I eventually had to cut the discussion short (it probably could have gone on all period). I asked the class if they were shocked to see these words projected in their classroom (a chorus of “yes”). I asked the class if they knew that there was an entire field of scientists and academics who studied stuff like this (a chorus of “no”). I gave a brief overview of what linguists do (the student from whom this lesson elicited unprecedented participation declared, “you can get paid for this? That’s what I’m gonna do!”), piquing class interest with a few maps charting particular word usage in the US. The following two maps were of particular interest.
I moved us toward this question with my slightly modified definition of “Dialect” (the literary term):
Dialect - Nonstandard speech that people actually use in their day-to-day lives. A dialect includes both nonstandard vocabulary (slang) and accent specific to a particular group.
People of different cultural backgrounds tend to speak differently:
- Geographic Area
- Race
- Socioeconomic Status
- Age
“Yes! Excellent example! How might this idea of dialect, nonstandard speech, play into a job interview?”
The student responded along the lines of, “Well, you’re supposed to talk a particular way in a job interview. Like if you used the words like the ones we were just talking about you won’t get the job.” We had forged an important connection between dialect/identity and institutional power.
In a subsequent post, I’ll examine the ways in which we explored this connection, but at this point in the lesson I felt like we could move into “Thank You, M’am” with a much richer understanding of Hughes’s use of dialect. I explained that Hughes’s inclusion of realistic, working-class, African-American dialect was a controversial one at the time--that many viewed the writing as simply grammatically incorrect. Prompted by our conversation regarding dialect and identity, students had a better and more vital understanding of Hughes’s decision to capture this dialect. This process, activating and validating prior knowledge, offering historical context and posing a controversy, and then analyzing the artistic decision to use dialect, allowed students to leverage complementary historical and analytical literacies, and engage much more richly and authentically with the text. Given my class’s enthusiasm surrounding dialects, I chose to extend our conversation in the next class using another text--A New York Times article. Check back for my analysis of this extension.
Delpit, Lisa (1988). "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in educating other people's children". Harvard Educational Review 58 (3): 280–298.
Hickey, Walter (2013, June 5). 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From One Another. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6?op=1
Labov, William (2012). Dialectical Diversity in America: The Politics of Language Change. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.