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DEBATE: FOR TEAM JOHNS

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Lindsay Johns says language is power, and makes the case for speaking English properly.

Author and broadcaster Lindsay Johns argues that language is power, and makes the case for speaking English properly.

Lindsay, who has mentored young people in Peckham, south London, for years, believes that street slang and what he calls 'ghetto grammar' disempower and limit the life chances of those who speak it.

And he says that those who make excuses for this language, or argue that it is good for young people, are really just encouraging them to ostracize themselves even further from mainstream society.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

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BBC Radio 4 - Four Thought, Series 4, Language Is Power

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Lindsay Johns says language is power, and makes the case for speaking English properly.

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Discourses - Rob Drummond on 'Ghetto grammar'

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Discourses - Rob Drummond on 'Ghetto grammar'

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DEBATE: FOR TEAM DRUMMOND

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Last week in my final year undergraduate Linguistics class we listened to Lindsay Johns' 2013 contribution to BBC Radio 4's Four Thought programme, on the subject of what he calls 'Ghetto Grammar'. I hadn't listened to it since around this time last year, and I'd forgotten just how much I disagree with much of what he says, as well as how he says it. My feelings against his views have probably strengthened over the last year due to the fact that I am spending more and more time working with young people from very similar backgrounds to the ones Lindsay Johns himself talks about. [I should say, I'm not the first person to comment on this programme, see for example the excellent points made by Dan Clayton here and here.]

Johns' basic argument is that language is power, and that by using slang rather than standard English, young people in Britain's urban centres are in danger of doing themselves a disservice when it comes to participating in the world of university and jobs. So far, so good. I can't see anybody disagreeing with these sentiments - they show a common sense attitude towards the fact that we live in a society in which there is a more or less broadly recognisable standard form of the language, and this is the form that is expected to be used in situations such as job interviews, college applications and so on. Unfortunately, Johns goes on to provide a lot more detail.

The first target for Johns' criticism is the language itself, which he describes as 'moronic' and the type of speech 'which makes you sound like you've just had a frontal lobotomy'. I just don't get this. I don't understand how anyone can spend time with young people speaking street slang [this is Johns' term, so I'll use it here] and not appreciate that is has its own unique sophistication and complexity. At its best, when spoken by expert users, it is no less rich and expressive than so-called standard English. I use the term 'expert users' deliberately to highlight the fact that just with any variety of language, there are people who are more or less proficient in its use. Many people use standard English clumsily or in an unsophisticated way, yet they generally don't come in for the same degree of criticism. Admittedly, some regional varieties of English come in for a hard time, yet I doubt if someone would be able to appear on a serious Radio 4 programme and claim that people from Birmingham sound like they've been lobotomised.

Johns also takes great delight in attacking 'left-wing academics, liberal commentators and educators' who assert the legitimacy of street slang. He says that
Contrary to the risible notions promulgated by cultural relativists - often white, liberal, middle class ones - notions which are deeply patronising, obnoxious and offensive, not to mention viscerally racist, of accepting black kids from Peckham speaking in inchoate street slang because they deem it to be the "authentic rhythms of Africa", I tell my mentees "We don't live in Timbuktu, or the south Bronx; we live in England, so speak proper English."
Again, it's hard to know where to start. I think I can say for absolute certain that no linguist, however relativist, white, liberal, or middle class they may be, has ever used the term 'authentic rhythms of Africa' to describe urban youth language. Yes, most would argue for its authenticity and legitimacy as language, but I fail to see how this is in any way racist, especially given the far from straightforward role ethnicity appears to be playing in its use. Surely the statement 'we live in England, so speak proper English' (whatever that might be) is far more in danger of being seen in those terms.

