NAMA :-

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- PUTRI RAMADHANI (A1B018057)
KELAS : 5A

ETHNICITY AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

The speaking style of people consisted in the same group is similar. However, many
individuals share linguistic features with a range of other speakers. Those features sometime
could indicate a person’s social status and even a person’s ethnicity. After discussing, we
conclude that this chapter will illustrates about the relevance of ethnicity and social networks in
accounting for people’s speech patterns, as well as briefly introducing a related concept, the
community of practice.
First of all, what is Ethnicity? Unlike words like 'apple' that more straightforwardly index
objects, ethnicity is something you just can't grab and bite into. Its concept is quite vexing. It has
been established that ethnicity and race are socially constructed and not biologically determined.
As a result people commonly associate ethnicity with distinctions based on national origin,
language, religion, food and other cultural markers, and link race to distinctions drawn from
physical appearance, such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape and so on. Moreover, the very
construction of ethnicity can vary across contexts and can have a multitude of meanings.
Since ethnicity is a social construct, this social construction must involve communication in
some way as well as Language. There are many different kinds of language features in every
ethnic around the world. The different kinds of ethnic’s specific language features could be seen
from:
a. Short phrases, verbal fillers, or linguistic tags
Example:
 In New Zealand, Maori people routinely use Maori greetings such as kia ora, and a
conversation between two Maori people may include emphatic phrases.
 Chinese Singaporeans similarly often signal their ethnic background with linguistic
tags, such as the untranslatable but expressive la
b. Dialect
 Dialect define as a variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is
characterized by systematic features (e.g., phonological, lexical, grammatical) that
distinguish it from other varieties of that same language.
Example:
 African American Vernacular English, in which they express the sense of cultural
distinctiveness of many African Americans. One of its most distinctive features is the
complete absence of the copula verb be in some social and linguistic contexts such as
“She very nice.”
c. Grammatical Features
Grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language.
Example:
 African American Vernacular English, in which the use of invariant be to signal
recurring or repeated actions. For example, ‘The children do be messin’ around a lot’
d. Consonant cluster simplification
Consonant cluster simplification is the deletion of sounds in streams of speech, in order
to speak more smoothly and fluidly.
Example:
 African American Vernacular English speakers also simplify the consonant clusters at
the ends of words, but they do so much more frequently and extensively than
speakers of standard and regional dialects of English.
e. Patois
Example:
 British Black, in which some young British Blacks use Patois for in-group talk as a
symbol of their ethnicity.
f. Linguistic features
Example:
 Some different lexical items in Patois of British Black, such as lick meaning ‘hit’ and
kenge meaning ‘weak, puny’.
 Pronunciation in Patois of British Black: The vowel sound in a word like home is
sometimes pronounced as in Jamaican Creole, rather than as in the local variety of
English.