Democracy and Dialect

AISGW
 Session Outline
• Definitions: dialect and standard English
• Language instruction in the classroom
• The value of dialect
• Dialect and identify
• Principles for addressing dialects
• Strategies for addressing dialects
• Discussion
 Definitions
• What is dialect?
– a provincial, rural, or socially distinct
variety of a language that differs from
the standard language
– Definition of a language as “a dialect with an
army and a navy”
• What sorts of dialect do we encounter?
 Complexities of Standard English
• What is standard spoken English?
• What is standard written English?
• What do individual teachers mean by standard
English?
• Is standard English “better” than variant forms?
• What are the motivations to teach standard
English
– Democratic: access to the language of wider
communication
– Authoritarian: maintain purity of language
 Roots of Traditional Ideas of
Correctness
• Natural linguistic xenophobia
• Language and the Enlightenment
• Basing English on Greek and Latin models
• Assumption English is in a state of decay
 The War Between Traditionalists
and Linguists
• Towards a “purified” English: Jonathan
Swift, Robert Lowth, Lindley Murray, John
Simon, William Safire
• Towards an “inclusive” English: Samuel
Johnson, Noam Chomsky, Webster’s
Third, Steven Pinker,
• Language study typically has been a
narrow approach focused on standard
forms
 Dialect and Identity
• Standard English is not superior to other
dialects
• Language is intrinsically rooted in the
identity of the speaker and community
• Devaluing language devalues the speaker
and the community
• Linguistic diversity is closely connected to
a diverse democracy
 Students Right to their Own
Language
• We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and
varieties of language – the dialects of their nurture or
whatever dialects in which they find their own identity
and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the
myth of a standard American dialect has any validity.
The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts
to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance
over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for
speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A
nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and
racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We
affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences
and training that will enable them to respect diversity and
uphold the right of students to their own language
Do You Speak American?

Origins of black dialect,effects

40 min – 51 min
 Dialect in Literature
• Dialect is fundamental
• The power of the vernacular, particularly in
American Literature
• The power of dialect, not only to represent
voice, but to convey new ideas
 American Writers on Dialect
• Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract
construction of the learned, or of dictionary-
makers, but is something arising out of the work,
needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long
generations of humanity, and has its bases
broad and low, close to the ground – Walt
Whitman
• The first requisite and rule is that expression
shall be vital and natural. The grammarian is
often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet
thinks he can express human emotions – Henry
David Thoreau
 From Middlemarch
“Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?”
“Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is
slang. It marks a class.”
“There is correct English: that is not slang.”
“ I beg your pardon: correct English is the
slang of prigs who write history and
essays.”
 From Huckleberry Finn
• Pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and
lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun
to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the
winds blow so. .. tree-tops a-plunging about, away off
yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you
could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now
you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and
then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky
towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty
barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they
bounce a good deal, you know.
 Principles:
an effective language program…
• Respects the home language – the object is to gain
mastery in another dialect
• Teaches standard English in context
• Separates grammar from usage
• Is based on student interests and needs, and requires
production of language as well as analysis
• Responds to language skills demanded by
contemporary society
• Fosters an interest in language
• Integrates reading, listening, speech, and writing
 Teaching Code-Switching
• Examples from Rebecca Wheeler
– S-V Comparison Sheet
– Examples of student papers
• The Story of English (2:06-2:11)
 Addressing Dialect
• Students create a linguistic autobiography by
researching their names, speech patterns and features
• Read aloud in class literary selections written in dialect
• Compare various literary interpretations of a particular
dialect, looking at spelling and variant grammar.
• Create skits in which one person tries to communicate
with a group using a dialect inappropriate to the situation
• Rewrite literary passages written in dialect using
standard English. Discuss what is changed or lost in
translation
• Students describe the grammatical rule systems for their
dialect and compare and contrast those with standard
English