Dialect discrepancy

It's ok in North Carolina...

Seminar yesterday from a renowned researcher in dialects and accents. Main point was that there is no standard English, and that englishes have equal value, and should be treated without bias. "she be on my ball team" would be marked "innappropriate/inaccurate" on the IELTS exam. To use the grammar of some of these dialects would immediately mark the user as having a lower level of proficiency. I would suspect that much of the grammars characteristic of dialects are generally spoken. Literacy rates might be lower, and proficiency testing and the language of academia and business tends toward a more conventionalised written form. My guess would be  that the majority of languages that are endangered and will disappear in the next 50 years are also spoken only, with minimal content in written form. I think this is political correctness run amok again. Not killing dandelions because as plants they have a right to exist. Poor grammar is to language like weeds are to lawns.

Take a look at this:


Gangsta is not cool

They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be… And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

Bill Cosby would say that learning English is critical for success. He states that people who have good jobs and make positive contributions to society use the language well. That blaming imperialism or institutionalized discrimination or whatever for the bias against certain kinds of langauge form is wrongheaded. And that the use of this dialect is part-and-parcel with a kind of lifestyle that ultimately is anti-intellectual, counter-productive, and self-destructive.


Without it, doors close...

What would happen if the speaker's ideas, when written in dialect form, were submitted to an international journal? Would the paper get an acceptance, or would the editor require a re-write? Is that social bias, or a recognition that an international standard does exist, and is found in the written language of academics and business documents?So, for students to achieve success in those worlds, they need to have proficiency with its form. If they insist on retaining their linguistic identities, then they need to live with the consequences.

That is yet another example of bringing in ivory-tower academics who recommend practices and procedures which do not help at the chalkface. We as teachers are to help our students achieve success, and typically this means wanting to do well in the academic, political or corporate world. And that is not an unconventional or unpredictable outcome. As a teacher, I do not believe that I am an agent of social change or should engage in social engineering. Learning is change, yes. I teach from a particular value system, yes. However, in too many classes, IMO, I have seen teachers go off in another direction.

ESL teachers in my hometown who use rap music in order to give vent to social inequality. Use poetry to advocate for this global issue or that political agenda. Why is this ok? Do math teachers do this? Do science teachers? Music teachers? I really think that ESL teachers are sometimes bored with the content, and do not examine language structure for its own sake (maybe the teachers don't know how), and this lends itself to open-ended, class discussion formats which penalize students for being shy, modest, or wanting to get a high mark by producing or desiring a more defined subject matter.