Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [17]
CITING STUDENT RIGHTS
Moving in the same direction as the teachers—but with an intriguing twist—has been the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), which shares the same office building in Urbana, Illinois. Representing mostly college English instructors, the Conference determined in 1974 that students have the right to speak and write virtually any way they want—whether in Spanglish, Ebonics, Valspeak, or Geekish—and teachers should respect that right. The official statement said,
We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language. . . . The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans.
In other words, what could be called a mistake in formal English could mean a dialect that needs protection, not correction. The wording reflected the difficulty English instructors themselves were having reconciling the demands of teaching with the need to be politically correct. The instructors obviously chose the latter, and the cause of promoting less formal English has benefited as a result.
As if to demonstrate the difficulty of being grammatically and politically correct at the same time, the Conference delegates spent most of one day’s session arguing over whether to use the singular word student which would trigger the awkward but PC words his or her as the later references. They chose to fudge the issue by using the plural.
Since then, the language establishment has quietly found it necessary to bend the old grammatical rule and allow the plural word their to refer to a singular collective noun such as whoever or anyone. However, language authorities have never officially acknowledged their rule change, which trailed the decision of the general public by decades.
DIALECTS ARE US
The Conference seemed to be saying that all students have a right to speak and write the way they want, and teachers should not try to correct them for fear of imparting “false” or “immoral” advice. In other words, “dialects are us,” and young Americans from all backgrounds are the beneficiaries.
The Conference went even further by issuing a background document saying in part, “If we can convince our students that spelling, punctuation and usage are less important than content, we have removed a major obstacle in their developing the ability to write.”
NCTE officials have heartily backed the Conference’s stand on these matters. Randy Bomer, director of language and literacy studies at the University of Texas and a former president of the Council, told me, “Students have the right to remain attached to and use language they are comfortable with. We need to respect the languages that kids bring to school.”2
But what is “content”? Nowhere in the websites of the two teacher groups is there a simple, easily accessible definition of the word. The vagueness of such a key term is another sign that educators are doing their part to encourage more informal English. They make that clear by saying that spelling, punctuation, and how you use the language are not as important as what you say and what the message is.
In other words, the old-fashioned concept of “correctness” in language is no longer as important as the ability to get another person’s attention and understanding. If your grammar is iffy, your spelling is nothing to brag about, and you sometimes use a wrong verb tense or pronoun, yet other people know what you mean, what’s the problem? After all, isn’t being able to communicate the ultimate purpose of language?
The teachers could not be clearer in their endorsement of informal English. It fits today’s attitude of many students who like to mock or ridicule those who get good marks and try to use formal English. In effect, both students and teachers, along with many others, agree