"Language and Ethnicity" by Carmen Fought

Complete with discussion questions and a glossary, Language and Ethnicity will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, as well as anybody interested in ethnic issues, language and education, inter-ethnic communication, and the relationship between language and identity.





What is ethnicity?
Is there a 'white' way of speaking?
Why do people sometimes borrow features of another ethnic group's language?
Why do we sometimes hear an accent that isn't there?
This lively overview reveals the fascinating relationship between language ethnic identity, exploring the crucial role it plays in both revealing a speaker's ethnicity and helping to construct it. Drawing on research from a range of ethnic groups around the world, it shows how language contributes to the social and psychological processes involved in the formation of ethnic identity, exploring both the linguistic features of ethnic language varieties and also the ways in which language is used by different ethnic groups.

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
PartI General issues in ethnicity and language
1 What is ethnicity?
1.1 Areas of agreement about ethnicity
1.2 Possible definitions of ethnicity
1.3 Possible definitions of race
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
2 Language and the construction of ethnic identity
2.1 What linguistic resources do individuals have in constructing identity?
2.2 Indexing multiple identities
2.3 Ethnic pride or assimilation?
2.4 How is an individual’s ethnicity co-constructed by the community?
2.5 Language and the construction of ethnic identity: three individual cases Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
Part II Linguistic features and ethnicity in specific groups
3 African-American groups
3.1 What is AAVE?
3.2 AAVE grammar
3.3 AAVE phonology
3.4 Variation in the use of non-standard features in AAVE
3.5 Attitudes towards AAVE
3.6 Regional variation in AAVE: is AAVE converging toward a supraregional norm?
3.7 Another possibility: a blend of supraregional and regional norms
3.8 Standard AAE and the language of middle-class African-Americans
3.9 AAVE in the media
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
4 Latino groups
4.1 The complexities of identity in Latino communities
4.2 Repertoires: multiple codes for multiple identities
4.3 Attitudes, choices, and the construction of identity
4.4 The structure of dialects in latino communities
4.5 Chicano English phonology
4.6 Chicano English grammar
4.7 The structure of other Latino English dialects
4.8 Latino dialects of Spanish
4.9 The language gap: differences among generations
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
5 Linguistic variation in other multiethnic settings
5.1 Cajuns and creoles in Louisiana
5.2 South African ethnic groups
5.3 Maoris in New Zealand
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
6 Are white people ethnic? Whiteness, dominance, and ethnicity
6.1 The social correlates of being white
6.2 The linguistic correlates of being white
6.3 The consequences of “sounding white”
6.4 Humor and the portrayal of “whiteness”
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
7 Dialect contact, ethnicity, and language change
7.1 Dialect contact and ethnic boundaries
7.2 Influences of minority ethnic dialects on the dominant dialect
7.3 Contact among ethnic minority dialects
7.4 Ethnic minority group speakers and sound change
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
Part III The role of language use in ethnicity
8 Discourse features, pragmatics, and ethnicity
8.1 Indirectness
8.2 Turn-taking, silence, and backchanneling
8.3 Joking
8.4 Complimenting
8.5 Acquisition of language norms
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
9 Interethnic communication and language prejudice
9.1 Tennis, anyone?
9.2 Interethnic communication
9.3 Differences in language use norms in public settings
9.4 Language varieties and interactional styles in the classroom
9.5 Teaching a standard variety to speakers of vernacular varieties
9.6 Accent hallucination
9.7 Matched guise studies and linguistic profiling
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
10 Crossing: may I borrow your ethnicity?
10.1 Classic studies of crossing in the UK
10.2 Who crosses?
10.3 Why does a speaker cross?
10.4 How does an individual get access to a linguistic code other than his or her own?
10.5 How extensive is crossing, linguistically? What linguistic areas are individuals who cross most likely to use?
10.6 Does crossing lead to less racism?
10.7 Crossing versus passing
Discussion questions
Suggestions for further reading
Notes
Glossary of terms
References
Index