English as a second racism: A Marxist approach to acceptability of article variation across racialized varieties of English’s

Sanabria Veaz, Karla Glizzette

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Description

Title

English as a second racism: A Marxist approach to acceptability of article variation across racialized varieties of English’s

Author(s)

Sanabria Veaz, Karla Glizzette

Issue Date

2022-08-23

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Cisneros, Josue D

Committee Member(s)

Ionin, Tania

Department of Study

Linguistics

Discipline

Teaching of English Sec Lang

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

Marxism, World Englishes, English as an International Language, Raciolinguistics, English as a Second Language

Abstract

This mixed method aimed to analyze undergraduate student’s acceptability of article use (a, an, the) across varieties of Englishes spoken in the US, East Anglia in the UK, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Cameroon, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Philippines, and Malaysia using both a World Englishes (WE) and Marxist framework. A total of 24 undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign participated in this study of two phases. Students were predominantly first year and second year students, female identifying, bilingual and Asian from the US, India, China, and Indonesia. All 24 participants completed Phase 1 which consisted of a language and sociodemographic background questionnaire, and an acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) with 42 sentence pairs with article usage in Inner Circle (IC) and Outer Circle (OC) varieties of English. For Phase 2, a sequential qualitative sampling of six participants were invited for a 1-hour semi-structured interview of three parts (1) a stimulated recall of their ratings in the AJT, (2) a reveal of a series of questions around education, English, race, and class. At the end of the interview, the participants were revealed the varieties of Englishes used in the study. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were conducted in the quantitative sample size of 24 students that was divided in four language groups US born Monolingual speakers of English, US born bilingual speakers of English, L1 English International speakers, and L2 English International speakers. Qualitative data was analyzed in two coding cycles using a grounded theory approach with analytic memos. Results from Phase 1 showed an overwhelming high significance (p-value < 0.001) of participants rating lower OC sentences compared to IC sentences in the two sub-categories of article omission (1) unmarked definiteness for count and noncount nouns and (2) article the with compound nouns or adjective- noun phrases. Despite L1 English international being the closest to the OC, they rated OC sentences the lowest and IC the highest compared to the other three language groups. On the other hand, US Monolinguals were the group that rated the OC sentences the highest compared to the rest of the language groups despite not being part of that speech community. Findings from Phase 2 indicated the presence of raciolinguistics ideologies in students’ experiences with English education. Specifically, the role of institutions in commodifying white standard English (StE) by obliviating the validation and exposure to racialized OC varieties in the classroom and reproducing class struggle between quality access to English in private institutions compared to public institutions. The participants also discussed the relationship between class and race to English proficiency and the class struggle dynamics of access to quality education and the commodification of English in countries such as India, Nigeria and Singapore. Using a Marxist approach I analyze the role of alienation and class struggle in the higher acceptability of IC sentences representing StE. In conclusion, this study aims to advance the field of Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL), and WE by incorporating raciolinguistics and Marxist frameworks to explain the dialectic role of race and capitalism in the exclusion and lack of acceptability of OC varieties in the classroom.

Graduation Semester

2022-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Karla Glizzette Sanabria Veaz

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