But in many ways, these two arguments - against the language itself and against apologisers for it - are predictable and superficial. People have always complained about the deterioration of language in the younger generations, and people (especially regular contributors to the Daily Mail and the Conservative party conference such as Johns) have always had a go at lefty liberals. What is far more damaging is Johns' complete disregard for the notion of code-switching, or the ability of young people to be able to use standard English when necessary. [I must admit, I myself have my doubts as to the value of the term 'code-switching' to refer to this linguistic practice, as it implies the speaker is making a complete switch from one variety to another, just as a bilingual might do between two completely different languages. More realistically, it is a process of using particular linguistic variants or patterns of linguistic features which shift the overall nature of the variety being used. However, that is a technical point of terminology.] To disregard the idea that young people can and should be able to shift their language to be more appropriate in different contexts makes no sense at all. After all, this is precisely what most of us do all the time to a greater or lesser degree as we negotiate our way through our day to day lives. For some, especially those who by accident of birth and upbringing happen to naturally use a standard variety of English and then also work in an environment where this variety is expected, this will involve only very minor adjustments; but for others, where upbringing or home life contrasts with work life, the shifting will be more substantial. But this skill is a fundamental part of successful human communication, and it is precisely this skill that we should be encouraging young people to acquire.

Johns disagrees, and sees things very differently. Rather than encourage code-switching/shifting, he simply wants to change the way the young people who he works with in Peckham speak. Instead of seeing the inherent value in being able to adjust one's language in order to fit the context, he wants to teach the young people to abandon their natural way of speaking and use what he sees as 'proper English'. He sees success as being achievable by young people being able to use words such as 'ubiquitous', 'judicious', and 'ephemeral' in everyday conversation, and he sees acceptance of street slang as 'a wicked betrayal of young people'. Changing the way young people speak, he argues, is the only way they will be freed from 'ghettos of the mind'.

Once again, I don't know anybody who would argue against the value in acquiring the ability to operate in standard English. But to encourage the abandonment of one's own natural way of speaking (and it is a natural way of speaking, see work on Multicultural London English) in the process is a spectacularly short-sighted and potentially damaging way to go about it. Language is so inextricably linked to issues of identity, community, friendship, and social practice, that to stigmatise and attack a particular way of speaking so strongly is to stigmatise and attack the very young people who use it. This seems a very strange way to go about empowering young people - to go out of your way to denigrate the very communities of which they are part. If the overall aim is to pluck a few young people from (often deprived) urban backgrounds, get them to turn their backs on where they came from and embrace a new identity and a new way of speaking, then fine. But if the aim is to improve young people's chances in life by giving them the skills to operate linguistically successfully in different contexts, then surely the way forward is to encourage the ability and awareness to code-switch/shift.

Lindsay Johns himself speaks very eloquently, and I have no doubt that he is the model he would like his young people to emulate. But while it would undoubtedly be advantageous for a young person to speak like Johns in a job interview (perhaps with somewhat fewer flowery adjectives) it would simply not be appropriate for that same person to continue that way of speaking when he or she was back with their friends. And this is the point Johns fails to grasp again and again - there simply is not one singular 'better' way of speaking, there are ways of speaking that are more or less appropriate in any given context. Just as standard English is the favoured option in a job interview, street slang is by far the best option when the job interview is over and the young person is back to the day to day practice of interacting with, and negotiating their place in, their social networks. It is Johns' failure to appreciate this that is betraying young people, and not their inability to use words like 'ubiquitous'.

We live in a society in which prejudice against the way people speak is widespread and normal. But just as with any form of prejudice, the answer is not to simply accept it and change the way we behave just so we can fit in with that narrow-minded view. Surely the answer is to raise awareness as to the value of language diversity, while at the same time being realistic enough to equip all young people with the tools to successfully negotiate an imperfect world.

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Thoughts on Lindsay Johns and ‘Ghetto Grammar’ | UrBEn-ID

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academic poster by Rob Drummond & Susan Dray (MMU)

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Asian and Caribbean English

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Devyani Sharma's research

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Background
Asians are the largest ethnic minority group in the UK, just under 5% of the population, and 35% of the community lives in London. Asians have been present in the UK for centuries but their presence grew after the Second World War, when migration from Commonwealth countries was encouraged due to labour shortages in Britain. This increase in numbers initially led to race rioting and violence driven by British nationalist groups, but over the decades British Asian contributions to food, literature, music, and politics have become an established part of British culture.

This teaching unit focuses on a Punjabi neighbourhood in West London. A set of audio clips is used to illustrate many distinct ways of sounding British Asian in London. Discussion points explore the influence of social factors on speech and identity, including age and childhood experiences, ethnic politics, generational change, gender, and social networks. Students are encouraged to discuss the role of these factors in their own experience of different styles of speaking.

