English With an Accent

Scrutinizing American attitudes toward language,English With an Accentexposes the way in which language is used to maintain and perpetuate social structures and unequal power relations. Rosina Lippi-Green explores language prescription and discrimination in a variety of contexts in today's society. She examines situations from the judicial system, the media and corporate America, including such instances as court cases that attempt to exclude persons with accents from teaching young children. In the process she reveals how the media works to promote linguistic stereotyping, how employers discriminate on the basis of language use and how the judicial system uses language to protect the status quo.