Language and Ethnicity Revision Notes

Language and Ethnicity – Revision Notes

Ethnicity: cultural heritage

Nationality: place of birth (country)

Ethnicity has replaced ‘race’ – ‘race’ acquired negative connotations. Problems faced with word ‘ethnic’ means ‘non-white’ / ‘non-British’

Immigration key influence on a multi-cultural society. Many immigrants’ settles in London (East) leading to the absorption of new language e.g. ‘kosher’ (refers to Yiddish food) also means ‘above board/okay’

Pidgin: trade language – not the original language of any speaker

Creole: develops from the pidgin and becomes mother tongue

Jamaican Creole: influence by slavery and British colonisation. In the 1970’s in London White British and Afro-Caribbean young people integrates and mixed-race relationships formed. This created London English and Jamaican English where words were used based on different social groups e.g. ‘Bruv’

Resistance Identity: an identity that goes against the mainstream culture/norms

Patois: ‘patwa’ – alternative term for creole

British Black English: wide label – refers to Caribbean speakers

Multicultural Urban British English: refers to the way multicultural London English has spread to other areas in the UK

Hybrid forms and Multicultural London English (MLE)-

Language contact in England between 1960’s and 1990’s was relatively…