What are the attitudes towards afro-Caribbean influence on Standard English?

I recently carried out a survey that investigated the thoughts on effects on Standard English with the influences of afro-Caribbean. I carried this survey out on a group of male and female aging from around 16-17 years old.
Throughout this questionnaire, I will be using the male and female results to compare how they differentiate. I found that 100% of females answering the first question, felt there was a need for a multi-cultural society, however only 90% of males felt there was an importance for a multicultural society, with 10% feeling there isn’t an importance, implying that percentage felt they shouldn’t think that our society should be multi-cultural. When females were asked about their understanding of ethnicity, the overall results for females was that they had at least a basic understanding of the meaning; their answers generally varied from someone’s ‘background’ and ‘origin’, and that it was a group of people with a shared heritage. However the males’ response to this question differed from the female’s in that the knowledge on ethnicity was a lot more limited;  as many as 10% didn’t know what ethnicity meant and just put their answer as ‘ I don’t know’, 70% had limited awareness in that their answers included ‘being from different countries’ and ‘people who communicate and get involved with other ethnic groups of people’, however 20% thought that ethnicity referred to someone’s colour of their skin (their race ).
Comparative results of male and female when asked of their ethnicity:

From the results, all female responses illustrated  that they were white British, fully understanding the question and showing the potential that that is what ethnicity a majority of British citizens automatically say they are ‘ white British’. However, this differentiates from the male’s response as the male response was a lot more specific in their choice of ethnicity, answers included responses such as ‘Caucasian’ and also ‘mixed’, which is contrarily quite broad and can be taken with different personal connotations. However a large portion of the responses didn’t understand the question and a larger portion were ‘white British’.
Throughout the responses, all females noted that there are negative issues raised that the Afro-Caribbean has influenced. 50% of the respondents said that there was more slang words within the afro-Caribbean style dialect and that pronunciation and meaning of lexis, grammar and vocabulary were all impaired by the afro-Caribbean style of dialect. These responses were linked to the concerns with the decline of speaking ‘proper English’, and that it is perceived, to them, as lazy, un-professional and the general decline of ‘proper English’ (standard English). This distinguished from the general male response, although some responses illustrated they were concerned with the decline of vocabulary and grammar, this only covered 20% of the responses, along with the effect it will have on specifically younger people. The remaining 80% promoted the view that they thought influence of the afro-Caribbean style of dialect was not implementing any bad influences whatsoever, they with-held no concern with the decline of spoken Standard English.

For question 7, participants were asked whether they felt the use of Standard English is getting worse, this chart represents the results:

For question 8, 19/20 participants stated that example 2 was the better example of speaking. All females said that the Standard English example was favourable, and one male stated they thought the afro-Caribbean example was better. Therefore the overall opinion was that Standard English is the better way of using their dialect. 

When asked whether they think afro-Caribbean has had either good or bad influences on Standard English, only one female stated that it did have influence of a good nature, due to society becoming ‘more cultural’. However the other large percentage of females believed the influences were of a negative nature, due to the decreased quality of Standard English, the new vocabulary introduced which is perceived as in-proper and lazy. The overall opinion of participants represented the thought that there is a large amount of influence of the afro-Caribbean dialect, as a large amount of people use it, particularly young students.

However the male portion of the results promoted that only three participants believed it had a bad influence, when the other seven participants believed it had a particularly good influence.

Even though a large percentage of females believed there was a negative impact on Standard English from afro-Caribbean, the male results nearly equalised with these results, showing between males there is generally no concern with the potential decline of their standard language, spoken Standard English. 

 

 

 

 

 

This advert is a screenshot from the Apple brand promoting the iPhone 5s, this advert is largely influential as it uses features such as direct address. This captures the audience’s attention as it is personal pro-nouns and makes the audience feel as if they are being addressed personally. This advert is also showing a background picture of two people running whilst smiling/laughing, this promotes the idea that if a consumer purchases this product, then it will lead to them also leading a life of health and control; which is very attractive to Apple’s target audience. Apple’s target audience is probably male and female in the ages of adolescence to adult, in which is the two people in this advertisement; which takes the influence further as it seems the ‘power’ fulfilment and better lifestyle will apply to them; therefore they will find the product more attractive and become consumers of the product.

The saying “you’re more powerful than you think” suggests that Apple is trying to influence its audience in creating an ideology of this product will make you powerful, in control, and have an all-round better lifestyle; just by the purchase of this product. This creates a sense of enticement as apple begin to sell more of a lifestyle, as a pose to features of the actual product, the only demonstration of the product is, assumedly, on the arms of the runners. Apple has made assumption of what the audience wants; meaning apple has taken an example of a healthy and positive lifestyle, in which looks like is situated in new York city (a powerful city in itself), and assumed that this lifestyle is what their audience desires. Without this product the advertisement is suggesting that this product can fulfil their full potential to be strong, powerful and lead a positive lifestyle; in which apple are potentially suggesting that without this product, that’s not what they are doing.

Within this advertisement there is only one line of lexis, therefore there is not much to say on discourse structure, however this advertisement could have the potential to have power behind discourse. Where by Fairclough suggests that this type of power will encourage consumers to purchase product, following the exposure of adverts. This could apply as the lifestyle that this advert promotes applies top many peoples desires, therefore if someone sees the advert and doesn’t think much about it, but then at a later date has a desire for that specific lifestyle, they may relate this back to the apple advert and purchase this product in believing this will kick start them into this kind of lifestyle.

The semantic format of the word ‘powerful’ explores the possibilities of the words connotation in which it suggests it to have various merits, e.g. encouraging this lifestyle and the consumer to be strong and in control, helping the consumer in the potentially desired healthy lifestyle.

Within this advertisement, lexical choice has led to the consumer to feel inclusive towards the advert as it contains direct address, and there are no examples of lexis that would potentially isolate the consumer from the seller, for example there is no subject- specific lexis that the consumer potentially wouldn’t know. Also the positive face theory is applied, this is because apple are using complimentary language to fulfil its purpose of persuasion. This is likely to attract the customer as they would believe what apple are saying and will want to achieve this.