The readings this week demonstrated that so-called Standard English (SE) is in fact a moving target, a concept that people in positions of power use to maintain their power by excluding those who do not know the rules (see, for example Christensen 1994, p. 143, and Lobeck 2005, p. 102). The notion of SE starts to break down pretty quickly when you consider that the United States, England, and Australia all use English to communicate, but there are variations in pronunciation, spelling, and usage both within and across those three (to say nothing of Singapore or Brunei English, as discussed in Raihan and Deterding 2017; see in particular p. 212).
The standardization of English (and other European languages) began with the widespread use of the printing press in the 1470s (Riahan and Deterding 2017, pp. 204-5). Because Western culture tends to privilege reading and writing (print culture) over speaking and listening (oral/aural culture) it is not surprising that SE has become a method of gatekeeping. The discussion about dialects (“any variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is characterized by systematic differences from other varieties of the same language in terms of structural or lexical features,” Lobeck 2005, p. 102) had me thinking about African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and how it is often presented as “poor” or “bad” English when in fact Geneva Smitherman, Samy Alim, Marcyliena Morgan, and many others have demonstrated that is more profitably thought of in terms of a distinct form of English, a dialect. I happen to be reading a book titled Double Negative by Racquel J. Gates, and she mentions in the introduction: “the use of negatives, particularly a double negative, is a telltale sign of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a variety of American English that is often heard as simply ‘incorrect’ or ‘broken’ English” (Gates 2018, p. 18). I did find it interesting that Lobeck, in a discussion of linguistic register, mentioned that there were formal and informal registers of AAVE (Lobeck 2005, pp. 104-5).
I know I usually try to grade written work based more on content than on any kind of grammar or mechanics, mainly because I’m a music teacher; however, if I do notice patterns of errors I will often point them out but not penalize the student for it.
The readings and the subject matter of this module reminded me of an anecdote that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. includes in his book The Signifyin’ Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Gates refers to 1983 article in the New York Times in which a group of high-school students in North Carolina “had trouble relating to a standardized achievement test.” The teacher offered the students a chance to “get even” with McGraw-Hill, the publishers of the test. The students created the “In Your Face Test of No Certain Skills,” which was designed to test “street” knowledge. Among the questions was “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” The correct answer: “Your mama.” Eight McGraw-Hill employees took the test only to score C’s and D’s (Gates 2014, p. 72).
While standardizing English—or any subject—may make it easy to measure one’s competency in a particular subject, it more often than not serves to alienate many of those who are being assessed. What often goes unspoken is that standardization of any subject is an illusion used by those in power to maintain their power.