WRITTEN ENGLISHES
Diversity and Inclusivity
in the Writing Classroom
Keith Gilyard:
Describing Eradicationism, Pluralism, and Bidialectalism
What are they saying in the field about language?
In their writing, Peter Elbow and Suresh Canagarajah both try to sort out the dilemmas that exist in the implementation of Students Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL):
By allowing students the use of their own varieties of English in early drafts, Elbow proposes that minority students will acquire competence in their writing. As they move through the writing process, they will either learn the skills of copy editing, or find the help of a copy editor to prepare their final paper to be acceptable by the educational institution. In this process, Elbow suggests students would achieve the current acceptable form, Standard Written English (SWE). Elbow believes this approach addresses both a long-term and short-term goal for education and society. Defined as code switching in educational practice, this approach provides students with the necessary skills to be productive in society and also opens the door for all dialects to be accepted in the classroom on some level. Elbow believes we can transition over time from code switching to code meshing and beyond, to a society where all forms of English are accepted as equal.
Canagarajah believes Elbow’s approach is pragmatic; however, it still merely allows the use of the student’s own variety of English temporarily. Therefore, in Canagarajah's view, Elbow’s approach still holds a monolingual perspective in that the acquisition of standard written English (SWE) is still a necessity for success in education and society. Canagarajah agrees that students’ use of their own variety of English in the classroom is imperative to the application of SRTOL but he modifies Elbow’s approach by suggesting that code switching is not enough. He wants to bring students’ home language into the classroom for use along with Standard English. Elbow would have students switch their entire form of English from one draft to another without any overlap. This use of home language in the early stages of the writing process would lay the groundwork for future opportunities where the various varieties of English would be more acceptable in the classroom. Canagarajah suggests students mesh the two forms of English together within the same text for he sees this multilingual approach being used in popular and academic communication. Canagarajah believes editing out vernacular expression holds back the use of students’ critical literacy practices and supports the idea that the different varieties are not equal. With his approach, students don't convert their own language into acceptable forms, as Elbow suggests, but instead keep their own language and mesh it with standard English when it is deemed rhetorical, purposeful, and effective.
Eradicationism, pluralism, and bidialectalism are differing approaches to teaching writing, as Gilyard explains. In Voices of Self (70) he discusses the presence of these perspectives in “the actions of individual teachers” as well as “institutional policy."
From the perspective of an eradicationist, all forms of language except Standard English should be eliminated for use within the academic world. Gilyard shares with the reader the eradicationalist’s view that “Black English is not only inappropriate, but is indicative of minimal intelligence or cognitive deficiency” (70). Jonothan Kozol, a young school teacher in New York, opposed this extreme view and lost his teaching position as a result. As a teacher, Kozol’s work inspired children with the cultural literature he introduced. The children found his material “relevant and stimulating” (71). Gilyard supports Kozol’s approach and believes eradication is wrong and ineffective in our schools.
Pluralists believe that Black English is not accepted in society because of race and the historical place in the social hierarchy for its speakers. For the pluralists, it is crucial for society to find equal ground for all languages, rather than holding one higher than the other. This would provide students with the ability to “see the value of expanding their productive communication repertoires…[and] prove rather skillful at accomplishing the task” (74). While Gilyard is specifically speaking of black students and their use of Black English in this case, we could apply the pluralist perspective to all students and languages. Gilyard supports the perspective of the pluralist, citing it as “correct and the only one in this day and age to which the majority of Black children are likely to subscribe” (74).
In explaining the bidialectalist perspective, Gilyard quotes Baratz in saying “since standard English is the language of the mainstream it seems clear that knowledge of the mainstream system increases likelihood of success in the mainstream culture” (74). Bidialectalists have the opinion that Black English is a legitimate language because it is just as linguistic and conceptual as any other language variety (including Standard English). However, to “keep the possibility of upward mobility alive,” all Black children should “master” Standard English (74). Gilyard suggests that the bidialectalists are those whose viewpoints are in between the extreme perspectives of eradicationism and pluralism. He argues that while bidialectalists recognize Black English as legitimate, the suggestion that students will not be successful without mastering Standard English falls short of equality for all languages.
According to MacNeil and Cran in their book, Do You Speak American, there is a gap in society’s belief system about the rules of language. There are “those who want our language to obey strict rules and those willing to be guided by how people actually speak and write” (9). MacNeil and Cran agree with linguist Dennis Barron that people are judged by how they talk. Therefore, “however informal and tolerant our society becomes, people know that the way they use language still matters” (10). On one end of the spectrum, the authors describe the prescriptivist that believes language should be governed by an elite group of society who are educated in the proper use of Standard English. The prescriptivist wants to dictate or prescribe the proper usage of language for everyone. On the other end of the spectrum, the descriptivist believes language should have the freedom to evolve according to its actual use rather than having strict rules that have been set and governed by a single class in society. The descriptivist simply believes in describing the changes as they occur in language.
John Simon is a firm believer that the quality of our language is deteriorating. Simon, an essayist and theater critic for The New York Magazine, was given the dubious title “Prince of Prescriptivists” by a columnist for the New York Times (13). Simon postulates there were “four great body blows” that started the decline of language, in his 1980 book Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline (11). The voice of the students’ started to be heard in 1968. This was the first factor to effect language decline. Submitting to the needs of underprivileged minorities especially Black, then Hispanic, adding later the category of females and homosexuals, was the second blow. As the third blow, Simon describes “more and more incompetent English teachers, products of the new (teaching) system” (12). The fourth and final blow, according to Simon, was television. He maintains that the easy access to all those people who do not speak proper Standard English has had a harmful effect on language.
Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Numberg supports the descriptivist perspective, saying “what’s different now is that conversation isn’t a private affair anymore—it has become the chief vehicle of entertainment and public information. We have become a society of over-hearers” (16). Numberg and Simon have battled publicly over the idea of a linguistic decline in society. Fueling the discussion, Mark Halpern wrote an article in The New York Magazine in 1997 that supported John Simon’s prescriptivist viewpoint. Author Tom Shachtman and linguist John McWorter also discuss the decline of Standard English in support of Simon.
In opposition to Simon, Otto Jesperson believes the English language is closely tied to freedom. As individuals had the freedom to forge their own paths in society, their language took on a new form as well. Additionally, the nineteenth century provided us with two writers, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Walt Whitman, who engaged in writing which supported a descriptivist point of view. The editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Jesse Sheidlower is a descriptivist linguist. He believes that “language change happens and there’s nothing you can do about it” (20). While Simon has complained that the OED is too permissive, Sheidlower contends “the purpose of the OED is not to tell people how to use language […] putting a word into the OED doesn’t make it an official part of English, or an approved part of English. Our purpose is to show how the language is being used” (21). According to Sheidlower, people have the desire to write the way they speak, and this is becoming more and more allowable in formal publications.
Today, it seems that descriptivists are gaining the advantage. With the invention of computers, access to databases is becoming increasingly useful in tracking patterns of English usage. The descriptivist is now able to find “concrete examples of how the language is actually used” (25), as well as disproving prescriptive notions of language use. A number of specific situational and cultural factors have driven the pace of language change in America. To the authors' point, the challenge continues to be in finding the common ground for standardization of the American language.
Approaches to Language Learning
© 2013 by the students of IUPUI's ENG-W600 - Written Englishes: Living Cultural Realities, Dr. Kim Brian Lovejoy, professor.