Resources
Discussion points
Audio: You can download the sound clips using the embedded player below. The download button is in the top right of the player window.

Linguistics Research Digest links
Fitting in to a new home - with a Bri'ish accent?

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Being Asian in London (TU17) - Teach Real English!

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Background Asians are the largest ethnic minority group in the UK, just under 5% of the population, and 35% of the community lives in London. Asians have been present in the UK for centuries but their presence grew after the Second World War, when migration from Commonwealth countries was encouraged due to labour shortages in [...]

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MLE, accentism - good revision

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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essential wider reading

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John McWhorter on criticism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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John McWhorter: There's nothing wrong with Black English
Ocasio-Cortez was engaging in what linguists call code-switching. Few find code-switching surprising when Latinos do it between English and Spanish, alternating between the two languages within a single conversation or even sentence. The concept perhaps seems less familiar when done between dialects of the same language, but this, too, is extremely common. For example, what an unfortunate number of Americans think of as black people slipping into "errors" when they speak is, in the scientific sense, people code-switching between standard and Black English, the latter of which is an alternative, and not degraded, form of English.

Ocasio-Cortez's critics seem to assume that since she is not black, her use of Black English must be some kind of act. This, however, is based on a major misreading of the linguistic reality of Latinos in America's big cities. Since the 1950s, long-term and intense contact between black and Latino people in urban neighborhoods has created a large overlap between Black English and, for example, "Nuyorican" English, the dialect of New York's Puerto Rican community. To a considerable extent, Latinos now speak "Ebonics" just as black people do, using the same slang and constructions, code-switching between it and standard English (and Spanish!) in the same ways.

This means that Ocasio-Cortez, as a Latina, was not using a dialect foreign to her experience. She grew up around it; it would be surprising if she did not have it in her repertoire to some extent. "I am from the Bronx. I act & talk like it," she tweeted. Anyone who would riposte that she isn't from the black Bronx in particular would miss that Black English stopped being a black-exclusive dialect in the Bronx decades ago.
Read: Should code-switching be taught in schools?
The dustup also reflects another misimpression about Black English: that only uneducated people can be considered "authentic" in using it. This partly reflects a sense that Black English is a mere matter of grammatical flubs, a legacy of inadequate education. That analysis of Black English has been resoundingly refuted by shelves and shelves of research by linguists. Yet even someone who acknowledges that Black English is not broken language might suppose that it is rooted solely in being black and, roughly, poor.

President Barack Obama, for example, came in for much criticism-some from black people-for using some Black English when speaking to black audiences. His critics assumed that, because he was an educated person, Obama's Black English could not possibly be "authentic" and was therefore condescending.

However, poor black people are by no means the only ones who code-switch into Black English. Worldwide, people code-switch into nonstandard dialects as part of the general palette of human expression: The nonstandard dialect can connote warmth, surprise, anger, flirtation, intimacy. Obama and Ocasio-Cortez are no less authentic in their use of Black English than people such as Cornel West and Keegan-Michael Key, educated black people who code-switch constantly and beautifully.

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increasing numbers of serious public figures

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part of the black english tool kit.john cardillo of newsmax

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It Wasn't 'Verbal Blackface.' AOC Was Code-Switching.

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John McWhorter: There's nothing wrong with Black English Ocasio-Cortez was engaging in what linguists call code-switching. Few find code-switching surprising when Latinos do it between English and Spanish, alternating between the two languages within a single conversation or even sentence. The concept perhaps seems less familiar when done between dialects of the same language, but this, too, is extremely common.

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this is the best resource on the topic

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Professor Paul Kerswill is one of a group of researchers who have documented the rise of Multicultural London English (MLE), and who have studied its forms, its uses, and its users. You can read more about MLE here, and find links to further resources.

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What is MLE?

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MLE, race and class
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Resources

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Who speaks MLE?

