Later this month, I’m off with my family for a visit to Trump’s America. No, not Trump’s America, per se–that’s just an unfortunate sidenote (I hope) — but rather a visit to the wonderful linguistics program at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. The researchers in this program have been trendsetters for decades in their community-centered linguistic investigations, providing an inspirational model of how we as scholars can give back tangible benefits to the communities we work with.
The purpose of the visit is to re-acquaint myself and to update my knowledge, from a U.S. perspective, about the relationship of ethnicity, education, language rights and human rights. After 13 years of living in Finland, it is clear that my understanding of the situation in the U.S. has become outdated and distant. I’ll be in Raleigh for just about three months, and during that time I have my work cut out for me: I hope to finish three chapters for my book, “Bad English”: An introduction to language attitudes and ideologies, which is under contract with Routledge, a UK-based publisher. The folks at NCSU, including my host Jeff Reaser, have very generously agreed to give me both feedback and input on my manuscript.
The book is based around a course I have taught at the University of Helsinki for many years. In the course, we talk about how some people have strong attitudes against the way other people speak — for example in a multi-ethnic or urban variety of English — and how that came to be the case. We talk about why language attitudes exist in English, how those attitudes got there, and how they are perpetuated. We also talk about several varieties of English that many (myself not included) would consider marginal or “incorrect”: English as a global lingua franca, creole varieties of English, African American English, and even the English of children who are learning it as their mother tongue. The reason we study all these different varieties is so that we can observe what they have in common, and how the attitudes toward them compare.
The book, which is expected in 2019, will cover the same themes, in addition to discussing London English, New Delhi English, and Singapore English. I clearly have my work cut out for me! I am lucky to have several academic friends whose work I can draw from and who I can collaborate with. My own students have been an immense help with the process, informing the work every step of the way.
To make it crystal clear: the book is NOT about putting down or ridiculing varieties of English and the people who speak them. The reason it is called “Bad English,” in quotes, is because this is how many people refer to these varieties, but without exactly knowing why. This book explains why. In doing so — I am not going to pretend otherwise — I hope to succeed in changing the way readers view these varieties. It seems to have worked on my students; lets see how it goes with a wider audience.
I was surprised to notice that the book is already listed in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Bad-English-introduction-attitudes-ideologies/dp/1138237469 Along with a page count and expected publication date! This is quite amazing, considering I have not written the book yet! Nonetheless, feel free to leave a review. (I’m joking, I’m joking)