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Unlearning Prescriptivism: Linguistics, Grammar, and Media Literacy in Anti-racist/Anti-bias Teaching

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About Us

Amy Plackowski

English Teacher

Hudson High School

Hudson, Massachusetts

aplackowski@hudson.k12.ma.us

Elizabeth Albota

English Teacher

Hudson High School

Hudson, Massachusetts

ealbota@hudson.k12.ma.us

Positionality Statement

We are both white women who have only a learned experience of discrimination, having to actively educate ourselves about the experiences and languages of marginalized people, including those of our students and colleagues. We have always spoken a dialect of English close to what most listeners would identify as “General American.” Much of this work has been built on the labor of scholars and educators from historically marginalized communities: Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Queer, immigrant, disabled. We are grateful for their work and their legacies and we hope we are representing it well.

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About our class

Linguistics & Media Studies

Formerly two electives: Linguistics and Media Literacy
Combined in 2020 to make one core class
Juniors and seniors can take it for English credit
Offered at regular and honors level
(Other courses students can take: AP Literature, AP Language, Coming-of-Age Literature, Dystopian Literature, Stories and Storytellers)
BUT, you don’t have to teach linguistics to teach about descriptivism and prescriptivism!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOCy3NTduBkhm9wGngNgrT6tez22hF5O_RA3oPeJqocJF8LQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Beth

Our class is called Linguistics and Media Studies

This class was born out of the English electives we used to teach: Amy taught Linguistics and I taught Media Literacy

Course combines juniors and seniors, but there are separate classes for honors and what we call academic level (other schools call it college prep level)

This is not the only English class Juniors/seniors can take; we have a rotating selection of other English courses at the Junior/senior (combined) level

Today, we hope to give you the hows and the whys for integrating descriptivism plus the tools for recognizing and dismantling prescriptivism in any English course you teach, whether or not it has linguistics in the title.

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Why teach about language in English Language Arts?

Linguistics can center student voices by centering student language.

Linguistics can combat bias and racism by de-mythologizing beliefs about language varieties and their users.

Linguistics can give students tools to become critical consumers of media.

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Imagine someone speaking these three sentences out loud:

-“I like totally hate that movie.”

-“I shall take a look at it promptly.”

-“He be working hard every day.”

Now, think about the way your imagined speaker looked and sounded for each sentence.

What was the race or ethnicity of the speaker?
Where were they from? What was their gender?
How old might they be?
Did they sound educated? Annoying? Relatable?

Jot down or consider some of your thoughts on this for 2 minutes.

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Presentation Progression: What to Expect

First Half:

How we, as teachers, can unlearn our prescriptivism and why unlearning it can help our students

Second Half:

Concrete ideas about how we can help our students unlearn their judgments around languages and use a descriptive lens to evaluate language more accurately

Then a little time for Q & A

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Unlearning our own prescriptivism

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Grammar

Grammar = the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language

Rosie a beautiful pony is. 🙁
Maurice and me are going to the movies tonight. 🙂
Tiago put the book. 🙁
The boy found. 🙁
Purple big pillows were on her bed. 🙁
I don’t have no idea. 🙂
Who did you talk to? 🙂
I have drank six glasses of water. 🙂

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Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Grammar

Descriptive grammar: attempts to describe how people actually use language in real life.

Looks for patterns to uncover “rules” that people are never explicitly taught about their native language
Studies how different languages and dialects have different patterns, and how these patterns change
Considers all languages and dialects as equally complex
Rejects the idea that there is a “correct” and “incorrect” way to talk.

Prescriptive Grammar: attempts to prescribe what rules of language people should use to speak “properly.”

Dictates correct and incorrect ways of using language.
Believes language users should follow rules of standard English when speaking and writing.
Does not believe that language should change.
Considers some dialects inferior to the standard dialect.

Beth.

What if we retrain ourselves so we can take a descriptivist view of grammar in the classroom?

What we get is more inquiry:

.We end up asking students to explore questions like

How is language used in real life?

WHAT rules do we all follow when we speak (without even realizing we ARE using rules, and without being taught those rules)?

What happens to our understanding of the world when we understand that all languages and dialects have rules and are equally complex?

What does that knowledge allow us to notice in the world; to have compassion for, and to admire?

We get all that vs. if we take a more traditional, prescriptivist viewpoint, which often makes people feel shame, feel judged, and feel more licensed to judge others (we all know this from every bad English teacher joke and every peer editing activity we’ve done with students.

Descriptive grammar: a true model of the mental grammar of language speakers

In other words, a descriptive grammar describes the linguistic rules that people use when they speak their language

The point of view of a descriptive grammarian is that grammars from every language or dialect are equal

Prescriptive Grammar: attempts to prescribe what rules of language people should use to speak “properly”

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Why should we unlearn prescriptivism?

John Baugh’s

Linguistic Profiling Experiment

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Language Ideology

“The beliefs and attitudes that shape [language users’] relationships to their own and others’ languages.”

--Jillian R. Cavanaugh (2019)

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Black Language

Black English?

African American Language?

African American English?

African American Vernacular English?