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Attitudes to MLE

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Contact

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Multicultural London English - Language and Linguistic Science, The University of York

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Professor Paul Kerswill is one of a group of researchers who have documented the rise of Multicultural London English (MLE), and who have studied its forms, its uses, and its users. You can read more about MLE here, and find links to further resources. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌‌

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MLE and more

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word of mouth on MLE

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Word of Mouth - Multicultural London English - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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Jamila Lyiscott is a “tri-tongued orator;” in her powerful spoken-word essay “Broken English,” she celebrates — and challenges — the three distinct flavors of English she speaks with her friends, in the classroom and with her parents. As she explores the complicated history and present-day identity that each language represents, she unpacks what it means to be “articulate.”

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Summary of MMU research

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examples of MLE terms

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analyse the representations

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With her ear glued to her mobile phone, my 11-year-old daughter, Millie, was deep in conversation, her brow furrowed as she discussed some arrangement with a friend.

I listened in, as I made jam in the kitchen. 'Lol, that's well sick!' Millie said. 'DW, yolo!'

This indecipherable code-speak ('sick' means awesome, 'DW' is don't worry and 'yolo' means you only live once) was delivered in an accent I could only place as somewhere between South London, downtown Los Angeles and Kingston, Jamaica.

It certainly isn't indigenous to our home village of Ashtead, in the rolling Surrey hills.

When Millie ended the call, she turned to me, smiled and asked: 'What's for supper please, Dad?' in perfect Received Pronunciation.

I t seems that after less than a month at secondary school, my daughter is now bi-lingual - but it is not French or German in which she is suddenly fluent.

Her new language, comprising alien words and abbreviations delivered with faux West Coast American inflections, will not stand her in good stead when she embarks on a school trip to visit museums in Berlin.

Millie now speaks a version of what academics call 'Multicultural Youth English', or MYE, which she has picked up from her friends - middle-class girls from the Home Counties.

Many well-heeled parents with children who have started secondary school this term will, like me, be familiar with this change in the way their children speak.

Some will be frustrated, while others will be depressed that their youngsters are conversing in what I can only describe as a clumsy rap-speak derived, variously, from the West Indies, Mumbai, MTV and American reality TV stars the Kardashians.

Initially dubbed 'Multicultural London English' by linguists, this bizarre way of speaking is now creeping out of the city and into the shires, infecting children like some linguistic superbug.
I greet my daughter's new vernacular with puzzled bemusement.

To her friends she speaks in what I like to call 'Amerifaican' - a linguistic affectation where the final syllable in each sentence plunges off an intonational cliff.

Her vowels are stretched to breaking-point, and conversations are now dotted with misused prepositions which I constantly try to correct. Just yesterday, for example, I asked her: 'What did you have for lunch today?'

She replied: 'I had, like, lasagne.'

'Like lasagne? Do you mean cannelloni, or maybe moussaka?' I persevered. . .

'No, I had, like, lasagne.'

The ruination of language does not stop there, since everything good is now 'epic', every triumph is met with 'ooosh', and humour no longer merits a laugh but is instead acknowledged with 'lol'.

So why is my daughter - along with hundreds if not thousands of other children - committing these linguistic atrocities.

'It's cool,' she told me. 'Everyone speaks like it.'

'How do the boys at school talk?' I asked.

'Like Bob Marley,' she said.

While I sometimes tire of yanking the grammatical reins and worry that this dialect will spill over from the playground into Millie's everyday life, I actually thank heavens she isn't speaking that particular version of MYE favoured by teenage boys through Middle England: the hideous dialect known as Jafaican, which seems to be spreading rapidly.

It differs from Amerifaican in that the influence is mainly Jamaican, yet it has been adopted by boys of all races and colours.

Our local 406 bus ferries people from the affluent Surrey village of Ewell to the leafy riverside borough of Royal Kingston upon Thames.

Mostly, the verbal soundtrack to this journey through the middle-class heartlands of the South East is Estuary English, the formal clipped tones of Received Pronunciation and, perhaps, a smattering of Korean and Polish.

But at 3.30pm each weekday, the destination on the front of the bus might as well read 'Kingston, Jamaica' rather than Kingston upon Thames, as hundreds of children from comprehensive schools head home, bickering in an indecipherable language which, frankly, only they can understand.

Lampooned by the television comedy characters Ali G and Lee Nelson, Jafaican has its very own lexicon, a random hotchpotch which includes words such as blud (friend), cotch (relax) and creps (trainers), and originated in the ethnic melting pot of East London.

