*A Chinese walks into a bar...: English Ethnonym

Ideologies

Lauren Hall-LewElisabeth NorcliffeStanford University

Intro: An ethnonym classification (Tuite 1995)

I A. German, American

B. Turk, Finn

Regular sg/pl opposition

II Chinese, Portuguese, Swiss…

Sibilant ending

Sg and pl formally identical

III English, French, Welsh…

Only collective usage; no formal singular

Intro: Observed Judgments

• *There was a Chinese at the beach.• There was a Chinese person at the beach.• There was a German at the beach.• *There was a French at the beach.

• ??There were two Chinese …• ?There were several Chinese…• There were thousands of Chinese …

The Genoeses, Chinesaas and Japenesaas

– 16th century English allowed regular plural inflection on these forms [OED]

– Loss of plural inflection in the 17th and 18th centuries

– Resulting form is still sibilant final

Chinese, Portuguese, Swiss: An account

– Sibilant final ending gives the appearance of plural inflection

– Final sibilant blocks formal singular/plural opposition

– Sibilant final ending + lack of number contrast aligns these forms with the class of plural mass nouns

Plural mass nouns

• Plural mass nouns are peculiar (Frawley 1992):– They occur only in the plural– They can’t be enumerated

*There were two oats on the table*You left several grits on your plate??The cook chopped a hundred chives tonight?There were thousands of coffee grounds in the pot

Properties of EthnonymsI A.German,

American

B.Turk, Finn

Regular sg/pl opposition.

Inflects for the collective

II Chinese, Portuguese, Swiss

Sibilant ending,

Properties of mass plurals and collectives; no formal singular

III English, French, Welsh…

Adjectival

Only collective usage; no formal singular

The Social Dimension:Pilot Observations

• Many people judge sentences with (certain classes of) ethnonyms to be impolite:

I saw a German at the beach

I saw a Turk at the beach I saw a Chinese at the beach

Word Category & Politeness

• Nouns are perceived as more impolite than adjectives when referring to individuals (Wierzbicka 1986)– She’s crippled vs. She’s a cripple– He’s gay vs. He’s a gay

Nouns categorize, they denote a kind Adjectives merely describe a property out of many of

potentially equal importance

Word Category & Politeness

Applied to ethnonyms…

Turk, Brit: nouns, and therefore susceptible to being perceived as impolite (Note: perjoration of many nominal ethnonyms over time: Vandal, Philistine, Bushman, Gypsy)

German, American: deadjectival

Chinese, Portuguese, Swiss: ???

Word Category & Politeness

Mass plurals aren’t even grammatical when referring to an individual, so why are they perceived as impolite at all?

Word Category & Politeness

Grammatical unacceptability may be perceived as impolite language use

(in the domain of word classes referring to categories of people/nationalities/ethnicities…)

Predictions

• For Chinese, Portuguese, Swiss:– Grammaticality judgments should improve as number

increases

– Politeness judgments should accordingly improve as number increases

• For German, Turk:– Number should have no effect on grammaticality

– Number should have no effect on politeness

The Social Dimension:Pilot Questions

• Do judgments reflect ideologies about politeness when referring to ethnic groups and cultural identities?

• Do judgments reflect a change-in-progress for the grammaticality and social acceptability of ethnonym use?– Older people seem less likely to give negative judgments

• Are judgments patterned according to demographic factors?– e.g., Age, Sex, or Dialect

Methods: The Survey

• Web-based questionnaire1, 109 sentences, 5 questions/sentence

1. Could you imagine ever saying this?

2. Do you think this sounds old-fashioned?

3. Do you think this sounds impolite?

4. Do you think this is a grammatical sentence?

5. Does this sound like your dialect?

• 8 ethnonyms – Basque, Chinese, Chinaman, Finnish, French, German,

Jewish/Jew, Portuguese, Swiss, Turkish/Turk

1http://www.surveymonkey.com

Methods: The Survey

• 7 number groups – singular, plural, collective, ‘several,’ ‘a couple,’ ‘a thousand’,

‘thousands of’

• singular and ‘a couple’ presented both with and without ‘__ person/people’– e.g., “A Chinese was…” “A Chinese person was…” “A couple of

Chinese people were…”

• Sentences randomized

Methods: The Survey

• Demographic data collected– Native language (all English)

– Dialects of English spoken while growing up

– Dialect of English spoken now

– Main dialect of English in place of residence

– Primary nationality

– Year of birth

– Gender

– Occupation & number of years of education

Methods: The Participants

• Total: 208 respondents, 5 major international English dialects, wide age range, significant ethnic diversity.

