[Linganth] Military Standard English?

[Jacqueline Messing]

Hi Galey,

I have heard of Military English from an undergraduate student while I was
teaching at the University of South Florida. In my linguistic anth class he
wrote a brief description of communication patterns in the military when he
was enlisted, explaining that the Army's goal was to "make everyone Green"
and therefore not be bound by racism or racially based identity terms- this
was his view. One way this was to be accomplished was standardizing certain
vocabulary that new recruits acquire. I think that this could be a great
class project, if you have students who are or were connected to the
military. At the time I looked and did not find any academic publications
on the subject. A quick google search didn't yield anything relevant today
either. I will make it a point to ask my undergrad grad class this semester
if anyone has any examples.

best,
Jacqui


-- 
Jacqueline Messing, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland-College Park
https://umcp.academia.edu/JacquelineMessing
Twitter @jacqmessing <https://twitter.com/>

On Mon, Sep 9, 2019 at 12:00 PM Galey Modan <gmodan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone ever heard of US Military Standard English? I'm doing a section
> on language standardization in a class; a student of mine was talking to
> her grandfather about it, and he mentioned that when he was in the
> military, the military took an active approach to standardizing both accent
> and grammar so that there would be no risk of miscommunication in
> life-or-death situations. I guess this would have been in the 60s or 70s?
> I'd appreciate any leads anyone might have about this, as I've never heard
> of this before.
>
> thanks a lot,
>
> Galey Modan
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