Jessica Bajorek
WSC119
Professor Efthymiou
4/22/2020
English Does Not Mean Class: Standard Academic English as the Globalization of Language
The idea that there is one correct way to learn English is something that plagues the culture of English-speaking countries and is used as a way to create otherism within a community of people. The purpose behind Standard Academic English is to unify the rhetorical choices made through a formality of tone and style in order to make academic work easily readable and to maintain an air of professionalism throughout the piece. However, this style of writing and speech has bled out of the confines of academia and into everyday interpersonal connections. It has become the reality that Standard Academic English has become equated to a person’s intelligence and credibility. For those who are not native English speakers or for those who have different dialects of speech, however, this can become detrimental to their progression in both their personal and professional lives. As we turn to observe the ways that this form of writing and speech can be used as an oppressor, we also uncover a much larger truth: English and its proper education have an inherent value, not just in English-speaking countries, but globally as well. Through the incorporation of works by Garrard McClendon, Min-zhan Lu, and Sojin Park and Nancy Abelmann, this essay seeks to underscore the ways in which the teaching of Standard Academic English creates a division in class and in doing so, becomes the global standard that all people should strive toward.
In a segment from Fox News titled “Fox News and Black English – Ebonics,” Garrard McClendon, a college and high-school level English teacher from Chicago, asserts his position the use of Ebonics by African American students does them a great disservice as they make their way into the working world and works to create a larger gap in class between black students and their white peers (McClendon 3:48). McClendon is the author of a book titled Ax or Ask: The African American Guide to Better English and is frequently asked to present in classrooms and schools to help prepare students in schools with a large percentage of African American students for career opportunities. In his interview with Fox News, McClendon stated, “The black community is losing countless children. Parents aren’t correcting children. Teachers, who are supposed to teach, aren’t correcting children” (McClendon 1:14). In this quote, McClendon is placing a high value on the “correctness” of language. The assumption here is that Standard Academic English is somehow more “correct” as a language than Ebonics because it affords more privilege to the person using it in the context of the global standard. He then goes on to say, “How can a person call him or herself a professional educator if you’re not willing to correct a person’s grammar?” (McClendon 1:14). From McClendon’s point of view, there is one proper way to teach English. He believes that by allowing these grammar mistakes to go unchallenged, it creates a cycle within the African American community of continuously using the same language, referred to in this video as “slang” (McClendon 1:52). In saying this, McClendon seems to suggest that African American people are becoming a product of their upbringing and puts this idea of a community standard of speech in a negative light. While Ebonics are seen as acceptable within the context of African American communities because it is a shared language that holds cultural importance, it does not fit the global standard that Standard Academic English satisfies. McClendon asserts that there is a responsibility placed on educators to intervene with the use of ebonics so that this cycle does not persist. He acknowledges that his is not a popular opinion among the black community, as he has “‘gotten a lot of backlash’” from trying to impose Standard Academic English on these students, but in doing so, McClendon believes that he is affording his students more agency (McClendon 2:22). He expresses that “‘African American children are suffering the most’” from the use of Ebonics because they are not taken as seriously in the professional world (McClendon 2:22). Here, McClendon proves that the class disparity in education exists because African American people are consistently “‘losing out on opportunities every day because of the way they speak’” (McClendon 3:35). In the case of “slang” and colloquial language, McClendon calls attention to this separation that occurs in which black people are those who “suffer most” from using it. A white person using the same language is a lot more likely to get away with using less formal language like Ebonics and will even sometimes be praised for their originality or their easygoing nature when using this type of language, whereas an African American student making the same rhetorical moves would often be deemed as less intelligent and professional. Though Ebonics works as a way of empowering black people on a community-based level, it works against them when speaking outside of this community. Ebonics does have its own grammar rules, but its form of “correctness” does not align with that of global standard. While McClendon acknowledges the unfairness placed on the African American community for having to always present themselves at their best and most professional, he feels that the way for African American people to combat this sense of otherism put upon them is through empowering themselves and others by conforming to the ideals of Standard Academic English and using it as a tool to get ahead.
