I really enjoyed Delpit’s piece on language diversity and the notion that someone’s race can influence the way a person speaks. Race, as Delpit notes, is also highly correlative with a person’s socioeconomic class/background. African-Americans and Latinos, for example, are disproportionately located among lower-income neighborhoods and thus school-systems. As the little boy in the beginning of the passage notes, there is a communicative dissonance between members of these “inner-city” communities, as we refer to them and those who “talk white” (even perceivable by children!). Now, this seems obvious to most people who are not completely sheltered (much like those from my hometown) but it raises an interesting question: Is there a “correct” way to speak?
What I mean by “correct” is not necessarily “best” or “optimal”, and certainly not “most intelligent” but simply right by objective standards and rules of a language i.e. certain pronouns correspond to certain groups in English like “he”, “she”, “they”, etc. Does it matter if someone who talks “white” and someone who does not are able to nonetheless have a conversation and communicate with the same ease as two people who engage in the same dialect, as Delpit defines it? Curious as to what everyone here thinks on this matter, given most of us share in a relatively diverse series of backgrounds and experiences, and as such may have different experiences with different “dialects’, as it were.
I also am aware I use a frustrating amount of “quotations” in my writing, thank you ahead of time for bearing with me on that.
I like this question. For me, the question seems to lend itself to other applications. Is there a correct way to write or read?
I think, like all matters of literacy, it comes down to circumstance and acceptance. By this, I mean certain types of speaking or writing are more accepted in different contexts. Cultural and situational norms dictate what may or may not be accepted in a particular conversation.
While two people can communicate using two separate dialects, there may be a few difficulties depending on which two are used. For example, I can imagine a conversation between someone speaking British English and AAVE could be difficult if neither is familiar with the other. Given my personal experiences with other dialects (which may not be universally applicable), it isn’t too hard to understand or replicate them after reaching certain degrees of exposure. Therefore, I don’t think there is much of a need for one ‘correct’ form of English, so long as there’s enough overlap among the other forms.
To further go off on the tangent I started, I think noting the differences in writing is important. In published works, different styles are usually celebrated, whereas divergence in spoken language is usually met in a negative way. Books such as Ulysses, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Tom Sawyer (in the phonetic way characters speak), and Dracula (epistolary writing) are typically hailed as innovative and groundbreaking. While time and reputation might be an influence on this, ‘different’ books published today are well regarded. The novel Illuminae (published in 2015, though it isn’t the first of its kind) is told in part through instant messages, which are written with grammatical mistakes and shortcuts intact, and has been a New York Times best-seller, despite its style.
To put this all in a concise statement, it seems as though getting the message across is the main goal, and different dialects and writing styles can both accomplish this. Some styles might be seen as more elegant or appropriate for a situation, but none of them have any inherent superiority.
I think this this a great question, and I also like how we touched upon it in lecture today. In my opinion, which is similar to what we discussed in class, there is a correct way to speak, but it varies among social groups, geographic location, and context. For example, we discussed how “yinz” is a Pittsburgh slang term that is heard often among the locals, however, we would never write that in a formal paper unless we were referring to the term. In some of the examples that Delpit explains, one can see how there is a wrong and right way to speak based on social groups and context, but just because someone may not speak the same way as you does not mean you don’t understand them. One example that sticks out to me was the example with the student, Tony. He responds back to the teacher stating “I be’s fine” when the teacher asks him how he’s doing (page 51). Although this is a grammatically incorrect way of answering the question, I’m sure we all could understand that Tony was saying “I’m fine.” I can almost guarantee that he thought his teacher was insane for asking him over again the same question, but to him his answer was correct, and that is probably because he has heard other people, whether that be relatives, or close friends, answer questions like “How are you?” in a similar fashion. Studies have shown that when children learn to speak they listen and repeat what others say around them. It may be used in the wrong context initially, but they will eventually figure that out without being corrected. For Tony, I think what he has learned is something that is conditioned. He has heard others say it without being told they’re wrong, so I don’t think he fully understands the grammatical error he is making in this case.
Overall I think it is interesting to observe the way we speak compared to others around us. Everyone has their own unique phrases and words that make them who they are. If we took that away, and everyone always spoke “correct” I don’t think the world would be as interesting as it is today.