Bill Cosby believes that it is crucial to learn the proper English language. He does not believe that African-Americans have fought this hard to get an education, for the younger generation to not take full advantage of leaning to speak English properly. I do not agree with Cosby because I do not believe that there is anything wrong with younger people communicating in African American Vernacular English. Although this is true, I can argue that Cosby is correct to a certain extent, because African Americans have fought to be educated while it seems that youngsters give up much easier on learning. I do not think that Smitherman would agree with Bill Cosby. This is because Smitherman believes that teachers of English, literacy instructors and …show more content…
Unlike Cosby, that believes that AAVE should cease to exist. Cosby prompts his audience to not accept the Vernacular that some black people speak because it will get them nowhere. Whiles, Smitherman defends that there is no intellectual deficiencies in the students that speak AAVE. Cosby says younger African Americans do not want to learn the Standard American English whereas Smitherman believes that they approach school enthusiastically and highly motivated to learn. It is not that they do not want to learn but instead because of the constant tearing down of their vernacular and being placed in Special Educational programs as a result extinguishes the desire of wanting to learn. Ultimately, I believe that African American Vernacular English speakers are capable of learning Standardized English in the right educational system. Staying away from degrading young African American Vernacular and instead focusing on teaching something new can be the best way of teaching. In this, Young people being able to switch between African American Vernacular English and the Standard American English at appropriate times creates confident that can only be
The teacher then goes on to explain how she would rather have her students only learn the standardized English rather than code mesh the two forms together. Young states “Yet she wants her students to somehow learn to turn off black language and use only standard, when she can't herself. After I highlighted this observation, she gave a final "tsk" and walked away” (Young 2009, p. 59).
When you can be yourself and it becomes an art, that’s when writing is fun. Barbara Mellix shares a great example of when she wanted to use "proper English", instead of her "black English." While doing so it made her feel uncomfortable and out of her realm. " "Thank you very much," I replied, my voice barely audible in my own ears. The words felt wrong in my mouth, rigid, foreign.
In order to live a better life, we all need a sound body, a sound mind and a sound soul. I’m blessed to have all three (Essay Idea). My physical health is good (Paragraph Idea). Since, I have good physical health, I can easily perform everyday routine tasks, and I can enjoy everything.
Review of Vershawn Young Discussion After reading “Vershawn Ashanti Young: Should Writers Use They Own English?” against Rebecca Wheeler’s “Code-Switch to Teach Standard English (Young 111. Wheeler 108)”. Each paper expresses a different opinion regarding the teaching of English in the classrooms. Each author writes with different agendas, different tones, and different purposes. Each acts upon their beliefs as they perceive them, and as a result are poles apart.
Language is not a significant part of a person’s character and importance. Many influential men and women of history dealt with speaking impediments and came from uneducated backgrounds. Some of these historical figures include Sojourn Truth, Sir Isaac Newton, and Winston Churchill. Sojourn Truth was born a slave during the late 1700s, she was never taught to read or write and spoke with a deep uneducated accent, but despite this though she became an activist. Sojourner became famous for her speech on human rights’, the abolishing slavery, and women’s right, one of her most famous and well known speeches was, “Aint’ I A Women.”
