Okay, so I’ve seen that Ben Shapiro video about “ackshually people want to be non-white now” has people citing examples about minorities having to “speak white” as a counter-argument. And while these are valid experiences, it’s also somewhat race-myopic. Thread! (1/18)

The most commonly cited “code-switching” experiences of racial/ethnic minorities include the black community and AAVE, Latinos and Hispanic pronunciations/Spanglish, Asians and their “foreign” accents. Supposedly we have owned Ben Shapiro in the racism argument. (2/18)

But take a second and think about it. It’s not just racial/ethnic minorities who have this experience. Let’s take one example, which is actually a gigantic group of people: white Southerners. (3/18)

White Southerners also experience discrimination on the basis of their accents. People often train to lose it. Hollywood actors from the South overwhelmingly choose to “lose the accent” for a “neutral American” (which is mostly Midwest-influenced). (4/18) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/movies/southern-actors-accents-billy-bob-thornton-sissy-spacek.html

In fact, people have done studies showing bias against Southerners in general. It is associated as being less educated and other negative attributes, while Northern dialects are associated with being more educated and other positive traits. (5/18)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/why-does-a-southern-drawl-sound-uneducated-to-some/

(And linking back to AAVE — remember its Southern origins that became a Northern urban working/middle-class black dialect after The Great Migration. Whites and blacks in the South, especially in rural areas, don’t sound all too different, even now.) (6/18)

And this is something that we witness outside of the US. In Canada, for instance, Francophones/Québécois experience similar attitudes of prejudice. This research has been used in conjunction with studies of “Black English”. (7/18)

Across the pond in the UK, Scottish dialects are deemed lesser and discriminated against in social and employment situations. Carol Ann Duffy, former (and first ever Scottish-born) Poet Laureate of the UK, wrote about this experience in her poem “Originally”. (8/18)

Even within England, there is discrimination based on dialect. Cockney, for instance, is the dialect of the poor underclass (unless you’re Michael Caine), compared to the posh “Received Pronunciation” (RP) aka “BBC English”. There’s a famous Broadway musical about this!! (9/18)

And it’s not just in the Anglosphere either. Southern Germany notably faces stereotyping and prejudice from Northern Germany. This dynamic is actually somewhat similar to America’s North-South and/or the coastal/“flyover country” divide. (10/18)

And even outside of European contexts too...Japan features the divide between Kanto and Kansai. Kanto-ben is “standard Japanese” based on the Tokyo dialect, while Kansai is seen as not quite as uppity (even though Osaka and Kyoto exist!!). (11/18)

Or in China, where there are 8+ varieties of the “Chinese languages” with countless subdivisions and branch dialects, to the point where they’re often mutually unintelligible. “Putonghua” is “Standard Chinese”, based on the Beijing dialect in the Mandarin variety... (12/18)

...and is a mandatory part of language instruction, while other local dialects that represent cultural heritage get banned from schools and pushed out of the public sphere. If you’re not using “Putonghua”, then you are “uncivilized”. (13/18)

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1053025.shtml

This isn’t meant to discount the experiences of POC and even white people who have to “code-switch” in the US. This is meant to provide a more global context in the history of linguistic discrimination. Our biases exist everywhere. (14/18) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/books/review/how-you-say-it-katherine-kinzler.html

This is meant to be a reminder that linguistic discrimination is something that goes beyond race. It is tied to class, status, and power. It is tied to who dictate what is “prestige” in the cultural fabric of a country. (15/18)

It is also tied to national identity and borders. “Swedish”, “Norwegian”, and “Danish” are mutually intelligible to some degree; “Mandarin” and “Yue/Cantonese” are not. And yet Scandinavian languages are recognized separately, while China categorizes Yue as a “dialect”. (16/18)

The difference between a “language” and a “dialect” is purely political. To quote famous linguist and Yiddishist Max Weinreich, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” (17/18)

Our relationship with languages intersects with the lines of not just ethnicity or race, but also class, education, and national identity. And we would all do well to understand these complex dynamics better. For more reading! (18/18 END) https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/