I'm happy to share credit with Eugene for his interpretation of my position
on polylectal tolerance.
We certainly agree that the experience of living with language diversity,
within and between "Languages", is a normal and healthy one. My take on the
issue of 'accents' and reactions to them was basically that they become a
resource for constructing and presenting a social position, a social status
or identity. Eugene extends this in his example to note that our social
relationships are in very basic ways produced in relation to issues of how
we communicate with one another, including our accents and reactions to them.
Where Eugene takes my position a step further is in noting that there is
something impoverished about a purely monolectal environment in which
everyone takes language uniformity for granted and uses this as a sort of
emblem for the normality of transparent communication. It's a good example,
to my mind, of how ideological beliefs (monolectal is good, communication
is normally transparent) become facts of experience for those who grow up
in privileged circumstances (or more generally for those who live in the
social world/sector whose interests are served by an ideological belief).
Those poor middle class kids! they do not have effective coping strategies
for dealing with language diversity and communication difficulties that
arise with it. They are culturally deprived ! In a more balanced way, we
may say that among their many privileges, this one is missing; that one
price they pay for their advantaged social positions is that they are
blinded in this respect by the language uniformity of their normal social
environments. It is just one of the many disadvantages of those whose lives
are too 'sheltered' or 'filtered' from diversity, as from adversity.
I am not so much calling for destroying the fluency of transparent
communication as I am for the removal of the artificial conditions that
produce the illusion, for some, that lectal uniformity is normal, and that
prevent many from learning to communicate across diversity.
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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