There is a giant, huge, overwhelming difference between "refusing to learn" something and "not being taught" it.
The way Standard American English is taught in our public schools varies wildly from classroom to classroom. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir if I say that much of our language arts pedagogy is horrid. Tons of parents speak nonstandard English dialects to their kids, and the kids learn those nonstandard dialects as their first language; then our schools do a terrible job building their fluency with SAE. Partially because we're still learning about effective teaching for linguistically diverse populations, and partially because we actively denigrate kids' native dialects. You know, by telling them they sound like "absolute fucking idiots" because they say "ain't" instead of "isn't," even though that diction difference has nothing whatever to do with intelligence.
I also blame "refusing to learn" on poor pedagogy, frankly. Teachers are telling kids they need to talk a certain way because that's The Right Way to Speak. Most kids don't care about that. Why should they? They communicate just fine in their daily lives, and their teachers aren't telling them why it's important for them to build fluency in SAE. Furthermore, significant social pressures sometimes exist to discourage them from speaking SAE, and the reality of the situation is, most kids value peer acceptance over pleasing their teachers. That doesn't make them stupid. It makes them human.
So no, people who speak an English dialect other than Standard American English are not "self-defeating." They simply lack a useful skill. Which is a shame, because there are self-important, privileged, classist, racist assholes out there who don't know the first thing about linguistics or language acquisition, who are going to decide that they're mentally deficient because they can't jump through certain grammatical hoops.
I feel strongly about this, as you can see.
I would really like for all people to be able to communicate clearly to one another. You might say that one barrier to that is the multitude of dialects we have in this country. I don't really buy that, because I don't have any trouble understanding people who say "ain't" instead of "isn't" or "We be goin' to the store" instead of "We are going to the store." No, the big barrier is some folks' insistence that one dialect is "proper" and the "best" way to speak. And their association of all other dialects with the stupid, lazy lower classes. That's not only linguistically unsound prescriptivist nonsense -- it's active prejudice.
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Date: 2008-05-27 11:34 pm (UTC)The way Standard American English is taught in our public schools varies wildly from classroom to classroom. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir if I say that much of our language arts pedagogy is horrid. Tons of parents speak nonstandard English dialects to their kids, and the kids learn those nonstandard dialects as their first language; then our schools do a terrible job building their fluency with SAE. Partially because we're still learning about effective teaching for linguistically diverse populations, and partially because we actively denigrate kids' native dialects. You know, by telling them they sound like "absolute fucking idiots" because they say "ain't" instead of "isn't," even though that diction difference has nothing whatever to do with intelligence.
I also blame "refusing to learn" on poor pedagogy, frankly. Teachers are telling kids they need to talk a certain way because that's The Right Way to Speak. Most kids don't care about that. Why should they? They communicate just fine in their daily lives, and their teachers aren't telling them why it's important for them to build fluency in SAE. Furthermore, significant social pressures sometimes exist to discourage them from speaking SAE, and the reality of the situation is, most kids value peer acceptance over pleasing their teachers. That doesn't make them stupid. It makes them human.
So no, people who speak an English dialect other than Standard American English are not "self-defeating." They simply lack a useful skill. Which is a shame, because there are self-important, privileged, classist, racist assholes out there who don't know the first thing about linguistics or language acquisition, who are going to decide that they're mentally deficient because they can't jump through certain grammatical hoops.
I feel strongly about this, as you can see.
I would really like for all people to be able to communicate clearly to one another. You might say that one barrier to that is the multitude of dialects we have in this country. I don't really buy that, because I don't have any trouble understanding people who say "ain't" instead of "isn't" or "We be goin' to the store" instead of "We are going to the store." No, the big barrier is some folks' insistence that one dialect is "proper" and the "best" way to speak. And their association of all other dialects with the stupid, lazy lower classes. That's not only linguistically unsound prescriptivist nonsense -- it's active prejudice.