Phase 2

Exploring the diversity of the English language literacy

Abstract

In this essay, I have critically analyzed my belief that technological advancement have helped us to accept the rich diversity of the English language, with proper evidences, counter arguments and refutations. The essay came to be through the study of the course materials and was fortified with examples and evidences from outside course sources. The cover letter describes the path that led me to come to the aforementioned assumption which I researched and explored in the following essay.

Cover Letter

Being a science student has made the word “research” very familiar to me. However, I never had the opportunity to do any actual research since I have become part of the science field 9 years ago, when I first specified my division as “science” in my secondary school back in Bangladesh. Finishing both my secondary and high school I got admitted to BRAC University and studied Biotechnology there for 2 years. However, in those two years I never did any research, it was all about memorizing and understanding, even in the biology lab works, I conducted previously done experiments written on a sheet of paper. The results, not surprisingly, was as expected. I had no intention of implying that the education quality in my country is bad, well, it is bad, and my country is not the only country where it is bad. For example, the SAT in USA, an exam system that fails in so many ways to evaluate the potential of students, just like the IQ test fails to truly evaluate someone’s intelligence. The reason is simple, you can never create a single standard to judge every human. I once found an example of it in a certain meme on the social media, where the teacher asked a fish, a seal, a dog, a penguin, an elephant and a monkey to take the same test, which is climbing a tree. Unfortunately, the most common thing the human species have, is being unique from each other.

Coming back to the topic, doing research takes time and patience, moreover, it takes everything you have learned since the beginning of your life, just to analyze the subject to conduct the research. My Researched Exploratory Essay was researched in a similar way. The phase two of this course had eight reading materials that provided the background for my research. After reading two of those eight materials, “English Belongs to Everybody” by Robert MacNeil and “Everyone Has an Accent” by Walt Wolfram, I was brought upon my idea for my Researched Exploratory Essay. At first, I wondered, why the claim, “English Belongs to Everybody”, then why is there a difference in English used by people of different ethnicities. I understood the latter, by reading Walt Wolfram’s work, there is a scientific reason why English is different from person to person, culture to culture and past to present, moreover, it will also change in the future. On the other hand, the reason for discrimination, I guess it is one of the great faults in humanity.

The topic what I researched on was, the effects of technology on the spread of English as a language, the work of technology as literary media for this language and if it had helped in stopping discrimination against different dialects. First of all, this was no easy topic to do research on. There is evidence that the media and technology have effect on the spread of English language, however, the key question was, did it help reduce discrimination against different dialects of English. I will try to answer this question in my Researched Exploratory Essay.

Why do All Lions Sound the Same?

What is the difference between humans and every other animal on this planet? The first answer that comes to our mind, we talk. We not only speak what we are thinking, but also in many different tongues. A lion from the African Savannah and one from Gujrat, in India have the same sounding roar. However, people from these two places speak in completely two different languages and in the same language the dialect differentiates among communities. Therefore, our answer for the above question is very accurate, we speak, and other animals don’t. Even after thousands of years, a song from a nightingale have not changed, but our languages changed a lot in course of few centuries, and they keep changing. The same words do not bear the same meaning, new words take place over the older one, and the way it is pronounced also change.

