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Chapter 9: Language Diversity
Learning Outcomes:
• Describe the connection between language and culture.
• Explain how languages evolve and change.
• Compare and contrast bilingualism and second language acquisition.
• Describe some theories of second language acquisition and their implications for practice.
I. What is the Connection Between Language and Culture?
A. The Interrelatedness of Language and Culture
1. People learn about language through their culture and about their culture through
language.
3. One prominent view on the interrelatedness between language and culture is that from
B. Infant-Directed Speech
1. In Western cultures, such as that in the United States, adults speak directly to infants
from birth using a unique speech register called infant-directed (ID) speech.
2. Evidence from southern working-class African Americans, Athapaskan Indians,
4. Rather than attempting to reformulate the underlying intentions of children’s
5. Adults from African American, Samoan, and Kaluli cultures usually ignore
unintelligible child speech rather than reformulate it or pursue the child’s intentions.
7. In communicative accommodation that is highly child-centered, the adult regularly
8. By contrast, in communicative accommodation that is highly situation-centered, the
9. The adult also tends to use registers appropriate for each situation, rather than infant-
directed speech, in communicative accommodation that is highly situation-centered.
10. Kaluli and Samoan parents emphasize highly situation-centered communication
throughout infancy and early childhood, whereas Mayan parents use situation-
II. How Do Languages Evolve and Change?
A. Dialects
2. In comparison, accents are varieties of language that differ solely in pronunciation
3. Dialects develop during a prolonged period in which people are separated by
5. Generally speaking, Standard American English (SAE; also called General American
6. Children develop an awareness of the higher status of these dialects at very early
ages.
7. American English Regional Dialects
a. American English regional dialects date to colonial America, when people from
b. Language contact is the process whereby speakers of a language other than
English shape the pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary of English in the
surrounding area.
c. Population movement, or the migration of persons from one dialect region to
another, can affect the maintenance of a dialect in one of two ways.
d. On the one hand, the dialect may begin to vanish in a region that receives an
influx of persons from other areas.
e. On the other hand, the dialect may become more pronounced in an area where the
i. Southern Dialects
• Specific southern dialects include Appalachian English, Smoky Mountain
dialect, South Carolina dialect, Texas English, New Orleans dialect, and
Memphis dialect.
• Speakers of southern American dialect pronounce the vowels /Ɛ/ and /ɪ/ the
• Some speakers use the contraction ya’ll as a second-person plural pronoun
and further use the phrase all ya’ll specifically to acknowledge each
individual in a group.
j. Northern Dialects
• Dialects of the North include New England dialect, Boston dialect, Maine
dialect, Pittsburgh dialect, New York City dialect, Philadelphia dialect, and
Canadian English.
• Distinctive phonological features of northern dialects include dropping
postvocalic /r/ sounds, such as in “cah” for car.
k. Midwestern Dialects
• Persons from areas such as Chicago, Illinois, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri, and
Michigan speak Midwestern dialects.
• With respect to phonology, Midwestern dialects tend to merge the vowel
sounds in the words Don-Dawn, hot-caught, dollar-taller, sock-talk into a
single vowel sound.
• This phenomenon is called the Northern Cities Shift because it is predominant
in large cities in the Midwest, such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and
Detroit.
• Midwestern dialect grammatical features include the need/want/like + past
participle construction.
l. Western Dialects
• Because the western United States was settled more recently than other
regions of the country were, the western dialect area remains largely
undefined.
8. American English Sociocultural Dialects
a. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) comprises the English dialects
that many descendants of enslaved persons speak.
b. Persons speaking the same African languages were often separated to prevent
uprisings.
g. Speakers of AAVE may also delete the suffix –s – whereby 50 cents becomes 50
cent, and She drives becomes She drive – and the possessive suffix ‘s – so that my
sister’s car becomes my sister car.
h. Another common feature of AAVE dialects is phonological inversion, whereby
ask becomes aks.
i. Special grammatical constructions in AAVE include the distinction between
habitual and temporary forms of the present progressive and copula be.
m. Chicano English (ChE) is a dialect people of Mexican ethnic origin speak.
n. Many ChE speakers are not bilingual and they may not know Spanish at all.
o. Some features of ChE include final /z/ devoicing in words such as lies and toys,
using a tense-vowel /i/ in place of its lax counterpart in words ending in –ing (i.e.,
pronouncing it as “eeeng”), and using intonation patterns characteristic of
Spanish.
