Examples of the Difference between Language and Dialect and Home Language Using of Migrant Communities - By Kourtney

Have you guys paid attention during our tutorial lessons? Do you still remember we have discussed about the differences between language and dialect and the situation of migrant communities using their home language in the last two tutorials?

Here I found some examples that can show what we have learnt in the lessons.

Language VS Dialect

I believe that most of you have watched this video. I am posting it here not because I want to start a controversial discussion, but what this "professor" said makes me think of the point that we have discussed in the tutorial last week. During our lesson, Dr. Red has talked about the difference between language and dialect: language has a higher status than dialect and the government or state usually have the right to decide which is language and which is dialect.

In the video, the "professor" claimed that Cantonese was a kind of dialect, which not all people knew how to speak. As a Chinese, he suggested that it was our responsibility to communicate in Mandarin because it was the official language of China. However, in my point of view, Cantonese is also an official language of HKSAR government, which means we have our right to communicate in Cantonese in Hong Kong. Therefore, I do not agree with his argument.

From this controversial video, we can see that there is a difference between language and dialect. They carry different values. Being recognized as a language indicates that its culture is also recognized with a higher value. This can explain why Hong Kong people were so furious when they watched this video.

Home Language Using in Migrant Communities

 

"their distribution among characters and parts of the plot reflects sociolinguistic stereotypes of migrant communities: We witness the parents generation using the home language with each other and with their children, but the younger ones using (an ethnolect of) the majority language with each other."
"home languages are portrayed as being subject to intergenerational language shift, heritage settings and emotional outbursts being their sites of survival." - Jannis Androutsopoulos, Bilingualism in the Mass Media and on the Internet

In the above video, it portrayed the situation that mentioned in the quoted text clearly. The younger man in the video was the second generation of a migrant African family in America.The boy pranked his father about the pregnancy of his girlfriend. At the beginning, both of them used English to communicate. However, when the father got to know about the pregnancy, he was so furious that he used African to scold to his son. Even though the son mainly used English throughout the video, we could tell that he also understood African. He translated his father's words into English subtitles. This situation was very similar to a friend of mine. My friend's parents speak Hakkanese most of the time. She can understand all the Hakkanese but she cannot speak any. This is the kind of sociolinguistic stereotype mentioned in the reading and I believe most of the migrant families have the similar situation.

What do you think about the two videos or the issues discussed? You are welcome to leave your comment below!