How the language evolves have always bewildered linguists and researchers of language. There are many reasons but the most important one is the cultures’ mixing together due to the migration of the population. This migration was a great factor in the past, however, nowadays, this mixing of culture still happens even when someone sits at home and don’t go out for a week or two. This was made possible due to the advancement in technology. To give an example, “google”, a word that had never been used two decades ago, is now very common. Due to the revolution of the internet, and the establishment of Google named search engine, we even started to use that name as a verb (e.g. If you don’t know the meaning of google, just google it). To emphasize on the mixing of cultures, A Korean chef, Emily Kim, has currently over 3 million viewers world-wide on her YouTube channel. The fact that she speaks English with a very hard accent did not hamper her popularity judging by the comments on her videos. On one of her most popular uploads, “Traditional Kimchi Recipe” (uploaded Jun 22, 2014), the commenters are from different parts of the world complimenting her recipe which were made clear as almost every comment started with “in my country” or “in (country name)”. She got accepted in the ever-increasing community of the internet, by making and uploading videos on making Korean foods. These mixing of cultures and acceptance of different dialogues were not so profound and widespread in the past. Not so long ago, English-speaking scholars had put some hard-fast rules to differentiate “proper” English from its other forms, and anyone who used English any other way, were condemned. Schools were very rough in this sector, forcing students with a different dialect to go through many correction courses just to get that “proper English”. People found themselves distributed in classes of hierarchy based on how they spoke. Then what changed? Why the countries that stood so strongly against “improper English”, now has multiple TV shows, viewed among millions, hosted by those very improper English speakers. One of the important factors that payed role was technology, which not only cures diseases or tries to take a picture of the black hole, but also brings communities from different part of the world together in one place, changing our perspective on the use of language. At first, radio, then televisions, from their now the complex network of internet, all of these played a great role in how we use our languages. In this paper, I tried to correlate technological advancement with our acceptance of diversity of English.

Six years ago, in a study done by Professor Jane Stuart-Smith and his colleagues from University of Glasgow, it was showed how the television has accelerated the dialect’s change in Glaswegian adolescents. In his article, he gave an example of a TV soap drama which had proliferated this change, as it made the viewers more engaged psychologically with the series, diffusing their language at a fast rate (Smith et al.). The change of English language due to the rise of media technology is well known, but it has become very rapid compared to the past. After revolution of press, writing was the initial media of carrying the language to the masses. This had not only brought changes in the language’s variation but also how it was spoken (Smith et al. 502). What Smith’s research had shown that, language had always been changing, but as the technology surrounding the language has improved, this change has become more rapid.

With the rapid change in language, our societies had to make lot of decisions, whether to accept those changes or not. Initially, different dialects created discrimination among communities. For example, USA is a country that was colonized by the Europeans. Later it had become a melting point of many different cultures, as people from Asia, Africa and South Americans started to immigrate into the country. They brought their diverse cultures and languages. All with the goal to live a life of freedom and liberty. However, acting as the dominant race, the English whites have always termed that their way of life is the right way of life, and their use of English is the proper use of English. As a result, the society soon got divided into classes, where how you speak, or your dialect, will decide where you will be placed in the society. Soon, the speech of freedom, become the tool of measuring worth. Though this discrimination still lingers in today’s society, I believe, our perspective is changing, and the change has become more rapid through the integration of technology.

The best way to stop discrimination is through awareness. Such as, being aware that, there is no such thing as a proper way of using a language as it is subject to change and there will always be differences in dialect between the speakers of the same language. The best example of defining the diversity of dialect is through the words of an American novelist and linguist, Rosina Lippi-Green. In her work, “English with an accent”, she talks about how dialects are built up since childhood, and how they change as we grow up. She termed the dialects as soundhouses, built brick by brick, using the experiences from our life as building materials. When forcing someone to adopt to a so-called proper dialect, it is like breaking into someone’s soundhouse, breaking the furniture, changing the paintings on the wall and removing parts of the house entirely. This will surely have negative effects on a child’s life. Coming back to raising awareness, two author seems to put a great path with their published articles. At first, a Canadian-American novelist, Robert MacNeil, in his article, “English Belongs to Everybody” talked about how English can never be controlled by the strict rules of the scholars, and how it has always portrayed the sense of freedom to everyone who seeks it throughout history. MacNeil successfully portrays that whoever choose to use English, has the right to use English in their own unique way. Furthermore, the individuality of dialect can be realized through the work of a distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, Walt Wolfram. In his article, “Everyone Has an Accent”, he provided evidence and scientific reasons establishing the idea that dialect is a personal attribute and it is different from one person to the other, moreover, awareness can reduce discrimination against dialects. Wolfram’s work gives foundation and reasoning to justify the diversity of English speakers. When combined, these two authors have set up the realization that, if we want to accept English as the language that connects people from all around the world, then we also have to accept that it will come with many dialects and bring great change to the language itself.

