English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 1997 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 286 pages

In this bestselling textbook, Rosina Lippi-Green scrutinizes American attitudes towards language. Using examples drawn from a variety of contexts: the classroom, the court, the media and corporate culture, she exposes the way in which discrimination based on accent functions to support and perpetuate social structures and unequal power relations. English with an Accent:

  • focuses on language variation linked to geography and social identity
  • looks at how the media and the entertainment industry work to promote linguistic stereotyping
  • examines how employers discriminate on the basis of accent
  • reveals how the judicial system protects the status quo and reinforces language subordination

This fascinating and highly readable book forces us to acknowledge the ways in which language is used to discriminate.

 

Contents

Language ideology science fiction?
3
3
18
7
36
The standard language myth
53
Language ideology and the language subordination model
63
Language subordination at work
77
fixing the message in stone
104
8 62
128
1
155
Our naked skins
173
the language rebels
202
6
209
1
218
The stranger within the gates
221
Civil dis obedience and the shadow of language
240
Bibliography
258

selling America to Americans
133
1
136
3
142

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