M3: Dialect

An important aspect of language is language difference or language variation.  The bigger the language, the more variation there is.  One type of variation is called a dialect.  Another type of variation is called register.  As teachers of multilingual students, we need to know about both of these kinds of language varieties.

So on the left, this is a definition and description of a dialect.  On the right is register.  

Can you come up with an example of a dialectical marker in a language?  An example of what a Texan might say in a Texas or Southern dialect of American English that is different from someone who is speaking a different dialect of English?

Is there a funny saying or word or pronunciation (that's what linguists call it, other people would call it "accent") that someone in your family says?

Write it down.

In this first video are some examples of different word choices or pronunciation depending on dialects in American English.

 

This next video describes dialects and has some examples of a different dialect of English outside of the United States.

An important note:
Linguists do not categorize languages as "good" or "bad" -- they just are.  However, there is a long history of language discrimination based on the dialect or language that someone speaks. These ideas remain today. Think about if you ever heard someone say a group of people don't speak a language correctly due to their different dialect.  When someone is discriminated against for the language variety or the language they speak, this is called linguicism.  It is essentially racism but with language.  Often they go hand in hand.  In our textbook, Wright writes, "discrimination against a person's language or way of speaking is rarely based on the language itself.  As the controversy over Ebonics suggests, the discrimination may be less about the language and more about the people who speak it" (p. 41 in the 3rd edition).

A related issue is linguistic profiling.  The linguist John Baugh first studied this in Philadelphia in the 1960s. There are others who have continued to study how people are discriminated against because of their language or accent.  If this interests you there are more links in the resources module under race and language.