DIALECTS 245
- What may be some factors, not mentioned in this chapter, that inhibit the ac-
quisition and use of Standard English among children? - Listen carefully to a dialect in your community and list the features that differ
from your home dialect. - Television news anchors generally speak what is known as “broadcast stan-
dard,” a hybrid dialect that is often identified as coming closest to spoken
Standard English. What are some features of your home dialect that differ
from broadcast standard? - What value is there in knowing that BEV is well structured according to its
own grammar? - What are some possible connections between BEV and academic perfor-
mance?
8.Team up with two other students in your class. Using what you have learned
to this point, develop a set of three activities that engage nonstandard dia-
lect-speaking students in using Standard English. Share these activities with
other members of the class to develop a lesson portfolio.
Chicano English
The termChicanoemerged during the 1960s as a label rooted in efforts to raise
the cultural awareness and identity among Mexican Americans, and it empha-
sizes their unique position between two heritages.Chicano English(CE) is the
term used to describe the nonstandard dialect spoken by many second and
third-generation Mexican Americans, most of whom do not speak Spanish, al-
though they may understand it slightly (see Garcia, 1983). CE is also used to
describe the dialect spoken by first-generation immigrants who have lived in
the United States long enough to have acquired sufficient mastery of English to
be able to carry on a conversation exclusively in it and thus are considered to be
bilingual (see Baugh, 1983).
Chicano English is influenced linguistically by monolingual Spanish speak-
ers, monolingual English speakers, and bilingual Spanish-English speakers.
CE is not the same asSpanglish—a blend of English and Spanish frequently
used by native Spanish speakers who have picked up a few words of English.
Although Spanglish was once ridiculed and derided aspochoEnglish because
of its long association withpachucos, young gang members notorious in places
like East Los Angeles, Spanglish is now widely used throughout Mexican-
American communities. We look at Spanglish later in the chapter.
Interest in CE is fairly recent, largely because until the 1980s the focus of
language policy in the United States as it relates to dialects was on Black Eng-
lish. The central issue with regard to the Hispanic population was bilingual ed-