Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

The blogosphere is ablaze with condemnations of the "law." I'm beginning to
wonder very seriously if there even is one:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/22/arizona-seeks-reassign-heavily-accented-teachers/

JL

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The precise wording of the law is elduing me, but here are a couple of
> seemingly useful sites. The first gives some background; the second is the
> CNN report:
>
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html
>
>
>
> http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/24/arizona-wants-to-reassign-teachers-with-accents/
>
> JL
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:31 AM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu
> >wrote:
>
>  > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > > >
> > > > Arizona has decided that it's unacceptable to have teachers
> > > > whose spoken English is deemed to be heavily accented or
> > > ungrammatical, even
> > > > though the latter has little to do with the former.
> > >
> > > Anyone who has gone through an engineering curriculum at a state school
> > > in the last generation probably has horror stories of trying to
> > > understand a lecture given by a non-native born grad student whose
> > > accent was so thick as to make communication impossible.  I know I do.
> > >
> >
> > Was there not a court case perhaps 30 years ago, in which a university
> was
> > sued for using graduate students who were incapable of speaking
> intelligible
> > English to work off their scholarship & stipend to teach undergraduate
> > courses?
> > As I recall, the plaintiff's position was that he paid his tuition to
> take
> > the course because he wanted to learn calculus, or whatever, and that it
> was
> > a form of fraud to assign the course to a teacher whose command of
> English
> > was inadequate to communicate his knowledge of the subject.
> >
> > I did note with interest that the 3 murderers who escaped from the
> Arizona
> > penitentiary last week all had surnames that suggested that they were
> Real
> > Americans and fluent speakers of English.
> >
> > GAT
> >
> > George A. Thompson
> > Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> > Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> > Date: Monday, August 2, 2010 9:55 am
> > Subject: Re: Is my accent a crime? (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > > Caveats: NONE
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> > > Behalf Of
> > > > Tom Zurinskas
> > > > Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 3:07 AM
> > > > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > > > Subject: Is my accent a crime?
> > > >
> > > > Arizona has decided that it's unacceptable to have teachers
> > > > whose spoken English is deemed to be heavily accented or
> > > ungrammatical, even
> > > > though the latter has little to do with the former.
> > >
> > > Anyone who has gone through an engineering curriculum at a state school
> > > in the last generation probably has horror stories of trying to
> > > understand a lecture given by a non-native born grad student whose
> > > accent was so thick as to make communication impossible.  I know I do.
> > >
> > > The idea that the teaching of English to those who can't speak it
> should
> > > be done only by people who _can_ speak it, clearly and well, with a
> > > native accent, is not all that draconian a restriction.
> > >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > That prohibition led the great Andrei Codrescu, an author who taught
> > > English
> > > > for 40 years but who came from Romania, to wonder out loud on NPR,
> > > "Did I land
> > > > back behind the Iron Curtain half a century ago?
> > >
> > > "Not being able to get paid to teach English if you have a thick
> accent"
> > > = "behind the Iron Curtain"?  Overreact much?
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Yet what is an accent?
> > >
> > > If the original author doesn't know the answer to this question, then
> > > there are probably multiple reasons he/she shouldn't be teaching
> > > English.
> > >
> > > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > > Caveats: NONE
> > >
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> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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