• For Analysis: (N = 36) Respondents:– (19) U.S. (12) N.Z. (5) U.K. – (20) 1970s-1980s (16) 1940s-1950s or older– (21) F (15) M

Methods: The Analysis

• Survey coded for every condition

• GoldVarb 20012 used for statistical analysis

• Tests run for grammaticality & politeness– Comparing across ethnonyms– Comparing across number groups– Comparing across speakers

2J.S. Robinson, H.R. Lawrence & S.A. Tagliamonte (2001) http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/webstuff/goldvarb/

Results: Grammaticality

• Nominal use of Chinese/Swiss/Portuguese (CSP) rated significantly less grammatical than the adjectival CSP-Person (p ≤ 0.000)

• Nominal use of Basque/German (BG) rated just as grammatical as the adjectival BG-Person (difference at p ≤ 0.220)

Results: Grammaticality

• Non-adjectival CSP gains grammatical acceptability from the singular to the plural:

a Chinese vs. two Chinese» p ≤ 0.001

• Unlike, e.g., German & Turk:

a German/Turk vs. two Germans/Turks» p ≤ 0.096

Results: Grammaticality

• Non-adjectival CSP gains grammatical acceptability as the number approaches a ‘mass’-like, non-individuating quantity:

– a Chinese vs. the Chinese (collective)– p ≤ 0.000

– several Chinese vs. thousands of Chinese– p ≤ 0.036

– two/a couple vs. a thousand/thousands/collective – p ≤ 0.000

• For, e.g., German/Turk, the corresponding values are non-significant (p ≤ 0.746, p ≤ 0.340, p ≤ 0.986)

Results: Grammaticality

• Non-adjectival CSP is rated as less grammatical than the nominal Turk (in a direct comparison).

• Non-adjectival CSP is rated as more grammatical than a nominal use of the adjective French.

• This is held true for both cases across all number-group conditions

Results: Politeness

• Nominal use of Chinese/Swiss/Portuguese (CSP) rated significantly more impolite than the adjectival CSP-person (p ≤ 0.000)

• Nominal use of Turk is also rated significantly more impolite than the adjectival variant, Turkish person (p ≤ 0.000)

• Nominal use of Basque/German (BG) rated just as polite as adjectival BG-person (difference at p ≤ 0.297)

Results: Politeness

• Unlike the results for grammaticality, CSP loses ratings of impoliteness only at very large differences in number group:

• a Chinese vs. two Chinese (p ≤ 0.515)• two Chinese vs. a thousand (p ≤ 0.000)• a thousand vs. thousands (p ≤ 0.988)

Results: Politeness

• Comparison of politeness ratings across ethnonyms shows the following ranking:

VARBRUL WEIGHTGerman 0.183Swiss 0.208Portuguese 0.458Turk 0.503Chinese 0.647Jew 0.778Chinaman 0.887

More polite insingular context

Less polite insingular context

Results: Demographics: Age

Grammaticality• Although there

is a general decrease with age in terms of the acceptability of CSP ethnonyms, the correlation is weak

Weak Correlation of Grammaticality & Year of Birth

R2 = 0.2007

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Year of Birth

% Judged Grammatical

Results: Demographics: Age

Politeness

• Similarly, ratings for CSP forms as impolite do increase with time, but the correlation is still weak

Weak Correlation of Judgments of Impoliteness & Year of Birth

R2 = 0.2317

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Year of Birth

% Judged Impolite

Results: Demographics: Sex

Grammatical Judgments of CSP: Sex Differences across Age Groups

0.00%

20.00%

40.00%

60.00%

80.00%

100.00%

1940s 1950s 1970s 1980s

Year of Birth

% Judged Grammatical

Overall Age Distribution Male Age Distribution

Female Age Distribution

Judgments of CSP as Impolite: Sex and Age

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

1940s 1950s 1970s 1980s

Year of Birth

% Judged Impolite

Overall AgeDistribution

Female AgeDistribution

Male AgeDistribution

No apparent differences between male and female respondents:

