Language, Correctness and Prejudice

Hi Everyone,

Thanks to 50% of the class who posted this past week. This week, I'm assuming that everyone will be able to post, and get into the regular habit of it. I'll remind you tomorrow during class.

It was quite interesting reading your posts; many of you seem to feel quite comfortable moving among different langauge varieties throughout your daily lives. It seemed there was some disagreement on the issue of naming different cultures/groups/ethnicities, perhaps we'll get into talking about that more this week in class.

This week, we're looking at how language intersects with issues of correctness and prejudice. As I read through the readings for this week, one of which drove me absolutely crazy which I'll talk about tomorrow, I was really curious about two main issues. I thought they might be good ones to talk about in our blog this week. But, also, as always, if you have something else you'd like to contribute, please do so.

1. It seems like some of the concerns about correctness in language go a bit overboard in terms of how much damage that incorrect usage is having on that language. But, there must be some kind of 'line,' so to speak, in terms of how much incorrectness a language can cope with. Perhaps we'll talk about this in class tomorrow, but also, consider what your 'line' is for correct usage. What is unacceptable to you? Or, perhaps you don't have a line at all?

2. I'm curious if correctness must come into play with issues of language and prejudice because the complaints that I am used to hearing is that "with all these immigrants, you can't even speak English in your own neighborhood anymore"--or something along those lines. Is it that English isn't being spoken at all, or is it a different form of English, an incorrect form? Or, perhaps another thing to consider is asking is it possible to be racist about language change if it does inconvenience speakers of the established language?

Those are just a couple ideas. I'm sure more will come from our discussions this week.

Tiffany