Paper 2
Section A
1) The connection between this dialect and the Standard form of English is strong because the
dialect originated from standard English, however the changes are due to culture differences and
relation to the people’s native language. Regarding the language frameworks, the phonology
replaces sounds that the African community find hard to pronounce with sounds that they are used
to, the morphology is the same as Standard English, the lexis is similar to informal English, the syntax
is outside of the normal arrangement of words that Standard English uses and the discourse
mentions the American people’s interest in African food, as well as comparing modern food prep to
the way things were done in the past.
The phonology of the dialect is different to Standard English. Sounds which are difficult for the
African people to pronounce are replaced with ones that are easier. An example of this is when
Caroline says “cook with dem”. In this example the word “dem” is actually “them”, however the “th”
sound is replaced with a “d”. Another example of this is in the word is the word “thanksgiving” which
Caroline pronounced as “tanksgivin”, here she replaces the “th” sounds with just a “t”, and that “a”,
which is usually pronounced as “ay” is pronounces as a simple “a” sound, and the sound of the”g” at
the end is missed out. The other thing that is shown here is the missing out of letter, which also
happened in this phonology. Another example of this is in the word “eating”, where the “g” is missed
out again and it is pronounced as “eatin”.
The morphology is the same as Standard English as there are not any words that are structured
differently, all words are structured the same as when used in Standard English.
The lexis used includes a lot of jargon to do with cooking, such as “cook”, “microwave” and
“food”, which are words that are mostly used in the kitchen. There are also nouns, such as “Gullah
Way Inn”, which is the name of a restaurant, and “Mac and Cheese”, which is the name of a well-
known dish. There are many words which are also frequently used in informal English, such as
“wanna”, which is the shortened version of “want to”, and “cos” which is a shortened version of
“because”. Caroline also uses “though” at the end of some of her sentences, and “man”, which is
used for emphasis, and they are both common in informal English. As well as this, she uses “ain’t” in
place of “didn’t” and the sound “mm hmmm” as a sound of agreement or emphasis.
The syntax is different to Standard English because the dialect does not require the same
grammatical structure as Standard English does, therefore the African people use a word
arrangement which is easy for them to use as it is only used for the purpose of communication. Fo
example, Caroline says, “cook with them bones” instead of “cook with bones”, here she added the
word “them” into the sentence. She also says, “we care not for no cholesterol” instead of “we didn’t
care about cholesterol”. In this example she says “we care not” instead of “we didn’t care” and “for
no” instead of “about”. As well as this, she says “they wanna learn you know”. She adds “you know”
at the end of the sentence, which is directed at the audience as a way of involving them. She also
repeats some words, such as when she says “and and they buy the neck bones”. Moreover, she says,
“they advise to say about the turkey”, rather than “they advise you to use turkey”, and she adds
“like” in the middle of sentence, such as “on like Thanksgiving”, which is common in informal
English.
The discourse includes topics which are related to food and cooking, the first being how tasty
the traditional African food is. Caroline says,
“everybody wanna know now (.) how we cook... white folks now they wanna learn you know
how we make our stuff so good... and they buy the neck bones a little bit too.”
Here she mentions how the American white people have an interest in African food, wanting to
learn about how it is cooked and trying it themselves. She also mentions Health related to eating,
