Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [80]
The initials of code-switching are the same as those for cool smart, the state of being able to know when to stop hanging with friends and when to learn enough of the prevailing language of media and business to achieve a happy and useful life.
We all code-switch to some extent to gain rapport with the person we are addressing at the moment. If it’s a language teacher, we are likely to cut the street talk and show off a few big words. If it’s a close friend or relative, we tend to revert to less formal terms.
As this book tries to make clear, language can be very enjoyable, especially with the informal lingo that is taking over the world and reshaping itself, as well as other languages, as it goes. But that doesn’t mean you should not be proficient in the working language of society
Funny guy Bill Cosby is the model here. The TV comedian is not joking when he says he learned how to code-switch as a boy. He would use street slang with his playmates during the day, but when he got home and faced his homework, he shifted to the language that eventually helped him succeed beyond his fondest dreams.
In today’s world of information technology (IT), people who can’t handle both formal and informal language will sooner or later lose their way.
What makes all this especially exciting is that for the first time in history, one language seems to be well on the way to filling that need for much of the world.
Deciding to be cool smart is easy. The hard part is the follow-through.
Notes
MADE IN THE U.S.A.
1. Toni Boyle and K. D. Sullivan, Gremlins of Grammar (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), p. 2.
2. The New Republic, April 6, 2011.
3. World-renowned linguist and author David Crystal has raised his estimate from 1.5 to 2.0 billion, the same figure used by David Graddol, another British authority on language. E-mail to author from Crystal, March 7, 2011.
4. Robert McCrum, Globish (New York: Norton, 2010), p. 276.
5. January 11, 2000.
6. November 6, 2000.
7. January 23, 2004.
8. April 11, 2001.
9. Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 242.
10. Washington Post, January 22, 2006.
11. November 22, 2006.
12. Washington Post, November 19, 2006.
13. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, July 25, 2007.
14. Vanity Fair, January 23, 2010.
15. Washington Post, December 23, 2007.
16. Washington Post, July 11, 2010.
17. Robert J. Connors and Andrea A. Lunsford, “Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research,” College Composition and Communication 39 (December 1988): pp. 395–409; The New St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1993).
18. Charlie Rose, PBS, March 11, 2009.
19. E. D. Hirsch Jr., The Knowledge Deficit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), p. 53.
20. New Yorker, June 18, 1949.
21. Washington Post, September 8, 2007.
22. Source: Denise T., the teacher.
23. http://teacherblue.homestead.com/penmanship.html.
24. Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (New York: Gotham Books, 2008), p. 112.
25. Louis Menand, New Yorker, June 28, 2004.
26. David Spates, Crossville Chronicle, June 4, 2007.
27. Highlights from PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, December 2010.
28. H. L. Mencken, The American Language, paperback ed. (New York: Knopf, 1977), p. 133.
29. Mencken, The American Language, p. 123.
30. http://www.mediamonitors.net/polatkaya1.html.
TEACHERS AND OTHER PIONEERS
1. The full sentence from the NCTE statement is, “In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition,