The Colour of Language: Accent, Devaluation and Resistance in Latin American Immigrant Lives in Canada.

LATIN Americans; ENGLISH language usage; BILINGUALISM; ACCENTS & accentuation -- Social aspects; IMMIGRANTS; RACE identity; IMPERIALISM & society; LINGUISTIC identity; SOCIAL history; SOCIOLINGUISTICS

This analysis studies the power of Standard English in the process of formation of devalued immigrant identities in contemporary English Canada. Probing the connections between Standard English, colonialism, whiteness and the immigrant experience, this piece moves from an educator's autobiography to the analysis of other immigrant lives to understand the production of a dominant discourse that reaffirms whiteness and the native speaker of English over the identity of the speaker of English as second language. The essay concludes with the argument that those whose identities have been marginalized in the name of substandard language and cultural traits emerge from this process with privilege to interpret and transform the society to which they now belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cette analyse présente le pouvoir normatif de l'anglais standard dans le processus de formation dévalorisante de l'identité des immigrés habitant aujourd'hui au Canada anglais. Cette étude sonde les liens entre l'anglais normatif, le colonialisme, le fait d'être un Blanc et ce que vivent les immigrés, en partant de l'autobiographie d'un éducateur pour analyser ensuite d'autres expériences de vie d'immigrés, afin de comprendre comment la production d'un discours dominant sert à réaffirmer a supériorité d'un Blanc de langue maternelle anglaise au Canada et l'infériorité identitaire d'une personne dont l'anglais est la langue seconde. Cet essai permet de conclure que ceux qui ont été marginalisés sous le prétexte de l'infériorité de leur langue et de leur culture, émergent de ce processus en ayant l'avantage de pouvoir scruter et transformer la société dont ils font désormais partie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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