Michael Newman - MIC Symposium 2024

Biography

Michael Newman (Queens College)

Michael Newman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders at Queens College/CUNY. His research focuses on the sociolinguistics of immigration in New York and Barcelona. He is the author of articles in Language Variation and Change, Language in Society, Journal of Sociolinguistics, American Speech, and other journals as well as three books including New York City English, part of the DeGruyter’s English Dialects series. 

Lecture Abstract

Watch Michael Newman's Lecture Recording

Title: Language accent and race in the history of New York City English

Abstract: When in contact languages exchange features and “mutations” accelerate with new language acquisition (Mufwene’s 2001). For New York City English (NYCE) changing forms of racialization and other intercommunal relationships have historically structured those contacts. In the colonial period, NYCE formed with limited Lenape and Dutch features due to conflicts with the two conquered peoples, one racialized and eliminated, the other eventually absorbed. Much later, less extreme racialization of Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants permitted entry of systemic exogenous features but fomented dialect-wide linguistic stigma (Bonfiglio 2002). By the mid 20th century even endogenous features came to represent deficient Americanness through New Yorkers’ perceived insufficient Whiteness. More recent multiracial immigration occurs under new and contradictory racialization schemes. Features brought by African Americans and immigrants— particularly Latinos—have created hierarchies of covert and overt prestige that mirror this complexity. With rising cosmopolitanism, stigma has largely vanished, yet traditional NYCE features are receding.