Language Variety--Even in America

This was an extra credit response in my Sociolinguistics class. Seeing as it was internet based, I thought I'd share.
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For a country that has no official language, the American system sure can push English. Many of my family members, for example, still get offended when hearing people speak Spanish in public. Silly as this may be, the sentiment is shared by many Americans who perceive that English is, was, and should be the country’s only language. Listening to their rhetoric (or lack thereof), a power differential usually emerges, with the English speaker’s linguistic toes being stepped on by the utterance of a foreign tongue, and their imposition of a presumed English monolingualism in this country. However, this view, it could easily be argued, does not fit with the democratic ideals to which this nation claims to adhere. That’s why it is so good to see, hear, and experience a pluralism of manners of speaking in links such as the one to the MLA Language Map or the International Dialects of English Archive site.

The MLA Language map is very helpful in revealing the full extent of the US’s language diversity. A full 18% of speakers in America, it reports, use a language other than English. While ten percent of these speakers use Spanish or a Creole thereof, the other eight are a hodge-podge of languages like Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Gujarathi. This diversity does not just point to a cultural or ethnic diversity, but a plurality of expression. Because our worldview is expressed largely through language, our processing takes on different structure, mood, or connotation based on our choice of expression. In my Sociolinguistics class, for example we looked at The Bilingual’s Creativity (1987) by Kachru (sorry, couldn't find a link to the full text outside of my school's library). It's a study of the discourse and stylistic features of dialects of English that emerge out of contact with other languages. It shows the abounding depth and texture to the English of bilingual speakers. Language plurality, therefore, is instrumental in maintaining a diversity of perspectives often neglected under the hegemony of English’s ubiquity.

Ironically, because of this ubiquity, English has been stretched into many different dialects the world over. The International Dialects of English Archive indicates the full extent to which English varies, while the Dictionary of American Regional English and Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English both show hearty variation on more domestic and local scales. English’s marked adaptability has been a huge part of its success. Because it is so widely used, it’s assimilated words from all over the world, with some 25+% derived from French languages. English’s ability to accommodate new vocabulary, and even calques, has been cited as “an adaptive strategy undertaken by speakers to enrich certain registers of a language, rather than having to switch to the new language for that register. (Mesthrie et. al. 2000)” Furthermore, despite efforts toward standardization, English continues to be used in new ways by speakers applying their native language's semantic and grammatical structures to English, and insodoing, contributing to variation within English itself. It is due to its plasticity that English enjoys the place it does today.

Notwithstanding, the prestige of English lends itself to pride and a strongly dominant posture among its speakers. American non-English speakers are often stigmatized for their lack of fluency.* But homogeny has never made for a realistic (let alone healthy) goal. Moreover, existing in community is inherently pluralistic, as no individual expresses in the same way, nor could they have the same ideologies, exactly. Then, to participate fully in this community, we go beyond what seems familiar, and exercise patience with something new, perhaps uncomfortable, and recognize the great value in someone else’s linguistic ways. In short, English’s prestigious speakers could learn a lesson from their language’s history, and then turn an ear to learn from the tongue of another.

[*Sometimes, even, they're assumed to be much less fluent than they might actually be, just because of a thick accent. Accents can be virtually impossible to eradicate from one's language outside having learned another before the speaker hits puberty.]

REFERENCES

• Baker, W., & Eggington W. G. (1999). Bilingual Creativity, Multidimensional Analysis, and World Englishes. World Englishes, 18(3), 343-358.
• Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A, and Leap, W. (2000). Introducting sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.