Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Evaluative Reactions to the Language of Disadvantage 151famously observed that ‘nearly every Englishman of working-classorigin considers it effeminate to pronounce foreign words correctly’.Kissau (2006: 415) reports that this attitude apparently persists: Canadiansecondary-school boys report that the French classroom is a ‘femaledomain’, and not a place for males. One language teacher observed that‘there’s still a lot of sexist thinking that a man doesn’t learn languages. Aman does math or engineering’ (see also Carr & Pauwels, 2006, below).Ogbu (1999) has described how black people in West Oakland(California) consider that ‘proper’ English is white English, and thatBEV is poor slang or, less pejoratively, ‘just plain talkin’. On furtherinvestigation, it is clear that BEV is seen as the ordinary vernacular, the‘low’ variant in a diglossic situation. And Ogbu also finds that, althoughhis respondents did not articulate the notion, they feel caught: the BEVthat represents home, familiarity and group identity is threatened by themastery of ‘proper’ English, a mastery that is seen as necessary for schooland work success. They believe, in other words, in a sort of ‘subtractivebidialectalism’. The ‘dialect dilemma’, the belief that the necessaryacquisition of standard English will tend to erode the vernacular, issometimes reinforced by a feeling (both within and without academia)that this process is part of the assimilatory intent of ‘mainstream’ schooland society. Ogbu notes that, on the one hand, black professionals,advocates, educators and communities endorse the learning of standardEnglish, but then turn around and condemn its acquisition on thegrounds that it threatens ‘Black English identity and racial solidarity’(Ogbu, 1999: 180).But Ogbu argues that the belief may be just that and does not reflectactual practice. After all, a more or less stable bidialectalism is the norm inmany contexts, and it is certainly part of the repertoire of large numbers ofblack Americans. Is there, then, any real dilemma here? Well, it is possible,just as ‘subtractive bilingualism’ is possible where the acquisition of anew language gradually ousts an existing one but, in both cases, any‘subtraction’ that occurs is a symptom of larger social forces that makeresistance unlikely to succeed. In the case of black American culture andits current pervasiveness well beyond the boundaries of the blackcommunity itself I should think that a diglossic relationship betweenBEV and standard English is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. Butif a ‘dilemma’ is perceived, it has at least a psychological existence. Ogbu’sinformants clearly feel that, when a black person ‘is talking proper, he orshe is puttin’ on [italics added] or pretending to be white or to talk likewhite people’ (Ogbu, 1999: 171172). They told him that it is ‘insane topretend to be white’, that speaking standard English is a pretence, a fake.