Excerpt: Language Discrimination in American Classrooms: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Relations
Wealthy, educated, northern, white individuals have maintained a position of power in the American public school system from its very beginnings in the late nineteenth century and into early twentieth century. As the dominant class, this group of elites enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) the political and social clout necessary to construct a national school system in which the norms and values of its culture, including the norms of its language usage, are enforced through formal and informal sanctions. Requiring members of the underclass to deny part or all of their cultural identity (one’s language, cultural or religious customs, history, aesthetic preferences, etc.) in order to gain access into powerful institutions (schools, the government, places of business, etc.) is a strategy utilized by the dominant class to maintain their position of prestige, power, and influence. Informally, the use of Standard Academic English is enforced via negative social sanctions such as labeling the usage of nonstandard English (as well as the people who speak nonstandard English) as inferior, substandard, and deviant. We derogatorily refer to AAVE (African American Vernacular English) as “black slang,” “street slang,” and “talking black” and deter its usage in American schools because that kind of talk “belongs on the street,” “belongs at home,” and belongs to people who are viewed as culturally and socially inferior.
Formally, we require speakers of nonstandard dialects, such as AAVE, Chicano English, Hawaiian Pidgin English, Appalachian English, etc. to alter their speech and writing in order to participate and “succeed” in the American school system. Merits, such as high school diplomas and high test scores on standardized tests, are contingent on how well one is able to comprehend and utilize American Standard English. (This, consequently, benefits the dominant class because they are precisely the people who comprehend and utilize American Standard English best.) Students who refuse to or are unable to conform to the norms and standards of Standard Academic English experience negative formal and informal sanctions such as low test scores, denied entry into places of higher education and certain places of employment, personal negative encounters (also known as microaggressions) as a result of language discrimination, and so on. These negative sanctions reinforce the need for nonstandard speakers to deny their linguistic identity in order to conform to the norms and standards of white, wealthy, educated America.
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If it is our aim to mend the broken relationship between nonstandard English speakers and the American school system, to foster learning environments in which all speakers are truly welcomed and valued, we must drastically reevaluate our standards of language usage. A pluralistic language pedagogy allows each speaker to decide for her/himself how s/he will represent her/his identity through language while the American school system accommodates and recognizes her/his right to do so. The obvious critique of this approach is that it is difficult to practically implement in the short term. The way that we communicate in our classrooms would change. The way we do standardized tests would change. The way we do job applications, college applications, loan applications would change. And yet, if we are committed to justice, reconciliation, and equality in our schools, in our communities, in our nation, that is exactly what is required of us. The alternative is that we continue to violate, maim, and silence the language identities of nonstandard speakers throughout our American school system.
In terms of practically implementing pluralistic language pedagogies, the American school system should incorporate basic linguistics training as a standard component of English studies. This will benefit speakers of nonstandard English dialects as well as Standard English speakers. Both nonstandard English dialect speakers and Standard English speakers will: 1.) learn in an environment which does not privilege particular languages, dialects, pidgins, or creoles and instead cultivates an atmosphere of inclusion and mutual respect; 2.) be able to recognize the systematic features of her/his own speech in addition to the speech of her/his classmates; and 3.) be able to better advocate for her/his self and others with the use of facts and concrete evidence as we attempt this process of language reconciliation.
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Reconciling the language divide between nonstandard and Standard English speakers is important not only for the health and wellbeing of those who are marginalized but for those who are denied the right to experience other cultures, other voices, other ways of communicating because of their place of privilege. The rigid enforcement of Standard English in American classrooms is detrimental to both standard and nonstandard speakers in that the cultural capital exchange among diverse linguistic communities is severely limited. The Anglocentric literary tradition of the contemporary United States emphasizes reading as a personal, individual, solitary act. As a result, the American English curriculum privileges writers and genres that fit into this private mode of reading, and, when works do not fulfill this standard, they are either consumed improperly or omitted from course curricula entirely. Unlike the contemporary Anglocentric literary tradition, oral literary traditions, such as the black literary tradition, emphasize the role of the reader as part of a greater community—not only is the way in which this art is consumed contrary to Western individualism, the entire system of value and meaning making are dissimilar. Through our intransigent enforcement of Standard English within the context of the modern Western literary tradition, American students are unlikely to experience and recognize the intellectual and cultural value of literary genres such as gospel music (as a distinct poetic genre), folklore, proverbs, slam poetry, and collaborative storytelling because 1.) the nonstandard language used in these genres are devalued and 2.) the cultures and the people associated with these genres are devalued. And, for this, we are all culturally, socially, and intellectually diminished.