Subject: accents in classroom

i received a number of helpful and informative responses from a few colleagues and i am grateful to all of them . below please find a digest of the responses . first of all , barbara partee provided the background information on the case itself , which was playing out practically in her own backyard . on july 7 , 1992 , barbara partee ( partee @ cs . umass . edu ) wrote to me : " i ' m keeping an eye on the westfield accent uproar because it 's not far from here and there 's something about it in the paper almost every day , including editorials . i ' ll be glad to help keep you updated on news , and i would appreciate receiving any references you find out about to research that shows that the parents have nothing to worry about . ( an article in a local paper today , about reactions , said in the last paragraph " linguists said that , as long as the teacher is comprehensible , parents concerned about having a good " model " in the classroom to help their children become americanized quickly in their speech have little to worry about . " but no names or references . ) what happened was that early last week a petition signed by 403 residents of westfield , mass . was given to the school board in response to a decision to reassign two bilingual education teachers to positions as normal classroom teachers . the petition urges that no teacher be assigned to first or second grades " who is not thoroughly proficient in the english language in terms of grammar , syntax , and - most important - the accepted and standardized use of pronunciation . " the mayor of the city , a greek immigrant with an accent , and a proponent of english - only laws , and chair of the city 's school committee , has been vocally in favor of the petition . it has been denounced by the state 's secretary of education , piedad robertson , a native of cuba and a former kindergarten teacher herself , who immediately came out with the statement that the proposal " would appear to be discrimination , plain and simple . . . . this petition , instead of fostering the acceptance of cultural diversity , would appear to encourage bigotry , racism , and discrimination . " the mayor in a phone interview june 30 dismissed her attack as " bovine scatology . " the state 's attorney general has offered th opinion that the plan would almost certainly violate the state 's anti-discrimination laws . an article today ( both articles i ' m quoting from are in the daily hampshire gazette , of northampton , though there was also a mention in sunday 's nytimes ) says the mayor , george varelas , says he has been getting calls from all over the country , mostly agreeing with his point of view . the two parents who started the drive are expressing great surprise ; the wife , " who is of spanish and portuguese descent , has become so distraught over accusations of bigotry . . . that she has taken to avoiding people . " the city has about 36000 population and a broad ethnic mix . but like most of what one reads about the english only movement , there 's a great deal of debate about whether it 's racist or xenophobic , etc . , and very little about the fundamental question that you raised , namely does it in fact have any effect on the acquisition of english by the children in the classes ? " throughout last week , i was forwarding the responses to barbara and she was updating the story as things evolved . on july the 8th , she was contacted by a reporter of the westfield paper , and she asked me for ( and , of course , received ) permission to use the materials i had in her interview with the paper . on july the 9th , barbara wrote : " by the way , i heard second hand that the school committee or a subcommittee thereof just voted this morning 3 - 0 not to adopt the petitioners ' request . i ' ll know more by this evening 's news . i expect the newspaper article that our stuff went to will appear tomorrow morning . i ' ll let you know . this is happening quicker , and coming out more emphatically on the right side , than i had expected . " the article appeared on friday , july the 10th , and barbara is likely to post it here on monday . as you will see , the reporter was absolutely fascinated by the fact of the ongoing worldwide discussion of the issue on a computer net . the same issue of the same paper ran a syndicated column by william raspberry on the subject . i have not yet found a paper available here that runs bill raspberry . that was the chronicle , and now for the substance of the responses . a couple of people suggested that the petitioners ' concern was about the teachers being comprehensible to the grade school students . this is , of course , a most legitimate concern , and many states , school corporations , and universities have taken measures to protect their students from incompetent english speakers . apparently , however , this was not the petitioners ' concern , and the core of the issue was their belief that the students would acquire the foreign accent of a teacher . all the responses on this subject shared the conviction that it could not happen . michael covington ( mcovingt @ uga . cc . uga . edu ) : " my own rather limited experience is that children are n't even influenced by the foreign accents of their _ parents _ , much less teachers . " cliff miller ( miller @ defun . cs . utah . edu ) : " of course it is possible [ for a grade school student to be influenced by the teacher 's foreign accent ] , but it is highly unlikely that it will be complete or long-lasting . and perhaps the more important question is : does it matter ? i grew up in several different places and my english has undergone a number of shifts - - i even had a japanese accent for a while . my english is quite native now and i do n't think that the different stages it went through did it any harm . . . . " craig thiersch ( thiersch @ kub . nl ) : " i ' m afraid i do n't have any citations from linguistics literature , and our phonologist is n't here today , but you ' re right : it 's more or less common knowledge that children virtually always acquire the accent of their peers , not that of parents , teachers , or other adults . i can think of countless examples from my own experience : for instance , i used to live in boston , where you can cut the local accent with a knife , and played organ for a church in arlington , mass . , where the pastor and his wife were from the mid - west . but all their children had strong " towny " arlington accents . " amy sheldon ( asheldon @ vx . acs . umn . edu ) : " i was interested in learning that your daughter never acquired the pronunciations of the 3 adults at home , when they differed from , i assume , the local dialect . i can add that our 9 & 12 year olds do not have any of their father 's quebec french pronunciations or translations in their speech and on occasions when they have had his speech forms / usage , they seem to get rid of it when they learn the local dialect . that is , his speech does not persist in theirs . they also recently asked me if i thought that daddy had a foreign accent . they said they did n't think so . i must admit , that i have to stop and think a second before i realize that he does indeed have an accent , and that on reflection , our kids will admit to it too . but there is a sense in which we do n't think on a minute to minute basis of him as speaking differently from us , though certain pronunciations or translations on occasion may strike us noticeably . i 'd imagine that students in a class with a nonnative teacher muight have the same perceptions , esp . if the teacher is fluent in english , although having an accent . this is a good " applied linguistics " example . " the only references that the discussion has yielded so far were contributed by catherine doughty and susan ervin - tripp . catherine doughty ( catherine . doughty @ linguistics . su . edu . au ) : " the ability " to be affected by phonology " seems to be the earliest of thing to go in terms of maturational constraints on language acquisition - - see the work of johnson & newport 1989 in cognitive psychology 21 . j & n set the age of the beginning of the decline at 5 or 6 . another interesting case that is analogous in some ways but not others is the case of simon a profoundly deaf child of profoundly deaf parents . simon 's parents were late acquirers of asl ( learned at ages 16 & 15 ) and so provided non-native and very different versions of asl to their child . they are his only source of input , as simon goes to a " normal " school where no one knows any asl . simon 's asl is comparable to the asl of children who learn asl from native signers - - e . g . , nativelike . ( singleton 1989 dissertation ) . susan ervin - tripp ( ervin-tr @ cogsci . berkeley . edu ) : " it would be nearly impossible for a child to be influenced by the accent of a grade school teacher unless it was the prestige accent of the community , and the child knew it . as labov showed convincingly , kids get their accents from their peers . on the other hand , i ran into some reported cases of children who preserved the accents of their immigrant parents , but these were unusual cases of socially isolated children . for example , in the clinical literature i found a case of an 8 year old who immigrated at 3 , and still had " his father 's accent " . as he was psychoanalyzed ( ! ) he lost his accent , spoke like his peers , and became able to mimic the accent at will . buxbaum , psychoanalytic quarterly , 18 , 279-289 ( 1949 ) . " - - victor raskin raskin @ j . cc . purdue . edu professor of english and linguistics ( 317 ) 494-3782 chair , interdepartmental program in linguistics 494-3780 fax coordinator , natural language processing laboratory purdue university w . lafayette , in 47907 u . s . a .