Min-Zhan Lu’s article “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” showcases this concept of otherism through the way that Lu navigates both her use of language and her identity as both a Chinese citizen and a member of the bourgeoisie during the time of the communist revolution. The first time that Lu was made aware of her separation from her classmates was when she had an interaction with her teacher where her teacher found out that Lu could speak English and began practicing her English on Lu. Lu described the feeling that she got after the encounter as “pride” because “suddenly [she] felt that [her] family language had been singled out from the family languages of [her] classmates” (Lu 438). Lu understood then that her ability to speak English increased her value in the eyes of the teacher as well as in the eyes of the other students. It set her apart not only because it was different, but because it was elevated, something that only a person of a higher status had the knowledge of. Lu’s family also put a heightened importance on English education because they believed it provided her opportunities above that of her classmates and that “it was [her] father’s fluent English that had opened the door to his success” (Lu 438). In learning English, Lu made herself more marketable. She allowed herself the ability to travel and study abroad and opened gateways to new professional connections and advances through her knowledge of English. In this way, Lu globalized herself. Lu speaks of her senior English class when she came to understand the way that class separated her as well. She says, “There I discovered the English version of the term ‘class-struggle.’ (The Chinese characters for a school ‘class’ and for a social ‘class’ are different.) I had often used the English word ‘class’ at home in sentences such as, ‘So and so has class,’ but I had not connected this sense of ‘class’ with ‘class-struggle’” (Lu 442). Here, Lu asserts that there is a direct link between the knowledge of the English language and the consideration of “class,” in both meanings. To know English was not only to be seen as “classy” because it was an extraneous skill, but it inherently symbolized her higher status. However, in doing this, Lu complicated her own identity. She grew up during the time of the communist revolution in China, a time at which nationalism was prevalent, and her bourgeoisie status began to separate her from this vision in a negative way. As Lu realized that her identity was demonized by drawing connections between the “arch-enemies” of China and herself by way of the English language, she began to change the way she interacted with the written word (Lu 439). Instead of being able to negotiate her home language of Standard Academic English and her school language of Standard Chinese, she was forced to constantly war between the two. Because of the vastly different styles of writing she was taught at home and at school, while she wanted to write freely in her own voice, her school assignments encouraged her to “reduce concepts and ideas to simple definitions,” ultimately erasing Lu’s own thoughts from the page entirely (Lu 440-441). The struggle of negotiating between these two languages resulted in the suffocation of Lu’s love for writing. She became so concerned with the correctness of her own language when she wrote for school that she stifled her ideas and grew to be ashamed of what she wrote. On one occasion when she had written a report on The Revolutionary Family that she ended up hiding in her desk because she said, “I could never show it to people outside my family, because it had deviated so much from the reading enacted by the jacket review. Neither could I show it to my mother or sisters, because I was ashamed to have been so moved by such a ‘Revolutionary’ book” (Lu 443). This separation between her two identities showcased the ways in which the standardization of her languages acted as an oppressor. She was unable to fully explore her own voice because she was too afraid of othering herself. Here, it was not the Standard Academic English that acted as the standard, but it was her own culture’s language that had become standardized. Through the separation of her languages, she was fighting between being accepted by the global standard of Standard Academic English and by the national, community standard of Standard Chinese under the revolutionary communist influence.
