Provide a 5 pages analysis while answering the following question: Accents in America: A Structuralist Examination of Foreign Language in the United States. Prepare this assignment according to the gu

Provide a 5 pages analysis while answering the following question: Accents in America: A Structuralist Examination of Foreign Language in the United States. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. Language is not, perhaps, the be-all, end-all of existence (though those of a Judeo Christian bent might argue otherwise), but the fact remains that the things we think of as representative of life as human beings — love, war, family, government, etc. — are inevitably expressed in language. &nbsp.In other words, it’s safe to say that the fact that we speak American English doesn’t make us Americans, but American English is the way, and perhaps the most important way, that we express our American-ness.

What’s interesting about our American dependence on language is that what we consider to be “our language” doesn’t necessarily reflect the way that people of the United States actually speak, a fact that affects all linguistic systems, as Ferdinand de Saussure pointed out in his groundbreaking Course in General Linguistics. Saussure made a distinction between what he called langue and parole: Langue is the set of rules that make up a language, the grammatical structure of speech, and the appropriate vocabulary. parole is the way that people actually use language when they talk to each other. (Saussure) An easy way to think of it is that langue is the English you learn in school. parole is the way you talk to your friends. Even though langue is the “correct” use of the language, most people who are native speakers of that language are just as likely — if not more likely — to understand parole. Noam Chomsky explains that there is a difference between competence, the name he gives to ideal use of language, and performance, the way individuals actually use language. (89) To boil it down to the essential point, “language at any given time involves an established system and an evolution.” (Saussure 13)

American English is no different, though its evolution has been an interesting combination of stubborn traditionalism and melting pot transformation. At the same time that the country encouraged “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to come to the country of opportunity, it made it clear that America was its own place, with its own language.