by Kylie Armstrong
Amid the Black Lives Matter protests in response to police brutality, the concept of racism being taught in schools has emerged once again. Within this conversation it is essential to discuss the way that language and dialects should be taught in English classes, and whether teaching students to only use Standard English is the correct way for students to succeed in the future. In reply to a New York Times article “What should Colleges Teach” by Stanley Fish, in which Fish argues that the only way students will be able to change the world is if they have the tools of speaking professionally in Standard English, Vershawn Ashanti Young introduces the concept of code meshing. Young believes that it is important that everyone has the ability to communicate their ideas and has an understanding of the functions of language regardless of the dialect they are speaking, and that Fish’s method of teaching solely Standard English is causing a racist attitude towards Black English. From a similar perspective, Jamila Lyiscott, a tri-tongued orator, conveys the ways in which code meshing has been beneficial to her because each language she speaks is important and powerful. Everyone has different opinions on the controversy of how code meshing and dialects should be taught in school, but it is important to acknowledge that all dialects have rules and uses, not just Standard English.
In his article “Should Writers Use They Own English” Vershawn Ashanti Young writes in a mix of Black English and standard English to establish his concept of code meshing: “Code meshing is the new code switching; it’s mulitdialectalism and pluralingualism in one speech act, in one paper” (Young). He believes that teachers should teach students how to speak and write using code meshing in a formal and informal setting. He argues that “instead of prescribing how folks should write or speak, I say we teach language descriptively. This means we should, for instance, teach how language functions within and from various cultural perspectives. And we should teach what it takes to understand, listen, and write in multiple dialects simultaneously” (Young). Young is establishing his perspective that the education system needs to allow students to speak and write freely in their own languages in order to combat the negative attitudes towards Black English in the professional setting. Change needs to start with the new generations and the only way to do that is to teach them to be accepting of all dialects and allow them to use them in the classroom.
Jamila Lyiscott wrote her poem “Three Ways to Speak English” after encountering a woman who congratulated her for being very “articulate” during an academic panel she was on. In a Ted Radio Hour interview with Guy Raz, she explained that this encounter opened her eyes to the fact that “had [she] been speaking with [her] family, who’s Trinidadian, or with people in [her] community who speak black English vernacular, that this woman would have maybe not seen the same worth and value in terms of [her] intellectual capacity or just [herself]” (What Does it Mean to Be ‘Articulate’?). In her poem which she performed in a Ted Talk , she explains that she is fluent and articulate in all three languages by switching between them as she delivers her message. Her perspective is that all of her languages are useful in a multitude of settings and teachers should be able to teach about all of the languages and dialects of their students, because dialects shouldn’t be stereotyped as bad or erased and controlled by the education system. She brings in the ideas of prejudices against African American Vernacular English or Black English because of the nonsensical racial disparities that she and others have faced based on their way of speaking, similar to the way that Black hair is seen as “bad” and often controlled by white employers. This controversy over whether AAVE should be taught about and if schools should allow Black students to write using the language that they speak at home and with their friends is a result of these prejudices and negative stereotypes that associate Black characteristics with being “bad”.
In Lyiscott’s Ted Talk she claims “The English language is a multifaceted oration subject to indefinite transformation” and in hopes of getting teachers to follow in her footsteps, she explains that each dialect has its own rules and that code meshing (as she exemplifies in her performance) should be taught in addition to these rules (Lyiscott). It is possible to be inarticulate when speaking in AAVE, but as opposed to popular belief, Black English is not just broken English. To illustrate this concept Lyiscott exclaims “when mommy mocks me and says, y’all be mad going to the store. I say, mommy, no. That sentence is not following the law. Never does the word mad go before a present participle” (Lyiscott). She demonstrates that AAVE is not just sloppy English, there are still grammar rules to follow, and it should be taught in school the history of and the correct way to use AAVE for the benefit of all students. However, it is important to note that even though schools should expose students to all kinds of dialects and languages, it could quickly become insensitive and considered appropriation if a classroom of white students were told to speak in Black English, or other dialects that they are not a part of. It’s essential for all people to understand and respect Black English as a language, but this does not mean that everyone should use AAVE in school or at home if they are not Black.
Other linguists such as John McWhorter, a professor at Columbia University have also taken similar positions to Jamila Lyiscott and Vershawn Ashanti Young on what teachers should teach about code meshing and diverse dialects. In his book Talking Back, Talking Black, McWhorter argues that Black English is not just “gutter talk” and linguists and teachers are “responsible for the fact that almost nobody knows that there exists something called Black English, which is complex enough to require books and academic articles to analyze, and which has its own grammatical structure, just as Standard English does, or Finnish, or Japanese” (McWhorter 7). He opens his introduction by describing countries such as Switzerland where people speak one language in school and print, but another language outside of a formal setting, and contrasts this with the idea that Americans speak Standard English in school and media, but outside of a formal setting Black Americans use “a lot of slang and bad grammar” (McWhorter 1). The education system needs to change their attitude towards Black English and start to understand that it is an actual language just the same as Swiss German in Switzerland, and stop repressing students’ language in school.
All three linguists would agree that Black English is a language that should not be seen as just “street talk”. It should be taken seriously in the classroom, just as any other language would be. All teachers should expose their students to a variety of languages and dialects from a young age in order to teach them that there is power in being articulate in multiple tongues. Code meshing should be normalized and students should never feel like they have to speak in standard English to have the ability to make a positive change in the world.
Works Cited
Lyiscott, Jamila. 3 Ways to Speak English. TED, https://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_3_ways_to_speak_english. Accessed 3 Nov. 2021.
McWhorter, John. Talking Back, Talking Black. Bellevue Literary Press, 2017, pp. 1-11.
“What Does It Mean to Be ‘Articulate’?” NPR, NPR, 14 Nov. 2014, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/362372282.
Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2010, Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.
Dear Reader,
The purpose of my essay was to compare how Jamila Lyiscott and Vershawn Ashanti Young think that teachers should implement code meshing and AAVE into the classroom. I focused on Lyiscott’s Ted Talk and the way that she expresses that all three of her languages have rules and in order to correctly speak each language you must understand the rules first. This led me to include John McWhorter’s book Talking Back, Talking Black as a source because he shows similar opinions.
I think that in my essay I did a good job explaining the way that Black English is its own language and that it has grammar and rules that should be taught in school. I also think that the part I included from Talking Back, Talking Black flows nicely with the way that I was writing my essay, and the content was very appropriate to this conversation. On the other hand, I think a weakness of my essay is that I didn’t talk very much about the differences in Lyiscott and Young’s opinions on code meshing in the classroom.
The challenges that arose for me when writing this essay were mainly trying to make sure that I get my own opinions in while focusing it on the advice that Young and Lyiscott are delivering in their works. I followed the prompt about Lyiscott’s Ted Talk and it focuses more on comparing the opinions of the two linguists but I knew that I had to have my own voice show through in the blog post too. I struggled to do this and stay within the word count, so I ended up trying to tie more of my opinions in with the conclusion, and the additional source (McWhorter) I brought into the paper.
Sincerely,
Kylie Armstrong
