?"
Double Negatives
Example: "I can’t get nothing done"
Existed before, even common in Shakespeare.
Became stigmatized throughout history.
Common in other languages (e.g., French: je ne veux rien).
The idea that this is "illogical" is a language ideology.
All dialects and language varieties are equally logical and grammatical.
"Ask" vs. "aks"
Considered the "most horrendous of errors."
Goes back hundreds of years.
Results from a lack of correspondence between sound and symbol in English.
Only a few variations are stigmatized based on socio-historical and political context.
Language Ideologies and Racial Categories
"The real problem with Black English… is a general unwillingness to accept the speakers of that language and the social choices they have made as viable and functional." (Lippi-Green 1997: 201)
Language ideologies such as these "naturalize" racial categories: make them seem as naturally given categories, rather than social categories shaped through sociohistorical processes.
Status assigned to standard English is arbitrary and merely a function of politics.
Standard Language Ideology.
"Pragmatic reality forces the burden of adjustment on groups who are outside positions of influence and power. It does little good to claim [AAE] is a valid dialect – which it is – when the social cost of linguistic and other differences can be so high." (Baugh 1983: 122)
Racism in Language
Overt racist talk.
Covert racism: How does racism enter our everyday talk?
Racism is not just a quality of individuals but rather a product of institutions.
"Racism is more a function of institutions, norms, and practices that facilitate the production of racist effects, so even when individuals do not intend to be racist or discriminatory, their actions may have these effects because of the institutions and norms to act within." (Ahearn 232)
White Public Space
Who is expected to monitor or fix their speech? Who is not?
Unmarked vs. marked language use.
White linguistic normalcy – Standard Language Ideology.
Self-conscious about “Spanish” accents in English but perfectly acceptable to have heavy English accents in Spanish.
Whites’ linguistic heterogeneity is not viewed as “disorder” – they are not literally “speaking Spanish.” Instead, they are simply being “natural”: funny, relaxed, colloquial (Hill, 1998: 684).
This heterogeneity is not permitted to e.g., Puerto Ricans.
Such language ideologies and stereotypes naturalize racial categories.
Mock Spanish as Covert Racist Discourse
Examples: “Hasta la vista,” “no problemo,” “manana.”
Direct indexicality: Humorous, cosmopolitan.
Indirect indexicality: Elevates whiteness, racializes Spanish speakers.
Without awareness of stereotypes, Mock Spanish jokes would not be funny.
In order to make sense of Mock Spanish, interlocutors require access to very negative racializing representations (Hill, 1998).
Covert racism racializes its subordinate group through indirect indexicality.
Racism Enacted Through Language
Within interaction: through behavior and conversations.
Linguistic profiling:
Example: Baugh’s study of rental market.
Often not explicitly formulated in racist terms.
Markedness.
Key Terms
Race as a social construct
Standard language ideology
Markedness
Language subordination model
Accommodation theory
African-American English as rule-governed
Naturalization of racial categories
Covert racism
Markedness
White public space
Indirect indexicality
Mock Spanish and mock languages
Linguistic profiling