This is where the technology plays a great role, bringing people from all over the world together. There are over 7 billion people living on this planet, putting every one of them in one English speaking country is impossible and irrational. Over 3 billion of those people are now connected through internet, a marvel of our information technology, and the dominant language in this medium is English. However, one might argue that, the advancement in technology has made us less interactive with each other, pulling us further apart. This has some truth to it, but we cannot deny the fruits of it. There is no denying that the internet has brought all the world together inside a giant cafeteria, and the main language of communication here is, English. As a result, the change of this language through this media is far more accelerated than Smith and his colleagues’ “television”. There are two most important platforms in the internet that are currently playing the major role in mixing our cultures and languages, Social media and the online videos’ channels, mainly YouTube.

Firstly, Social Media, is the go to place for people of all ages, to share information, learn new things, spend leisure time or interact with other people. Assistant professor of Institute of Education & Research at University of Science & Technology (Bannu, Pakistan), Irfan Ullah Khan and his colleagues had identified an interesting outcome of using Social Media. In their study, they found that at University level, Social Media can help improve the vocabulary of the students. In other words, our language literacy changes with our use of Social Media. Moreover, we have started to use more short and straightforward way of writing English. As e-mail has taken over letters, we tend to write both business and personal letters in short and with a fluid structure. To keep pace with our fast and rapid flow of life, our language has become fast too.

Secondly, online videos have replaced televisions. Instead of waiting, every week and sit exactly at the same time to watch a show you like on the TV has become a news of the past. Nowadays, we get to decide when to watch and what to watch. Thus, it has successfully taken all of our free time, as we don’t have to put out time to watch a show but watch as many shows as possible in the time we get. This excess exposure to a media that not only interacts with us through vision but also through sound, it has great influence in changing our way of using the language. Children, now from a very early age, are exposed to the videos made by people all over the world, carrying different dialects and forms of speaking English. Thus, this and upcoming generations are more aware of the difference in dialects and they will rarely discriminate between dialects. The platform set by these two parts of the internet, has created the chance to people from all over the world to come together and accept our differences, a giant mixing machine of cultures, religions and languages.

In conclusion, technology is rapidly shifting our paradigm on English language literacy. We have adopted a new and faster way of learning and using English as language with a more widespread influence. As more and more, people join the communities in the internet, we have become more and more acceptable towards each other’s differences. There are still discriminations in both our real and virtual world, but our discrimination towards dialects has been on the decline. English had started to settle itself as an international language because of the past super power Britain and then followed by USA. However, it has gained great momentum in becoming the common language for all through our advancement in our communication and information technologies.

References:

  1. Kim, Emily “Maangchi”. “Traditional Kimchi Recipe (Tongbaechu-Kimchi: 통배추김치).” YouTube, 22 June 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTucCw1w6Ak.
  2. Stuart-Smith, Jane & Pryce, Gwilym & Timmins, Claire & Gunter, Barrie. “Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect.” Language, vol. 89 no. 3, 2013, pp. 501-536. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lan.2013.0041
  3. Lippi-Green, Rosina. English With an Accent : Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London ; New York :Routledge, 1997. Print.
  4.  MacNeil R. “English Belongs to Everybody.” McCrum R., Cran W., MacNeil R. The Story of English. New York, New York, USA. Viking 1986. 192-196. Print.
  5.  Wolfram W. (2000, September 1). Everyone Has An Accent. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2000/everyone-has-an-accent
  6. Khan, Irfan Ullah. Ayaz, Muhammad. Faheem, Muhammad. “The Role of Social Media in Development of English Language Vocabulary at University Level.” International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences.” Vol 6, No. 12, 2016.