gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (11/29/88)
This should really be in sci.lang, but as Banks put his foot in it here ... Followups to sci.lang Finally, if you're not reading this, my apologies again for phrasing some earlier comments in what is taken as anti-American propaganda. Peace? In article <1821@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes: >Maybe he dislikes our meritocracy, but at least here >a child of working class parents can become a professional >without having to learn to disguise an accent. When I did my education degree, all education systems in the West (and the Eastern block for that matter), did a very good job of replicating the social order. I do not think things have changed, nor that the US system is significantly better than European systems at giving everyone an equal chance at Educational achievement, especially when you look at the fortunes of the largely hispanic and black working class. The interesting comparison would be between an East End of London white and a Harlem Black (or between the latter and a Brixton black in the UK). There are hard statistics on this sort of thing, so look before you boast of meritocratic superiority. I don't think US college profiles will be any less socially skewed than European ones, especially not Ivy League. And what about trying to get into Berkeley if you're Asian? News here is that there are unofficial quotas to stop bright Asians overrunning the place (and news in U.S.A. too, I read an article on this in the States last September). What differs across societies are the symbols of class. In Britain, and much of Europe, language is a class marker. Some people do disguise their accents, others emphasise them in defiance of snobbery. It does affect how you are judged socially, but I have yet to hear of anyone being excluded from the professions because they divn't taak proper. The pressure is felt, but I'd be surprised if no Southern American has ever felt pressure to soften off their accent when working in the North, as a professional. A Turing test here is the accent given to American speech synthesisers. I've yet to hear a broad Texan one. In fact, most of them sound like New England professionals :-) (or would do if they worked). Anyone know of a black speech synthesiser? Are articles like the Dartmouth review's "Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive Bro" completely deviant? Why did Labov have to write "The logic of non-standard English"? about Black English being no 'worse' than white language. The question is, do American blacks entering professions feel any less pressure to change their language than the British working class? Finally, as a child of working class parents, I can tell you that the problem in Britain is as much dialect as accent. I had to use less dialect once I went to college because my dialect is unintelligible to many other Britains (and most Americans, I have problems when I visit). As it was, I was still discovering my dialect words when teaching working class kids with a different dialect in the Midlands. I stopped using them there too. If you are interested in British sociolinguistics, a Scot who does not normally use dialect words, will not disguise their accent after many years in England. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert
jeff@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (12/16/88)
In article <1992@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >When I did my education degree, all education systems in the West (and >the Eastern block for that matter), did a very good job of replicating >the social order. I do not think things have changed, nor that the US >system is significantly better than European systems at giving everyone >an equal chance at Educational achievement, especially when you look at >the fortunes of the largely hispanic and black working class. >There are hard statistics on this sort of thing, so look before you >boast of meritocratic superiority. I don't think US college profiles >will be any less socially skewed than European ones, especially not >Ivy League. Why don't *you* look. As far as I can tell from admittedly unsystematic observation, most people leave school at age 16 or so in the UK and only a very few go on to University. In the US, most stay in school 'till 18, and a far greater proportion go to University. There are a fair number of "minority" students even in the Ivy League. The US isn't so different as to make everyone happy, and is, of course, not better in every way, but there certainly seem to be significant differences. I would also like to know how you determined that the working class is largely hispanic and black. I am perfectly willing to be convinced by hard statistics, but not by seemingly automatic assumptions.