Also, student's vocabulary and formality of speech can and will differ in different social contexts, from school to home to the playground, as indeed does all human speech, as even teachers adopt a greater degree of formality speaking to the principal, to students, and also in their own homes.
Why teach standard speech at all? What to do when certain patterns of speech, such as Black English, have different grammatical variations than standard written English? One approach is to stress contextual aspects of speech in education. (Chaika, 1994, p.299) It cannot be denied that job applicants and people are validated and valued differently, depending on how their speech coheres to Standard Written English. Even dialect speakers are evaluated on a valuation gradient, as speakers with certain desirable accents, like a British accent for example, might be esteemed more than speakers with a traditionally Black or Spanish accent, unfairly. (Chaika, 1994, p.382) But this does not mean that teachers need to validate such prejudices within the classroom, indeed teachers can teach Standard English grammar yet still make use of literature that contains dialect, one suggestion offered for coping with the 'Ebonics' debate that began in an Oakland, California classroom. (Adger, 1997)
Sociolinguistics as a study helps teachers escape some of these ethical dilemmas, by stressing that tracing the sociology and the social attitudes to dialects and bilingualism is not done with an aim to pass judgment on the phenomenon of individuals speaking with different accents or speaking more than one language. "Students of sociolinguistics should gain respect for all peoples," says Elaine O. Chaika at the beginning...
& #8230;Through language, children acquire a sense of who they are as well as a sense of their speech community" (Sulentic 2001, What Is Language? Section: ¶ 2). In addition, language serves as a venue for a particular people to transmit their cultural values and mores. Language portrays power. Standard English, particularly in the U.S., portrays the language of power. "Language is power and that power grows when one knows
DEA wants to hire Ebonics translators" by Carol Cratty and Phil Gast, 2010 Ebonics, or African-American English, is the term coined in the mid-1990s to describe a manner of speech used by some African-Americans that some linguists maintain is a legitimate dialect that deserves further study. More pragmatically, the point is made in the title article that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) wants translators who are fluent in Ebonics
Linguistics Ebonics Ebonics is a term coined by Robert L. Williams in 1975. It was developed by merging the words ebony and phonics. Ebonics is defined as a system of oral communication utilized by Americans of African ancestry that consists of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, lexicon, rate, rhythm, stress, and nonverbal communication. Ebonics started during the trans-Atlantic African slave trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Africans who were brought over
" Another is "Sister," or "Brother" (or Sistah or Brotha) which is used to mean another black person on the street. Most of the Ebonics I have heard is on television or in reading articles about it. Personally, Ebonics does not seem professional enough for use in business and other professional situations. It evolved on the street, and may serve a good place there, but it is not good business communication.
The fact is that the Oakland Ebonics controversy revealed that there remains a subculture in America whose ideas are unheard. There remains a segment of American society that refuses to adopt the mainstream method of communication and, instead, chooses to adopt an alternative form. These individuals do not necessarily equate success with the adoption of middle class values and the middle class style of life. For these individuals the ability
Racial or ethnically-based teasing and peer pressure has long been associated with academic achievement, as Tyson et al. point out in his 2005 report studying the behaviors of blacks and whites during high school. While Tyson et al. also suggests that "school structures" are somewhat to blame for "stigmas" of "acting white" or "acting high and mighty" (582), he maintains that that teasing and peer pressure and also important
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