p. Another feature of ChE is the use of some Spanish words and phrases, even by
s. Some features of Miami dialect include a heavier /l/ sound than in SAE due to the
tongue remaining on the roof of the mouth for a longer duration and fewer vowel
sounds than in SAE, which mirror the five vowel sounds of Spanish (e.g.,
speakers pronounce the word hand with a nasal vowel so it sounds like hahnd).
t. The Jewish dialect has characteristics of both the Yiddish and Hebrew languages.
u. Jewish English pronunciation includes a hard g sound in words like singer,
x. Some research indicates that when children who speak a nonstandard dialect
increase their use of MAE across first and second grade, they experience greater
gains in their reading than children whose use of MAE does not increase over
these early grades.
y. It may be the case than an increasing use of MAE indicates a linguistic awareness
or flexibility that is beneficial to learning to read during these early grades when
B. Pidgins
1. A pidgin is a simplified type of language that develops when speakers who do not
share a common language come into prolonged contact.
2. Pidgins have no native speakers; instead, people use them as a second language,
C. Creoles
2. Some creoles remain nondominant in their community, whereas others gain status as
official languages.
III. What are Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition?
A. According to the 2011 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census
B. Fifty-eight percent of these people reported speaking English “very well” and another
19% reported speaking English “well.”
C. Many people living in the United States acquire two or more languages during their
lifetime.
D. The generic term for this diverse group of persons is dual language learners.
E. Bilingualism and Multilingualism
1. Bilingualism
a. Bilingualism is a term that describes the process whereby children essentially
2. Simultaneous Bilingualism
a. With simultaneous bilingualism, a child acquires two or more languages from
birth, or simultaneously.
b. Simultaneous bilingualism occurs in one of two contexts: A child is part of a
majority ethnolinguistic community, or he or she is part of a minority
ethnolinguistic community.
c. A majority ethnolinguistic community is a group that speaks a language the
majority of people in an area value and assign high social status.
f. Shifting to the majority language is common among bilingual children in minority
ethnolinguistic communities, especially when they enter formal schooling.
g. Support from other people in the minority ethnolinguistic community should
increase the chances that children will maintain their bilingualism throughout
adulthood.
3. Sequential Bilingualism
a. Sequential bilingualism is similar to simultaneous bilingualism in that a child
acquires two first languages.
4. Two Systems or One?
5. Code Switching
a. A common phenomenon among bilingual individuals is code switching, or code
mixing.
b. In this process, speakers who have more than one language alternate between the
languages.
c. When the alternation occurs within a single utterance, it is called intrautterance
mixing (or, within one sentence, intrasentential mixing).
F. Second Language Acquisition
1. Second Language Acquisition
(L1) learn an additional language.
b. Some researchers use the term instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) to
differentiate L2 acquisition that occurs as a result of instruction as opposed to
acquisition that occurs implicitly from exposure to authentic L2 input.
c. Success at acquiring a second language and maintaining an L1 or L2 depends on a
number of factors, including whether an individual is part of a majority or
minority ethnolinguistic community.
h. Other terms that characterize an L2 learner’s developing language system include
learner language, approximative system, and idiosyncratic dialect.
i. The interlanguage includes elements of the L1 and the L2 as well as elements
found in neither of the two languages.
j. Language stabilization occurs once the interlanguage stops evolving and L2
learners reach a plateau in their language development.
k. Regardless of whether an L2 learner stabilizes in his or her development,
considering the notion of interlanguage is still important in order to understand
the process by which L2 learners transition to a new system, including their
n. For example, an L2 learner might memorize phrases such as, “How do you
say…?”
2. Attitudes and Policies Regarding Dual Language Instruction
a. In modern times, dual language instruction has endured in most parts of the
world, especially in countries with official bilingualism, such as Canada, Israel,
and Belgium.
3. English as a Second Language
a. Learning English as a second language (ESL) occurs when a person who speaks
a first language other than English then learns English in the context of an
English-speaking country, such as England or the United States.
b. Sometimes people refer to learning English as an additional language (EAL)
(L1) in the classroom with other children and adults.
j. In the second stage, the nonverbal period, children produce little to no language
as they begin to acquire their L2 receptively.
k. Older children remain in the nonverbal period from a few weeks to a few months,
4. English as a Foreign Language
a. English as a foreign language (EFL) differs from ESL in that children,
adolescents, and adults learn English in a non-English-speaking country.
