The jab was at white, wealthy, English speakers who treat language as essentialist, and thus must be preserved from corruption. Dialect and grammar are also frequently used as markers for marginalized groups. I’m not sure what specifically, if anything, prompted Cory’s rant, but every few years in the U.S. we have some kind of manufactroversy over language be it Valley Girl-speak, or Ebonics. Most popular are calls for instituting an official national language. While I think most people who complain about language use*, especially online, are just simple pedants, to an extent they are perpetuating a meme used by the upper class to keep their lessers in check.
*Disclaimer: I’m one of them. Jeez people, do you think those little red squiggly lines are festive holiday decorations?
But that’s the thing: standardization has been invented. It’s the baseline to learn before expanding outwards. Without a grammar/punctuation standard to lean on, making up new words or just disregarding punctuation entirely isn’t clever or thoughtful, it’s illiterate. You might be Cormac McCarthy and decide that quotation marks are just too much bother, and get away with it, but if you have no idea what the difference is between “its” and “it’s” is and you don’t care, you will be judged by your writing.
I didn’t invent this one (bash.org strikes again), but it gave me a chuckle: “First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.”
Well, when you put it like that, then you really are teaching a foreign language to these kids. I find that letting them learn it as such, as not “right” and “wrong” but different encourages learning. Communication serves not only to convey information, but also to show if you are a member of the clan or not, which sept you belong to, and so on. That’s why we have slang, after all.
So how to teach? Should it be “this is the proper way” or “this is how those in authority expect it”, or even “here’s the slang the rich and powerful use”?
Because that’s exactly what I meant, right? eye roll
But let’s go down that path, if the Normans hadn’t invaded then probably wouldn’t have been the class-language division that occurred (Latinate vs. Anglo-Saxon).
What probably would have occurred, as with other Germanic languages, is an “upper” and “lower” versions (wherein its typified by written vs. spoken versions of the same language).
Yeah, sort of what I meant in my little brainstorm. What I was searching for was a way to make it attractive to learn to those who do not use it as their native dialect. They can communicate and communicate well, but only in their community. What I am fishing for is a way to interest them in how to access a different/wider community. And considering that the discussion here is evolving into a discussion about upper class English (American and British forms), the angle I am looking for is how to treat it as a secret code that is desirable to crack.
Though Shakespeare did apparently have a lot of influence on spellings and pronunciation so its entirely possible he had something to do with the way we use it now.
Mmmm… not so much? Happened on this post recently:
While linguistic clarity can be important, a lot of scientific papers are written in English all over the word by non-native speakers, and most rely on the data to speak for itself (and editors to clean it up.)
