Chapter Eight: Ethnicity and social networks

* It is often possible for individuals to signal their ethnicity by the language they choose to use. Even when a complete conversation in an ethnic language is not possible, people may use short phrases, verbal filers or linguistic tags, which signal ethnicity. For Example: In New Zealand many Maori people routinely use Maori greetings such as kia and ora, while speaking in English, to signal their ethnicity.

- African American Vernacular English: a distinct variety or dialect that was developed by African Americans as a symbolic way of differentiating themselves from the majority group.

Some of AAVE linguistic features (pp186-187)

- Complete absence of the copula verb be in some social & linguistic contexts

- The use of invariant be to signal recurring or repeated actions

- Mutable negation

- Constant cluster simplifications

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British Black English

1-Patois: a Jamaican Creole in origin, which is used by Jamaican immigrants in London and by young British Blacks in group talks as a sign of ethnic identity.

Some of Patois linguistic features (p190)

- Lexical items such as lick meaning 'hit' and kenge meaning 'week, puny'

- Different pronunciation like then and thin are pronounced 'den' and 'tin'.

- Plural forms don't have s on the end.

- Tenses aren't marked by suffixes on verbs, so forms like walk and jump are used rather than walked, walks, jumped, and jumps.

- The form mi is used for I, me and my (mi niem / my name).

- The form dem is used for they, them and their (dem car / their car).

2- Midland Black English: a variety of Standard English with a west midland accent which is an informal variety with some Patois features.

3- Multi-cultural London English: a variety used by adolescents (teenagers) from a range of ethnic backgrounds, including Jamaican & Asian backgrounds. Its features include using monophthongs instead of diphthongs and a distinctive vocabulary, for example: blood / mate and nang / good and yard / house.

- Social networks: who we talk and listen to regularly is an important influence on the way we speak (regular patterns of informal social relationships among people.

- Density: it refers to whether members of a person's network are in touch with each other.

- Plexity: is a measure of the range of different types of transaction people are involved in with different individuals.

- Uniplex relationship: is one where the link with the other person is in only one area.

- Multiplex relationship: it involves interactions with others along several dimensions.

- Community practice: the activities that group members share, and their shared objectives and attitudes (one belongs to many communities of practice such as family, workgroup, sports team, etc).