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.
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