Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

A Concluding Statement 283those who have some knowledge of those stereotypes. That is whyjudges who know no Greek are unable to make the aesthetic distinctionsbetween Cretan and Athenian that are so blindingly obvious to those inthe wider Greek speech community. That is why foreign visitors, sittingamong an audience of native English speakers will not appreciate thehumor when the stage duchess opens her mouth and talks with aCockney accent.So, as with disadvantage itself, our explorations in the social life oflanguage reveal that differences among varieties are just that differences. But, just as the alchemy of community ignorance andprejudice easily transmutes difference into deficiency, so stereotypingand other inaccuracies of social categorization have the power to turnlinguistic variation into linguistic deficit. That being so, I felt it necessaryin this context to devote some specific attention to teachers, on the onehand, and to speakers of Black English, on the other. The first is easy tojustify. This entire book, after all, is about the play of language in theclassroom, and teachers have at least a co-starring role in that drama.And speakers of Black English? The study of their particular dialects isespecially rewarding precisely because those forms have so long beenlooked down upon along virtually all dimensions, and that, in turn, hasoccurred because their speakers have occupied the lower rungs of thesocial ladder. A corollary is that, if it were possible to show that thedialects of Black English were just as valid as any others, that wouldsurely be a powerful support for the broader argument that all varietiesare fully-fledged systems of communication. And that demonstrationhas, in fact, taken place, to the complete satisfaction of those who aredisinterested and at least reasonably intelligent. The relatively recentcontroversies swirling around ‘Ebonics’ show only that not everyone yetpossesses those qualities. They have also brought to light some of thefurther intricacies attaching to the ‘difference’ position. That is, if societyat large has not yet fully grasped the scholarly demonstrations bearingupon the validity of different dialects or, in many cases, continues toexhibit a wilful ignorance what practices suggest themselves vis-à-visnonstandard dialects at school?In my last group of chapters, I move from nonstandard varieties toentirely separate languages. I attempt to outline something of thehistorical and contemporary ways in which schools have responded toforeign languages in their classrooms, and have tried to tease out some ofthe important features that are particularly to be looked for in multiculturaland multilingual societies increasingly common in many partsof the world. One of the most interesting aspects of this discussion