English 345: Thursday, August 25

I looked back at my notes after reading the two articles, and my comments went something like this: "Basically, you cannot easily identify anyone." "How can you label different English speakers?" "How do you even precisely define all of these key words?" In sum, Jenkins' article acknowledges placing people in terms of distinct groups of English speakers is simply impossible--as it should be I think. If I consider many of the graduate students here in the English department, many people would simply assume that we are all native speakers of English... and they would be partly right. However, we come from such various places in the U.S. that dialectal issues come into play, making our "native speaker" Englishes different from one another, as well. I always find it funny when I am told that I have a "Chicago" accent because I simply do not hear it, but apparently it is pretty evident to people who are not form northern or central Illinois.

Another interesting point from Jenkins that struck me was in regards to nonnative speakers:  "The first group has always been considered superior to the second regardless of the quality of the language its members speak," (16) a point that we all know simply cannot be true. Any university in the country contains faculty and students that constantly prove this to be incorrect. And yet, the falseness of this statement once again leads one to wonder just where to place the nonnative speakers who are much better speakes of English than most native speakers. Just what should the English speaker diagram look like?

I found the Diaz-Rico article to be good background reading/history for many important topics that this class deals with. The example of Miami as a vibrant place of nonmainstream people is especially interesting as I just witnessed this first-hand a few months ago. I knew that many people in Miami spoke Spanish, but I never realized that, very often, 90% of the conversations going on in public places would be spoken in that language. It was so interesting seeing the vibrant Latin culture there--housed in the state where my grandpa and many of his  80-year-old friends live : ).