Its Not Only What You Say, But How You Say It: On Language and Class by Alyssa Lyons (Huffington Post - August 6, 2014) #Harlem Education News: Columbia University in the City of New York, Teachers College, Columbia University EXCERPT: Passing by Columbia University on Broadway and Amsterdam on my morning stroll to work, I noticed a flyer tacked to a lamp post as I waited to cross the street. The advertiser was offering linguistic lessons to non-native speakers to help them adapt to Standard English. The ad also offered to help those interested in eliminating regional dialectical variations. Reflecting on my own linguistic history, I realized how intertwined language was with my identity, particularly my social class. . . . College was my linguistic niche. My school was located in the heart of the Bronx, and the student body consisted mostly of students of color in the lower to middle socioeconomic classes. It was considered a commuter school, and so many of my fellow students came from similar communities. I felt normal because my linguistic identity was legitimized by the presence of my peers who articulated much like me. But in graduate school, I became cognizant of my dialect and its relationship to who I was. I thought I sounded urban. I knew I sounded like I was from the Bronx. I sounded poor. Experiences are often verbalized for conversational fodder, and I lacked the experiences of my more affluent peers, such as international traveling, a two-parent home and various other forms of socially accepted capital. I just didnt articulate myself the same way as my peers. Because of what society perceived (and myself in turn) to be a linguistic deficiency, I intuited that I wasnt as smart as my peers and didnt deserve to be sitting in an Ivy League classroom. My identity and my self-worth hinged on my language, and society told me that my language wasnt good enough. And for a long time, I internalized the belief that my languages werent good enough. To remedy my linguistic differences, I fought to over articulate my words, refrained from emphasizing my b when I mentioned my birthplace (everyone knows Bronxites pack a verbal punch with their bs), and spoke less frequently in class. At home, I was the purveyor of linguistic righteousness, correcting my familys pronunciation and verb usage, implicitly telling them that if my language wasnt good enough, neither was theirs. In short, I consciously and subconsciously employed an internal and external hypervigilence centered on policing my language and articulation. For all of my educational and personal investment in issues of social injustices and systemic inequities, I sought to assimilate to the middle class culture, at least dialectally. This assimilation required the adoption of behaviors, standards and norms belonging to a largely middle class white patriarchal hegemony and was counterproductive to my passions of equality. My assimilation was subtle but noxious, as its aim was to eradicate a part of my identity that indicated I was from what Jacob Riis dubbed as the other half a century ago. Thinking a firm command of Standard English supersedes any experiential or learned knowledge one possesses, my former dialectical beliefs mirror the general consensus. We tell each other that we must compartmentalize our languages and subsequently our identities, and that not all languages are created equal. The problem lies in the fact that linguistic marginalization does not apply to everyone. It applies to societys deleteriously disenfranchised. We do not recognize the value in linguistic variations and content, nor do we merit the ability to code switch with enviable ease. I surely didnt. So we must ask ourselves, who created these linguistic standards, and who has the authority to decide that our tongues are illegitimate, as Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldua poignantly points out? In How to Tame A Wild Tongue, Anzaldua remarks, If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. We must legitimize our tongues. Language is not only identity, it is power. I have sought to reclaim the part of my identity that I have tried to stamp out, and now understand that identity means different things in different spaces. My friends and families languages helped shape my identity and understanding of the world and are just as valuable as my academic discourse. But one language no longer commands power over the others. They are all intrinsically a part of me.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 00:22:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015