An answer to the question...Someone's ethnicity has a positive impact on their language. Revision for English Language AQA A Level paper 2. This was marked by my teacher and scored 28/30.
Evaluate the idea someone’s ethnicity is having a positive impact on English (30).
Language specific to someone’s ethnicity is known as an ethnolect, which is a dialect of
language associated with a particular ethnic group.
It can be argued having a shared ethnolect can have a positive impact on people’s use of
English and give them a shared sense of community. For example, the large number of
Carribeans arriving from the UK in the late 1940s had an impact on the British English
language. Within them came the patois they spoke which began to cross to people of
different ethnic backgrounds, this can be said to have a positive impact of bringing people
together and allowing other cultures to settle into England and mainstream day to day life
and communication.
This sense of community is also shown in the identity ethnolects can provide for ethnic
minorities. For example, in London Multicultural London English (MLE) emerged in 2nd and
3rd generation immigrants in London. Characterised by th-fronting so three becomes ‘free’,
th stopping where ‘th’ is replaced with a t or a d such as in ‘ting’, and pragmatic markers
such as ‘innit’, MLE has become so widespread linguistics now refer to it as Multicultural
urban British English. It can be said when it first emerged it gives youth a sense of belonging
and culture from the result of multi-ethnic friendships and a variety of languages spoken at
home, as these children from diverse backgrounds grow older, their English stabilises and
results in MLE. John Pitts found young black English speakers were shifting towards
language that use that suggests a resistance identity and so their use of ethnolects gives
them covert prestige by going against mainstream culture. The effect that ethnicity had on
English can be said to be positive especially as it gave young children role models such as
in the grime scene who also spoke MLE. As David Crystal points out the occasional nang
(meaning cool) isn’t earth shattering. Ben Rampton spoke about how MLE was considered
cool and tough and so as a result white youths in English began speaking it to converge to
the new trend. Kerswill spoke about how it has now spread outside of London to places like
Manchester and Birmingham where even middle class youths are picking up local versions
of it. Therefore, despite beginning as an ethnolect it could be argued this variety has now
spread nationally and could even overtake regional dialects to become a variety spoken all
across England. So, ethnicity can be said to have a positive impact on English as it has
given many youths a sense of identity and a way of being able to converge into their
networks and use a variety seen as fashionable and cool.
However, it would be wrong to say MLE hasn’t had many criticisms with people arguing it
has ‘ruined’ English and taking a prescriptivist view that this variety is damaging and wrong.
Many critics labelled it as the derogatory term ‘Jafaican’ and stating ‘the whites are turning
black’. Lindsay Johns argued this street slang makes youths sound stupid and uneducated.
There is a general concern, suggested by Johns, youths cannot code switch and so the poor
grammar and street patois associated with MLE has pervaded the essays children write and
is disadvantaging children’s futures. So it can be argued ethnic features of language are not
having a positive impact due to suggestions children can not code switch adequately.
However, other studies suggest children can code switch successfully, which provides
contradictory evidence for this argument, decreasing its validity.
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