BY MISSY WATSON
I’m a teacher and user of standardized English who strives to deconstruct and contest standardized English. My classes regularly feature essays, textbooks, and research studies that reveal the oppressive and discriminatory results of assuming, consciously or not, that standardized English is superior to all other language varieties.
Last year, I happened to assign one such text the same week to two very different classes: my undergraduate composition course and a graduate course on “Sociolinguistics for Language and Literacy Educators.” The text was a chapter from sociolinguist Rosina Lippi-Green’s 2012 version of English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States titled, “The Standard Language Myth.” And I found myself intrigued by differences in how the two student groups responded.
Her chapter examines the common yet faulty belief that a standard language exists. Lippi-Green clarifies that “The idea of a standard language is constructed and re-constructed on an on-going basis by those who have a vested interest in the concept” (56). There is simply no such thing as a standard language; rather, that any language is standard is an idea that is constructed.
We certainly can’t deny that the dialect we call Standard American English exists. We can point out this dialect when we see it or hear it, and we can analyze it for some of its typified linguistic and discursive features. But the point is this: deeming any language as standard is a social, cultural, and political undertaking, not a linguistically natural (or even necessary and useful) phenomenon. And as linguists like Lippi-Green have pointed out, the standard has been constructed by and for the privileged: middle-to-upper class educated white people. In much sociolinguistic scholarship, furthermore, we find that language discrimination is intimately tied to race and other marginalized identities.
It was a brisk Tuesday in March when my freshmen and I read Lippi-Green’s chapter. Early into our discussion, it appeared that students did not hesitate to accept Lippi-Green’s stances. I recall one student saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, “It just makes sense. Standard American English isn’t any better than the other languages I speak. We in the US have all just decided to agree it’s better. Or…,” she went on, “we have been taught to believe it’s better.”
That same week, when teaching my graduate students who themselves are current or prospective teachers, I found that some needed far more support than my undergrads did to wrap their heads around these concepts. To be fair, many had no trouble at all with Lippi-Green’s claims. Some, though, were unsettled by arguments that standardized English was not linguistically superior and that other language varieties were not deficient. Many were especially uncomfortable with the idea that part of the reason the myth of standard language endures is because teachers of English enforce this ideology through their teaching. I could feel the emotional distress in the room.
The graduate students I teach are diverse, and most have witnessed in their own lives the power of harnessing standardized English. Indeed, some are immigrants and English language learners themselves. And just as English teachers tend to do, most graduate students in my program seek this line of work because they believe that gaining English as a language and standardized English as a dialect will help improve the lives of their students. Thus, grappling with the idea that perpetuating standardized English may also do harm, not just good, can be perplexing and painful.
In my article in the May-June issue of Academe, “Contesting Standardized English,” I discuss the reasons why standardized English is problematic and why standard language ideology is difficult to overcome. And I also try to acknowledge the struggle we feel as teachers when pushed to reimagine the teaching of writing and to rethink our demand for standardized English. “Truth be told,” I argue, “we enforce standardized English partly because we ourselves are steeped in and benefit from the tradition of doing so: standardized English is what we learned in school and is what we’ve been trained to use and teach.”
Perhaps those of us who have gone on to pursue graduate degrees, who hold positions in academia, and especially those who intend to teach academic writing, have simply lost perspective on what is possible with written communication. Perhaps it’s beyond our expertise and the narrow confinement of our disciplinary knowledges to imagine what effective writing might look like that doesn’t rely on standard language. Perhaps our immersion in academia leads us to wrongly assume that standardized English is always clearer, more effective, and more acceptable to audiences. Perhaps we become so fond of and versed in this dialect of power that we begin to discount, discredit, and suppress deviations from the norm that we encounter, especially in our assessments of student writing.
Perhaps, then, it would be to the benefit of us all to seek, critically engage, and adopt some of the perspectives on language difference and academic writing held by novice students—individuals whose uses of and openness to language differences may have not yet dwindled away with the disciplining of academic degrees. Indeed, if we are to truly honor our students’ diverse experiences and backgrounds, and if we are to truly strive for a more inclusive academe, then being open to changes to standardized English is essential.
Guest blogger Missy Watson is assistant professor of composition and rhetoric at City University of New York City College. Her research lies at the intersection of composition and second language writing and revolves around seeking social and racial justice.
Articles from the current and past issues of Academe are available online. AAUP members receive a subscription to the magazine, available both by mail and as a downloadable PDF, as a benefit of membership.
