Teaching through the medium of Rastamouse? It's the future

Today we started looking at attitudes to language change, focusing on non standard English. Rastamouse is a blinding way to introduce any topic whatsoever, but especially so here. Given that we looked at predominately prescriptive attitudes to language change in the media today, it's not really a surprise that Rastamouse initiated a lot a debate, and this has been covered in great detail (more than I could ever hope to) by Dan Clayton on his blog, which you can find here.

We're going to return to Rastamouse later on in the course (hooray!), but for now, I'll share some of my own observations, and we can discuss them in class tomorrow.

As I see it, kids around here (generally, and it must be pointed out, misguidedly) associate Jamaican culture and accent with cannabis use (if you don't believe me, then check this out), and cannabis use with a shift away from mainstream society (if you don't believe me about this, then simply hang around the post office in the village for around ten minutes after school, but remember some Bonios to placate the rabid, unhinged staffies that will be there, too). Since kids are masters at distancing themselves from the adult mainstream, then it isn't really a surprise that Rastamouse is a big hit, not only with youngsters but with teenagers, too.

Now, one of the most efficient  ways of accepting things into the mainstream is to make a kids' TV show about it... so I'm guessing that in a few years time the Jamaican accent could well have lost any connotations of weed smokin' hipness, and youngsters will have to use other terms to show how different they are from the mainstream - (I'm guessing a new synonym for 'amazing' will be 'Nevin' - you heard it here first).

There are other factors at work here, by the way, such as the rise of London Multicultural English (LME) and suchlike, but that's my tuppence worth, and as I've pointed out above, you'll get a much clearer and general understanding form checking out the articles on the SFX blog.

Anyhow, we also looked at our own use of non standard forms, and looked at how Donald McKinnon categorised attitudes to language - which I can't link to as the firewall is doing a mighty fine job of preventing you from looking at anything useful. These be mighty fine tools for examining exactly why people don't like particular brands of English, so it's worthwhile getting to know these.

We'll carry on with this tomorrow, when we'll be looking at the fuss Prof. Jean Aitchison managed to cause with her Reith Lectures - those descriptivists really are a magnet for abuse...

Finally, I couldn't possibly not link to Rastamouse on iplayer - it'd be rude not to. Fill your boots.

Finally finally - if you're a prescriptivist, you need to bring your blue prescriptivist hat to the next lesson. Likewise for your yellow hat if you are a rocking out descriptivist. No arguments. No excuses. No moaning.