The Skin That We Speak The way a person speaks is a direct link to a person’s culture and the environment which he or she was raised in. A person’s language, skin color as well as economic status influences the way he or she is perceived by others. Lisa Delpit and eleven other educators provide different viewpoints on how language from students of different cultures, ethnicity, and even economic status can be misinterpreted due to slang and dialect or nonstandard English by the teachers as well as his or her own peers. The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, who collected essays from a diverse group of educators and scholars to reflect on the issue of language
Baldwin stated that “Language is determined by the person that is speaking it.” The audience is anyone that doesn’t consider “Black English” a language, people that don’t use
It was once believed that the languages that the Africans spoke varied drastically from region to region but in reality they were “local variations of a deeper-lying structural similarity” (Herkovits 79). This similarity allowed communicating in the New World to be easier than if the languages were all completely linguistically independent, “whether Negro speech employs English or French or Spanish or Portuguese vocabulary, the identical constructions found over all the New World can only be regarded as a reflection of the underlying similarities in grammar and idiom, which, in turn, are common to the West African Sudanese tongues” (80). Language then became an important part of African American culture, whether it be a “secret” language used to help slaves escape, or to tell stories and folklore to children to encourage and motivate them, or express African proverbs from generation to generation. There has been many times when other races seem not to understand what African Americans are saying because of the slang terms we create that then become popular terms, most recently has been the phrases “on fleek” and “twerking”, to name a few examples. Being proficient in verbal arts was prized in Africa and now a value has been placed on verbal expression in today’s culture through riddles and through preaching and teaching (Williams
In discussing Black English, John McWhorter talks about the theories of the origin of the language. McWhorter talks about how people have made claims that Black English is related and comes from African languages. He also tells how their research on this subject is unreliable and “sketchy.” These people making these claims are outside of linguistics, meaning they practice things such as education and speech pathology. People like Dr. Smith, a teacher at a medical college, suggested that Black English is a mixture of African languages with English, where these African languages have altered English into a new language.
Judgment for using colloquialisms found mostly in the black community (African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, as it is called) is commonly paired with a white person’s latent racism — despite that white person perhaps thinking his or her
Loosely using words we do not have recognition of is a problem we can fix with more public awareness of where they came from through a conversation about race; a conversation that may seem daunting, but that has the ability to teach profound lessons of the way our society
Before reading Baldwin’s essay Black English to me was slang and improper words because that’s how media publically portrays majority of Blacks communicating. Being under the impression that the majority of Black people spoke improper English, and given where I was from I used to always hear the comment that I spoke White or too proper. But my environment and peers began to have a stronger influence on the way I talked, I began to pick up different slang and talk in a way that was considered to be normal because I am Black. All this happened despite my family’s corrections and despite having English classes every year in high school. Now I feel that despite the good intention of their corrections, my family and school perpetuated a false idea.
“If Black English Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me What Is” In the essay “If Black Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me What Is” (The New York Times, 1979) written by James Baldwin, the author asserts that the African American community has altered the English language into a new language during the last five centuries to accommodate the black experience in American history despite the white’s attempt to submerge it. To begin the essay he makes his argument clear by referencing the alterations the French made to their native language to describe how people will eventually “...evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances…”; furthermore he continues to analyze how the caucasian people of America have only accepted the black language when it came out of a white mouth; he ends the essay by reinforcing his position, elaborating on the racism black’s have faced when they were denied the right to an education unless it was for the white benefit. His liberal purpose is to bring light to the subtle racism that African Americans experience even after the Civil Rights movement and to acknowledge the cultural influence they have in America. His writing appears very personal and intimate like he’s voluntarily opening up to his audience by letting them know of his own struggles as an African American, targeting mostly minorities and people who feel oppressed by white America.
Dialect is defined as, “a variety of a language used by the members of a group” (Merriam-Webster.com, 2018). The use of “black” dialect in the story brings the characters to life, makes them more relatable, and contributes to the theme of racism in a way that other literary devices cannot. Particularly, “The increased use of dialect by black authors, particularly children 's authors, was a sign that the nature of the black experience as they wanted to convey it did not have to rely on traditional forms, and literary devices; that they could treat familiar, realistic ideas and situations using a familiar dialect and relate that idea more effectively” (Wells, 1976, p. 39). From “’Ey, ‘lois!
The Harlem Renaissance was a development period that took place in Harlem, New York. The Renaissance lasted from 1910 to about the mid-1930s, this period is considered a golden age in African American culture. This Renaissance brought about masterful pieces of music, literature, art, and stage performance. The Harlem Renaissance brought about many prominent black writers such as Richard Wright. Richard Wright is a highly acclaimed writer, who stressed the importance of reading, writing, and words.