IV. What are Some Theories of Second Language Acquisition and Their Implications for
Practice?
A. Theories of L2 acquisition must account for a host of additional variables, both internal to
and external to the learner, that influence one’s acquisition of second and foreign
languages.
B. Nurture-Inspired Theories
1. Contrastive Analysis
a. Nurture-inspired theories of language development emphasize the notion that
humans gain knowledge through experience and exposure to language forms.
b. Principles
• This process is called L1 interference.
c. Implications for L2 Instruction
• Contrastive analysis involves performing a structural analysis by identifying
C. Nature-Inspired Theories
1. Nature-inspired theories of language development assert that an individual’s
2. Universal Grammar
a. Principles
• UG is a nature-inspired theory of L2 acquisition because its underlying
premise is that an innate, species-specific module is dedicated solely to
language and not to other forms of learning.
b. Implications for L2 Instruction
• UG has implications for understanding the errors L2 learners make as they
3. Monitor Model
a. Principles
• The monitor model of L2 acquisition consists of five underlying hypotheses.
• The acquisition-learning hypothesis states that two independent systems are
crucial to L2 learning performance: the acquired system and the learned
correctness, and knows the rule he or she is trying to express.
• The natural order hypothesis suggests L2 learners acquire grammatical
structures in a natural and predictable sequence.
• The input hypothesis states that L2 learners move forward in their competence
b. Implications for L2 Instruction
• The natural approach is an L2 teaching approach that stems from the monitor
model.
• To use the natural approach, teachers must help ensure that students’ affective
D. Interactionist Theories
1. Interactionist theories include characteristics of both nature- and nurture-inspired
theories.
2. Cognitive Theory with Attention-Processing Model
a. Principles
• The cognitive theory of L2 acquisition rests on five principles that relate to the
learner’s mental and intellectual functioning.
• The first principle is that automaticity helps account for how L2 learners can
acquire language without truly “thinking” about it.
b. Implications for L2 Instruction
• On the basis of cognitive theory, L2 teachers should consider the following
implications.
• Teachers might incorporate short-term reminders of progress.
• L2 teachers should help learners understand the long-term benefits of learning
their second language.
• Intrinsic motivation: L2 teachers should consider students’ intrinsic motives
and design activities that appeal to those motivations.
3. Interaction Hypothesis
a. Principles
• The interaction hypothesis for L2 learning is similar to Vygotsky’s social-
interactionist theory of L1 development in that it rests on the communicative
b. Implications for L2 Instruction
• Advocates of the interaction hypothesis would recommend a focus on
communicative strategies that speakers use to carry out specific language
E. Other Theories
1. Other theories of L2 acquisition exist but are not discussed in this text.
I. What Practices Does Research Support for EL Students?
A. Teaching students to read in their L1 promotes higher levels of reading achievement in
English.
B. Principles of good instruction and curriculum for EL students mirror principles of good
instruction and curriculum for all students, in general.
I. Employing instruction and expectations that are clear, focused, and systematic.
J. Using visuals, charts, and diagrams to promote comprehension.
K. Using a student’s primary language for support, such as using cognates, or words that
appear similar in one’s L1 and L2 and mean the same thing (e.g., familia – family).
L. Selecting reading material with content familiar to students.
M. Providing opportunities for extra practice and repetition with material.
N. With regard to ELD instruction, researchers propose a number of practical
R. Allowing sufficient duration of services by continuing ELD instruction until students
have reached at least an advanced intermediate level of proficiency (or possibly an
advanced or native-like proficiency).
S. Grouping EL students carefully and tailoring instruction to their language-learning needs.
T. Encouraging verbal interaction with English speakers, especially within the context of
academic tasks and structured practice.
Beyond the Book:
1. Watch a movie that takes place in the southern part of the United States, such as Coal
2. Survey 10 of your friends and relatives from across the United States (and beyond) for
3. Collect a brief language sample from two children who are about the same age. Use the
same elicitation approach for both children, such as asking each to tell a story about a
4. Identify the dialect of your five closest friends as well as your own. How much variability
is there among your friends in the dialect they speak?
5. Have you ever studied a foreign language? If so, are you aware of any errors you make or
Discussion Points:
• Why are some dialects considered more or less prestigious than others?
• Can you think of some additional phonological, grammatical, and lexical features that
characterize the dialect or dialects you speak?
