Yesterday evening I attended the publisher's launch of a new book:
Language, Blacks and Gypsies
Languages without a written tradition and their role in education
Edited by Thomas Acton and Morgan Dalphinis
London: Whiting and Birch, 2000
ISBN 1 86177 018 9 (cased) price =A342 + 1.50 pp
ISBN 1 86177 019 7 (limp) price =A317.95 + 1.50 pp
Publisher's address: 90 Dartmouth Road, Forest Hill, Londoin SE23 3HZ
"This book results from a collaboration between activists and academics.
The editors believe that if grammar is to become politically important,
then educated people must receive some grounding in a scientifically based
descriptive linguistics before they are exposed to the prejudices of
traditional prescriptive linguistics.
Issues covered include: the use of a language as a form of ethnic defence;
the implications of the emrrgence of literary forms of languages without a
written tradition; the social position of speakers of these languages;
educational strategies for supporting students from these communities; and
multilingual education and its political implications."
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Declaration of interest: this is basically the proceedings of a conference
held at what is now the University of Greenwich. I have a very short
article in it, "Phonological relationships within Caribbean English". One
of the editors (Dalphinis) is a former student of mine.
For me, the most interesting article in the book is Mark Sebba: "What is
'mother tongue'? Some problems posed by London Jamaican". He analyses a
story told by a London-born teenager of Jamaican parentage, and shows that
his speech is neither ordinary London English nor Jamaican Creole as spoken
in Jamaica.
Another book was launched at the same time: Scholarship and the Gypsy
Struggle, a festschrift for Donald Kenrick.
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The basic idea of the editors of Language, Blacks and Gypsies (one I think
Gypsy, the other St Lucian) is that both Blacks and Gypsies suffer
discrimination and oppression on linguistic grounds.
One particularly interesting speech at the launch was that given by the
chairman of the Gypsy Council. He said that English Gypsies had long been
used to being treated as dirt. But now they had been inspired by seeing
black people who refused to be treated as dirt, inspired to stand up for
their rights to decent treatment.
John Wells
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