It is heavy with Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean inflections; words are clipped and there are idiosyncrasies with unknown origins, such as saying 'raaait' instead of right.

Worryingly, MYE in all its forms takes many of its characteristics from the misogynistic and expletive-ridden world of rap music.

Professor Paul Kerswill, of Lancaster University, has studied MYE - and says it is no passing fad.

'There is evidence that this new type of English is spreading outside London around the big urban centres of England - some young people in Birmingham and Manchester use local versions of it, for example.

'Because of the slang and its association with hip-hop, it's considered cool and fashionable. This leads young people - and some older people too - to pick up the slang and the style in their everyday talk, even though they may be middle-class and not from the inner city.'

Professor David Crystal, linguist and author of Wordsmiths And Warriors: The English-language Tourist's Guide To Britain, adds: 'Groups and bonding are especially important to teenage girls so, if there is a feature which is perceived to be cool and fashionable, you are almost certainly going to get it spreading like wildfire in that particular age group.

'It is now perfectly normal for kids to leave junior school, start senior school and switch their accent and dialect.'

Experts agree that MYE has spread quickly because of mobility between cities, and also technology. Worryingly, it is projected to usurp some traditional regional dialects, such as Cockney in London, within the next 20 years.

In cities, the problem is so acute it even affects the school choices parents make for their children.

Rock star Paul Weller is one of them, admitting that he chose private education for his children over the local comprehensive near his home in London's wealthy Maida Vale because of the way local teenagers speak.

'I don't want my kids coming home speaking like Ali G - I'm just not having it,' he says.

It is not just snobbery about accents which is stoking parental concerns. Diction has a direct bearing on how speakers are perceived, especially in the job market.

An investigation by ITV's Tonight programme two weeks ago concluded that there is a social stigma attached to certain regional accents. A survey commissioned by the documentary revealed that people speaking with Liverpool and Birmingham accents were perceived as less intelligent.

Jafaican was not included in the report, but it seems unlikely to score highly in any linguistic league table.

However, it is now so entrenched that some experts believe it will never be eradicated.

'It is already many people's ordinary speech and will stay with them into adulthood,' says Professor Kerswill.

For my part, I am sure that if I persevere with my light-hearted nagging, Millie will grow out of her new verbal habit.

I hope that I'm right. It concerns me that children are becoming conditioned to speaking in a dialect which many potential future employers will find totally off-putting.

These children are in danger of literally talking themselves into unemployment in later life.

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Why are so many middle-class children speaking in Jamaican patois? A father of an 11-year-old girl laments a baffling trend

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With her ear glued to her mobile phone, my 11-year-old daughter, Millie, was deep in conversation, her brow furrowed as she discussed some arrangement with a friend. I listened in, as I made jam in the kitchen. 'Lol, that's well sick!' Millie said. 'DW, yolo!'

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analyse the representations

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by LAURA CLARK, Daily Mail

Last updated at 11:50 12 April 2006

If you struggle to understand Cockney, Brummie, Geordie and Scouse, then stand by for an even bigger challenge.

It's called Jafaican and, slowly but surely, it is infiltrating the English language.

The multicultural hybrid, based on Jamaican but with undertones of West African and Indian, is not a totally new concept, of course. Ali G has been delivering his comic routines in his own colourful variant of it for some years.

But linguistic experts say it is becoming so common in the inner cities that it is beginning to eclipse traditional accents.

In some London boroughs, for instance, it has taken over from Cockney, the prevailing accent for generations, as inner-city white youths pick up the speech patterns of their black and Asian classmates. More than four out of ten London residents are now from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The Jafaican name, conveying the idea of 'fake Jamaican', was coined on the streets rather than in the research rooms. The academics prefer 'multicultural English'. But the message is constant.

"People are beginning to sound the same regardless of their colour or ethnic background," said Sue Fox, of London University's Queen Mary College, who is studying the phenomenon.

She ruled out suggestions that the language is simply the result of white youngsters trying to be cool.

"It's not about that at all," she said.

"It seems more likely that young people have been growing up in London exposed to a mixture of second-language English and local London English and that this new variety has emerged from that mix."

Miss Fox and co-researchers from Lancaster University are analysing the speech patterns of dozens of teenagers at colleges in inner and outer London.