Results: Demographics: Dialect

But provocative differences between US and New Zealand respondents:

Grammatical Judgments of CSP: Nationality Differences across Age

Groups

25%

45%

65%

85%

1940s 1950s 1970s 1980s

Year of Birth

% Judged Grammatical

Overall Age Distribution American Age Distribution

New Zealand Age Distribution

Judgments of CSP as Impolite: Nationality and Age

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

1940s 1950s 1970s 1980s

Year of Birth

% Judged Impolite

Overall AgeDistribution

American AgeDistribution

New Zealand AgeDistribution

No dialect difference for grammaticality, but Americans find CSP ethnonyms more impolite than Kiwis. An ideology of (avoiding) non-“P.C.” language?

Discussion: Grammaticality

• Sibilant-final ethnonyms become more acceptable with:

• Small number Large number• Singular Plural use

• This is predicted on the basis of the peculiar morphophonological properties of this word class:

• No number contrast (=mass plural)• Apparent plural ending (= non singular)

Discussion: Politeness

Politeness

Judgments

Grammaticality Judgments

Word Class(N, Deadj N/Adj)

Discussion: Politeness

• Sibilant-final ethnonyms become more acceptable with:

• Small number Large number• Singular Plural use

• This is predicted on the basis of our proposal that grammaticality and politeness judgments may be correlated for English ethnonyms.

• More grammatical more polite

Discussion: Politeness

• Perceived politeness is correlated with word category

Nouns Adjectives & Deadjectival Nouns

Turk

Jew

Chinaman

Turkish, French,

Chinese person,

German

Discussion: Grammaticality and Politeness

Thus, precisely in the class where there are number dependent grammaticality ratings, we find associated number dependent politeness ratings. (Chinese/Portuguese/Swiss)

Where grammaticality does not vary according to number, we accordingly find no variation in politeness perception. Rather, politeness is conditioned by word category.

(German/Turk/Chinese person etc)

Discussion: Demographics

• Age results suggest a potential change over time for both grammaticality and politeness, but the evidence is not robust. (Because 1940s speakers are ahead of their time!)

• Men and women showed no significant difference in grammaticality ratings

• For grammaticality, US vs. NZ respondents showed no significant difference.

• For politeness, Americans had significantly higher ratings for impoliteness than New Zealanders.

Conclusion

• Within socially sensitive word classes such as ethnonyms, unacceptability resulting from ungrammaticality can be construed as impoliteness.

• Comparable systems of ethnonym grammaticality may correlate with different rates of politeness, depending on cultures’ ideologies about ethnicity and language.

Future Directions

• Words that are interesting:– Jew (compare Jew/non-Jewish speakers)– Pekinese (dogs are OK in singular!)– Togolese (suffix choice in novel forms?)– Data (changing mass/noun differences)

Future Directions

• How are ethnonym classes best distinguished? – How can we account for different levels of acceptability

(singular vs. ‘several’)?

• Does the perception of adjectives being more polite than nouns hold cross-linguistically?– In languages with minimal distinctions between categories?

• What will a corpus study tell us about changes over time?

• Can we use experimental techniques to get more directly at people’s judgments?

Acknowledgements

• Paul Kiparsky, Beth Levin, Arnold Zwicky, Arto Anttila, Penny Eckert, Norma Mendoza-Denton and the Stanford Language Ideology class (Spring 2006)

• The 208 people who responded to our very lengthy survey…

• And you, for attending to our talk today!

References• Frawley, W. 1992. Linguistic Semantics, Lawrence Erlbaum,

Hillsdale, NJ.• Pullum, G. 1975. “PEOPLE DELETION in English.” OSU WPL

18.172-183.• Robinson, J.S., H.R. Lawrence & S.A. Tagliamonte. (2001).

Goldvarb 2001. http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/webstuff/goldvarb/

• Tuite, K. 1995. The declension of ethnonyms in English. Proceedings of the 21st annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS 21); 491-502

• Wierzbicka, A. 1986. “What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?)” Studies in Language. 10-2, 353-389.