Rosina Lippi-Green’s ideas in Ch. 2 of English with an Accent connect very closely with the ideas in last week’s Farr and Song article, particularly in the assertion that, although the term “standard” is applied to languages by scholars, teachers, and grammarians all over the world, there is no such thing as a standard language, except as an abstraction. Lippi-Green extends this concept by identifying non-accent English as being equally non-existent. She argues that every form of English has an accent, and, more importantly, no accent is “standard.”
She continues with an interesting discussion of the difference between accent and dialect, though I thought her conclusion was quite obvious: accents are marked by phonological changes, while dialects are marked by morphological changes. She didn’t say but I would like to add that although accents and dialects are distinct, they latter rarely comes without the former. For example, Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer with both an accent and a dialect, because the dialect would hardly be used without its corresponding accent. Perhaps, though, there are some examples where this in not the case. It’s interesting to note at this point, too, that just as people judge or make unfounded decisions about speakers of another language, we also judge others based on their accent and dialect. In fact, Lippi-Green later discusses the concept of “accent … as the first point of gatekeeping” (64), because we can’t use race or religion to discriminate, but, legally, we can use accent. Such discrimination was earlier evidenced in her anecdote of the Hawaiian newscaster.
While her chapters were interesting, I must say that I did not enjoy the tone Lippi-Green used in her writing. It’s unfortunate, because I agree with her overall message, and she explains things clearly (like her extended metaphor of building a House). However, she seemed pretty snarky and sarcastic in a lot of her arguments to the point of being, in my opinion, unprofessional. For example, she implied in her discussion of the Webster Dictionary definition of “Standard English” that the dictionary was somehow responsible for exploring the implications of the word “educated” and that they had failed in that responsibility. I would imagine that most "educated" people know that exploring the extensive implications of the over-used label “educated” is far beyond the scope of a dictionary. She later twisted the words of this definition to suit her own purposes. Then she pretended that the prefix “non” means “opposite” so she could take some person named Heath’s definition of “mainstreamer” and reverse it to make poor Heath look like a total idiot. Just because you are “not” (non) something doesn’t mean you are the exact opposite of it. I'm sure Heath doesn't appreciate being associated with this reverse definition. In fact, I reread this part of the chapter very carefully to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding what Lippi-Green was doing, because it seemed so obnoxious. Maybe I misunderstood her intentions here ...?
Chapter 5 of McKay Bokhort-Keng said echoed many of the ideas and sentiments of the Lippi-Green chapters, but in a more professional and even-handed way. I particularly like the distinction they drew between the concepts of “intelligibility,” “comprehension,” and “interprebility.” Just because a statement is intelligible and the listener thinks they comprehend it doesn’t necessarily mean they have interpreted it correctly. It would seem that accurate interpretation is only guaranteed, even between speakers of the same language, dialect, and accent, if clarification and verbal confirmation is achieved.
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