Youngsters have been interviewed and observed talking to their friends over a ten-month period.

What has emerged is a distinctive inner-London patois which borrows heavily from Jamaican creole, lifting some words unchanged.

But it has been influenced by other speech patterns, mainly Bangladeshi and West African, with a little South American and Arab thrown in.

An analysis of vowel sounds has shown the traditional long Cockney vowels are becoming shorter. The word 'face' sounds like 'fice' in cockney but more like 'fehs' in Jafaican.

"Our sample includes teenagers with West Indian, South American, Arab, West African and London backgrounds," said Miss Fox.

"In London in the post-war years lots of white working-class Cockney families moved out to satellite towns such as Basildon and Harlow. In their place, we have got this huge mix of different ethnic groups."

While the study is currently focussed on London, Miss Fox believes a similar pattern will be emerging in other cities.

In Bristol recently, police used Ali G-style patois on placards warning young people to curb their antisocial behaviour. They insisted they were merely reflecting the language of target groups.

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'Jafaican' is wiping out inner-city English accents

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by LAURA CLARK, Daily Mail Last updated at 11:50 12 April 2006 If you struggle to understand Cockney, Brummie, Geordie and Scouse, then stand by for an even bigger challenge. It's called Jafaican and, slowly but surely, it is infiltrating the English language.

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Discourses -  codeswitching and identity

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Discourses -  codeswitching and identity

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read this opinion piece

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Growing up in my predominately white town, I was often asked to "speak Indian" - which, besides being an ignorant request, was honestly a hard one with which to comply. I shied away from any marker of my "otherness," especially something as obvious as language.

In college, one of my parents called me late at night when I was with a close friend. In my hazy, sleepy state, I instinctively answered in Marathi, a language spoken in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Yet, I had never spoken Marathi in her presence before. Marathi is a symbol of security to me - my mother tongue and the language I use with those closest to me. To let someone else into that blanket of security was a big moment, and it was gratifying to not have to compartmentalize my identity with her after that.

There is a lot going on linguistically in my family. We are multilingual, multicultural, interracial immigrants and members of the Indian diaspora - to name a few components of our identity. But what strikes me as more interesting is how we so easily navigate and display our layered identities in conversation through "code-switching".

Code-switching is typically defined in linguistics as a mixing of languages and speech patterns in conversation. At any given time my family speaks in at least three different languages - Marathi, English, and Hindi - simultaneously. It's so normal to engage in code switching that I didn't realize it happened so often until a friend pointed it out after having dinner with my extended family.

I understand and can speak four different languages to varying degrees. Even before I knew what code-switching was, I don't remember a time when I didn't naturally just navigate my life using different languages.

My parents both grew up in Madhya Pradesh, a state in the central part of India, where Hindi is the most common language. However, my family is originally from the west Indian state of Maharashtra, where most people speak Marathi. My parents grew up speaking both languages and English. I was born in India, but grew up in the United States. I learned Marathi and English almost simultaneously, while learning Spanish at school and picking up Hindi from Bollywood movies.

Languages, and location, affect what we say, and how. When my parents speak Hindi in the US, the words come out tentatively, as if they have forgotten how to string them together. When they speak Hindi in India, however, it is like hearing sounds of relief from someone who's just come home from a long day. The words come out slower, relaxed, and filled with long pauses as if there is all the time in the world to talk.

Lately, I am finding it easier to code-switch in the presence of non-family. As I have grown to appreciate my intersectional identities, my code-switching has become more deliberate, to highlight, for example, the pronunciations of names and places in their proper tongue. And the more I pay attention to code-switching around me, the less it seems to juxtapose with the dominating American English.

As I look around the dinner table with my parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends and realize how many different experiences are actually being conveyed through the languages spoken, the switches seem necessary - and wholly enriching.
Topics

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I don't 'code-switch' to hide my identity. I 'code-switch' to celebrate it | Vaidehi Mujumdar

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Typically defined in linguistics as a mixing of languages and speech patterns in conversation, code-switching has been a feature in many multicultural families

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man's on bigger tings innit

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This was a video on mryassory98 channel now it has been terminated it is the same user btw all my videos in the beginning say mryassory98 they are the same user.

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read and summarise Sharma and Sankarans' research