Identifying southern dialect influences on business student writing

Studies in error perception indicate that variation in language use can result in highly stigmatized features that indicate a lack of linguistic cultural capital, in terms of appropriate contextualized discourse competence. The purpose of this dissertation is to focus attention on how typical Southern American English dialect characteristics manifest themselves in writing, particularly in student business writing, and how these influences affect perceptions of competence within academic and business discourse communities.; The overall design of this study is qualitative discourse analysis of three critical cases. Comparable oral and written discourse samples created in response to assignments designed to socialize students into the business discourse community are used to look at linguistic and rhetorical dimensions in relation to social class with the assumption that social class background is linked to the acquisition of certain kinds of literacy. Specifically, I look at how Southern, Alabama-based dialects influence the writing of three upper-level undergraduate business students who are representative of three socioeconomic classes at a state university. My research question is which variations from Formal Written English are present in the students' written discourse samples, and of these variations, which could be attributed to their Southern English?; This study supports the notion that dialect can influence business student writing across traditional linguistic categories and that those influences can be particularly important in terms of pragmatics and rhetorical structure. The socioeconomic background of the students in this study is reflected in their linguistic choices. The student from the upper-socioeconomic group makes appropriate choices with his linguistic repertoire, thereby demonstrating his linguistic cultural capital. The working-class student, on the other hand, while having greater linguistic cultural capital than those often labeled “basic writers,” does not have the level of linguistic cultural capital expected in academic and business discourse communities. The pedagogical implication is that educators must use both implicit and explicit methods to go beyond the obvious dialect influences and address the less well understood dimensions of dialect influence within the context of discourse communities.