Disparity between class is perhaps best articulated through an article by So Jin Park and Nancy Abelmann titled “Class and Cosmopolitan Striving: Mother’s Management of English Education in South Korea” which explores how English education is valued by mothers of male students from working class, middle class, and upper class families respectively. Through this article Park and Abelmann seek to understand the reasons why people in South Korea place such a high value on English education. As is stated by Park and Abelmann, “English has long been a class marker in South Korea: namely, knowledge of and comfort with English has been a sign of educational opportunity, and for some of the experience of travel or study abroad and of contact with foreigners in South Korea” (Park, Abelmann 646). For South Koreans, the goal of an English education is self-betterment. They believe that through the implementation of learning English, a child can be afforded more opportunities to become a citizen of the world rather than just a citizen of Korea. Upon examining the way these ideals were valued among mothers of various economic classes, something interesting was revealed: that English is a means of globalization, and that for South Koreans, this globalization of their students is the goal. In fact, this identity of globalization is so ingrained within the culture that as Park and Abelmann so clearly state, “what it means to be South Korean is transforming: increasingly, to be South Korean means to be South Korean “in the world”-a prospect that calls for the mastery of English as an index of cosmopolitan striving” (Park, Abelmann 650). From a class standpoint, this conception of “cosmopolitan striving” can be incredibly far-fetched. This is best illustrated through the interview done by Park and Abelmann of a working class mother who reported wanting to get an at-home tutor for her son in order to provide him with an educational experience that she was not able to have in her own time, but “in the final analysis Hun’s Mother gave up because of her economic circumstances” (Park, Abelmann 654). While Hun’s mother wanted to provide him with this opportunity for cosmopolitan striving, her class standing made her unable to do so, making English education therefore even more of a commodity. However, when examining the importance of the values in relation to Min’s mother, a middle class English teacher. While she admits that English education does play an important role in affording a person in South Korea status, she claims, “‘Mothers don’t understand the meaning of ‘creativity.’… Education is a slow process, but all they care about these days is results. They are only interested in news flashes about the “13 year-old boy with the perfect TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] score””18 or the “young genius who is attending a university.” And they think about their own children in relation to these media sensations….’” (Park, Abelmann 659). For her, the importance of English is less about the affordance of class and more about the mental and creative development that a more holistic approach to education can provide. When comparing this viewpoint to that of Jinu’s mother, an upper class citizen, it reveals the difference of how an English education is interpreted based on class. Jinu’s mother asserted that it was through her time spent abroad with her children that she learned the most. She believed that the experience was valuable because she was able to interact with and connect to the locals and other international tourists and that it forced her to speak in broken English (Park, Abelmann 663). For Jinu’s mother, her own and her children’s use of English was far more for the fun of it, but was otherwise inconsequential. Park and Abelmann state here that, “We can see that for Jinu’s Mother, education strategies (e.g., securing her children a place in the best English after-school), goals for English communication (i.e., achieving the ability to really communicate in English), and cosmo- politan striving (i.e., the desire to feel at home in the larger world), are inextri- cable from one another” (Park, Abelmann 664). The conception presented here of English as a means of cosmopolitan striving only serves to cement the idea that the national standard presented by Korea is the global standard. In order to become an upstanding Korean citizen, English is necessary, but it is not made equally accessible, making it simply another way of adding to the class separation that already exists.
My own experience surrounding Standard Academic English and class is one of privilege. As a white student from a middle-class family, I am afforded a certain amount of freedom with my language, a freedom that many international students and people of color do not have in the context of a country like the United States. In my position as a tutor in the Hofstra Writing Center, I see the ways in which Standard Academic English can affect the power dynamics at play between students and their professors. When students of marginalized identities come to the writing center looking for help with grammar on their papers, I am plagued with a choice. I must choose between being a heavy-handed critic, aware of the less understanding audiences that exist for their work and focusing primarily on the content of the piece, choosing to ignore some of the smaller errors in favor of preserving the student’s own voice and writing within the paper. I must decide whether the student’s exigence in going to a tutor in the first place is to be globalized or not.
In enacting Standard Academic English as the global standard of language, we are putting forth a set of rules that act as a way of both unifying cultures through the use of one communal language and excluding cultures by minimizing the importance of their own specific languages. Through the lens of McClendon, Lu, and Park and Abelmann, it is clear that English education is used as a means of getting ahead, and so it creates this culture of the English language as a commodity. There is a value placed upon English, but this value is the exact thing that makes it an oppressor. It is that value that creates the imbalance in class. By putting a value on English education, it says that people who can speak proper English are more valuable than people who are not.
Works Cited:
Lu, Min-Zhan. “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle.” JStor, 1987.
McClendon, Garrard. Fox News and Black English – Ebonics. YouTube, 4 Jan. 2007, youtu.be/X_KKLkmIrDk.
So Jin Park, and Nancy Abelmann. “Class and Cosmopolitan Striving: Mothers’ Management of English Education in South Korea.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 4, 2004, pp. 645–672. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4150852. Accessed 26 Apr. 2020.
Writing Against Power 