You're right about attitudes toward dialect. You probably did your survey
in California where you would expect reactions like the ones you got.
Unfortunately, you'd get much the same in states where southern dialects are
standard. Labov got those sorts of reactions to pronunciation in New York
City. So in describing attitudes, the term class is probably indispensable.
I would, however, like to see us move away from the use of terms in our
general discussion of dialect that seem to imply a social hierarchy of
better and worse people based upon dialect.
I'm not trying to be politically correct. I get in trouble constantly for
not being politically correct. I just hate what they are trying to do in
Texas to their drawl. I visited Houston recently and discovered that many
native Texans have quit drawling. I miss that lopsided little heist of the
upper lip. When I asked about the negative attitude toward the Texas
dialect, I was told that it was an economic thang. No classy jobs for
drawlers.
Jeff Glauner
Associate Professor of English
Park University, Box 1303
8700 River Park Drive
Parkville MO 64152
[log in to unmask]
http://www.park.edu/jglauner/index.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 2:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: who or whom
Thanks, Jeff, you've nicely depicted how messy it is to try to delimit
and label dialects. Finding social features that consistently align with
dialect features is probably impossible, especially if you want a
fine-grained analysis.
Perhaps objectively and scientifically class isn't a correct defining
parameter for dialect differences in our society. When we consider
language attitudes, however, I think class is an important social
construct precisely because of the superior/inferior values that are
attached to it. In a Hairston-like survey that I did with a class of
mine, we found that dialect features associated with less-educated
speakers (such as double negation and third-person 'don't') elicited far
more consistently negative responses than dialect features that are
nonstandard (that is, incorrect from the trad. grammar point of view)
but appear in the dialect of educated speakers (such as 'between you and
I' or failure to use 'whom' in an object position). Judging from their
self-idenitifications, most of our respondents held positions that would
be considered middle to upper-class. So the kinds of 'mistakes' that
they themselves might make were judged much more acceptable than the
kinds of 'mistakes' that people from less-successful groups might make.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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