An Anthropolitical Critique of the " Language Gap " Is language responsible for... more An Anthropolitical Critique of the " Language Gap " Is language responsible for poverty? If poor and minority parents spoke like rich white parents, would they too become rich and successful? That's the impression one gets from the nowfamiliar discourse about the language gap (or word gap, or 30 millionword gap) between children (of color) on welfare and children of professional (white) parents. This notion of a language gap is based on flawed and limited research yet has taken on a life of its own, circulating like those 200 Eskimo words for snow. Here's the background: In the 1980s, two psychologists, Hart and Risley, counted the words and utterances addressed to 42 infants and toddlers in families they classified as ranging from upper to lower socioeconomic status. They claimed to calculate the number and quality of utterances addressed directly to the children and to discern a correlation: the wealthiest children were hearing the greatest number of words (primarily in the form of " encouragement, " according to Hart and Risley) while the poorest children were hearing the fewest words (many " discouraging, " according to Hart and Risley). Extrapolating, they estimated that by the age of 3, the gap between children at the economic top and bottom amounted to a staggering 30 million words. Without investigating whether this pattern exists across contexts and country, they concluded that the language gap could explain the correlation between poverty and school failure (see the original study here and an early critique here).
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1997
The Hispanophobia of the Official English movement in the US ANACELIAZENTELLA Abstract The greate... more The Hispanophobia of the Official English movement in the US ANACELIAZENTELLA Abstract The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post-WWIperiod have been taking place since 1980. Language policy in three areas—the ...
The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post W.W.I period have be... more The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post W.W.I period have been taking place since 1980. Language policy in three areas¿the language of government, the language of employment and the language of the schools¿ affect the human rights of 32 million members of language minority families, but they are targeted most specifically at the group that represents the majority: Spanish speakers. In response, defense of Spanish has served to unite diverse groups of Latinos despite differences in migration history, socio-economic profiles, and political affiliations. Of particular interest is the relationship between the positions that a group takes on the issue of making English the official language of the US and on the issue of eliminating the services that might be affected by English-only legislation. This paper reports on the views of more than 300 Latinos in New York City, and compares them with those of Euro-American, African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, ...
An Anthropolitical Critique of the " Language Gap " Is language responsible for... more An Anthropolitical Critique of the " Language Gap " Is language responsible for poverty? If poor and minority parents spoke like rich white parents, would they too become rich and successful? That's the impression one gets from the nowfamiliar discourse about the language gap (or word gap, or 30 millionword gap) between children (of color) on welfare and children of professional (white) parents. This notion of a language gap is based on flawed and limited research yet has taken on a life of its own, circulating like those 200 Eskimo words for snow. Here's the background: In the 1980s, two psychologists, Hart and Risley, counted the words and utterances addressed to 42 infants and toddlers in families they classified as ranging from upper to lower socioeconomic status. They claimed to calculate the number and quality of utterances addressed directly to the children and to discern a correlation: the wealthiest children were hearing the greatest number of words (primarily in the form of " encouragement, " according to Hart and Risley) while the poorest children were hearing the fewest words (many " discouraging, " according to Hart and Risley). Extrapolating, they estimated that by the age of 3, the gap between children at the economic top and bottom amounted to a staggering 30 million words. Without investigating whether this pattern exists across contexts and country, they concluded that the language gap could explain the correlation between poverty and school failure (see the original study here and an early critique here).
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1997
The Hispanophobia of the Official English movement in the US ANACELIAZENTELLA Abstract The greate... more The Hispanophobia of the Official English movement in the US ANACELIAZENTELLA Abstract The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post-WWIperiod have been taking place since 1980. Language policy in three areas—the ...
The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post W.W.I period have be... more The greatest efforts ever made to restrict language in the US since the post W.W.I period have been taking place since 1980. Language policy in three areas¿the language of government, the language of employment and the language of the schools¿ affect the human rights of 32 million members of language minority families, but they are targeted most specifically at the group that represents the majority: Spanish speakers. In response, defense of Spanish has served to unite diverse groups of Latinos despite differences in migration history, socio-economic profiles, and political affiliations. Of particular interest is the relationship between the positions that a group takes on the issue of making English the official language of the US and on the issue of eliminating the services that might be affected by English-only legislation. This paper reports on the views of more than 300 Latinos in New York City, and compares them with those of Euro-American, African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, ...
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Papers by Ana Zentella