Thanks, Greg, for your interpretive notes and further questions.
I'm eager at this point to get into Peter Smagorinsky's paper, so for now
let me just suggest some sources of interesting perspectives on these
questions of language standardization and its social role.
One is _Authority in Language_ by James and Lesley Milroy. It develops the
notion of hyperstandardization as a counterpoint to the claims that
language uniformity is just a logical necessity for wider communication
(some degree is, but modern standardized languages go way beyond that
point, developing a norm of intolerance for diversity in favor of what was
called at one time 'language purity' and was very directly associated with
'racial purity' ... there is an important history to the development of the
idea of unitary national languages, and most of it is politically
uncomfortable).
Another can be found in the work of Angel Lin (and colleagues like Micky
Lee), who has been and may well still be on xmca, working in Hong Kong, and
writing about the social class effects of Cantonese being de-valued by an
educational system (and economy) oriented to the prestige of (British)
English and now Beijing Chinese in what is mostly a Cantonese-dominant
community. Hong Kong is a true polylectal community and especially among
young people there are emergent language varieties that are not simply
assimilated to models of standard language, code shifting, etc.
And then there is the pioneering work of the late Charlene Sato, formerly
of U of Hawaii, on language discrimination against dialect speakers and the
issue of our legal rights (U.S. law only protects speakers of non-English
"Languages", not speakers of varieties that get classified as dialects of
English, in this case Hawaiian Creolized English, but the issue extends to
many other groups as well; cf. Ebonics advocates being denied bilingual
education funding).
Finally it's an interesting general point about ideology to note that the
powerful are equally deceived by political illusions. It's really not
surprising, I think, that the people whose self-interests are most
consistent with an ideological viewpoint will also find it the most
convincing, and indeed natural truth in the world. The mystery really is
the extent to which, and why, others also accept these illusions, if indeed
they do. No Macchiavellian conspiracy is needed to insure that illusions
which are believed by people with power are propagated in the media,
sanctioned by the curriculum, enshrined in law and policy, and given the
effect of social truth or social reality -- "as if". If there is any
conspiracy, it is the conspiracy of silence, or to silence, alternative
views and dissents from these 'truths'.
There is also, unfortunately, the informal conspiracy of goodwill among
many who doubt these official beliefs but act as if they were true, so as
not to damage the interests of students who must live in a world that
enforces them by active discrimination. When we teach people HOW to conform
to the standardized norms, what do we say about WHY students must do so? Do
we tell them it's because they have to submit to the will of their
political oppressors? or do we come up with a large number of plausible
rationalizations and justifications that carefully avoid the political
dimensions of language standardization? In many discussions of this issue
that I have had over the years, I've been told that (a) the students
already know about discrimination and don't have to be told about it by us,
(b) if we did talk about it, many students would choose to resist rather
than submit and would damage their future lives by doing so, and (c) it's
not our business, we're just there to help them speak and write the
standard language. It really seems to me that hegemonic illusions are
maintained, despite their contradicting the lived experience of many in the
community, only by the deep self-delusion of the privileged, especially the
well-intended priviliged. What is hard for us to face is not the truth
about language standardization/discrimination or any other ideology, but
the degree to which our own class interests (including those of our
children) dispose us to finding some way to rationalize not actively
opposing it.
JAY.
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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