AAVE?

AAE?

AAL?

Ebonics?

I use [the term] Black Language intentionally because . . . Africologists . . . maintain that Black speech is the continuation of African languages in an American context. Africologists argue that Black Language is a language in its own right that includes features of West African Languages, and is not just a set of deviations from the English language. (Kifano & Smith, 2003)

--Dr. April Baker-Bell

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Toni Morrison on Black Language

"It’s terrible to think that a child with five different present tenses comes to school to be faced with those books that are less than his own language. And then to be told things about his language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging… this is a really cruel fallout of racism.”

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Black Language

A dialect or a language?
Has its own grammatical rules and structures
Has verb forms that don’t exist in white American English
Shows influences from English and African languages
Like all languages, has changed over time and has regional variations.

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Five present tenses?

He workin’= He is working at this time.
He be workin’ (habitual be) = He is usually working / he tends to work
He be steady workin’ = He is usually working in an intense, sustained manner
He(‘s) been workin’ = He’s been working at some earlier point, but probably not now (Other example: I been knowing her = I have known her)
He BEEN workin’ (remote been) = He has been working for a long time and still is

Source

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Syntax Features of Black Language

Copula absence (“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks)

Omits “to be” verb in present tense (is; are)
Never happens in past tense, first person singular, or final position
“She goin’” 👍
“We late” 👍
“I tired” 👎
“They [were] hungry last night” 👎
“I don’t care what you [are] 👎

Beth--In addition to habitual be, another example of a difference between Black Language and white Language is the copula absence. This feature often gets judged as “lazy;” or as breaking the rules of English. This judgement happens when people use a prescriptivist lens and haven’t learned about Black English .

Teaching students the truth: that the null copula is a rule-bound feature of Black Language that’s been widely studied by linguists gives them a more accurate idea of how language operates. And therefore a more accurate idea about people.

You can use the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks to introduce this Black Language feature. (There are lots of recordings of it on YouTube)

Occasionally omitting the “to be” verb in a sentence that would normally require it. Never happens with “am” or past tense “was.” You might say She going or We late, but never I going or They hungry last night.

Habitual “be”: “We be playing basketball after school”

Including the word “be” before a verb to indicate that something happens frequently, but not necessarily right now.

“We be playing basketball” = “We play basketball from time to time.”

“She be working late” = “She works late a lot.”

-s deletion: “He jump high”

Omitting the –s at the end of a verb in third person singular

Double negatives: “Ain’t nobody can beat me.”

Even Chaucer and Shakespeare used this construction!

Pronunciation features

Replacing /th/ sound with d, t, and f sounds (these, with, and birthday 🡪 dese, wit, and birfday)

-g dropping from –ing words (fishin, fightin). This happens with SAE speakers, too!

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The Elmo Experiment (Jackson, 1998)

Researchers showed children a picture of Elmo eating cookies while Cookie Monster was sick in bed.
Researchers asked “who is eating cookies?” and “who be eating cookies?”
Both Black and white children said Elmo is eating cookies.
Only Black children said Cookie Monster be eating cookies.

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Why does this matter?

Imagine this scenario:

A speaker of Black Language is a witness in a murder trial. The jury is made up of people who do not speak or know about Black Language. The witness says of the defendant, “He be at the store.”

How could this affect the outcome of the trial?

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Helping students unlearn prescriptivism

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Student Opinionnaire Responses

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Student Opinionnaire Responses

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Student Opinionnaire Responses

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What do these comments reveal about students’ language ideologies?

“I just think there are way too many slang and incorrect phrasing and wording in the English language.”

“When someone is talking to me and they have an accent it makes it seems like they are smart but not a regular person coming up to me and talking.”

“Anyone with a Boston accent is automatically less smart.”

“Slang words aren’t real words, they’re just made up words.”

Amy

Students’ open responses to some of these items are pretty revealing about the language ideologies students hold.

One student said, “I just think there are way too many slang and incorrect phrasing and wording in the English language.”

Another student wrote, “When someone is talking to me and they have an accent, it makes it seem like they are smart, but not a regular person coming up to me and talking.” It’s interesting to think about what that student believes about who has an accent.

Another student wrote that “Anyone with a Boston accent is automatically less smart.”

And another student wrote that “Slang words aren’t real words, they’re just made up words.” So we can see a really pervasive misconception about where words come from, and the idea that slang words aren’t real.

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How is prescriptivism replicated?

Last year, a student of mine told our class the reason he had always been prescriptivist--and proudly so. It was because when he corrected people’s grammar, he won. He always looked smart and got praise when he corrected or judged others’ language usage. And we can see that in the world (especially on the internet).

When students are asked where their language ideologies come from, they rightly point out that people learn these ideas from school, but many of them also notice that they learn those attitudes from parents and families, especially parents who believe they need to speak “correctly” to get into college or get a good job; they learn them from the language policing that goes on on social media, and they learn them from TV and movies, where a character’s language usage is often used as shorthand to indicate whether they’re smart, or sophisticated, or uneducated, or evil, etc.

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Centering student voices by centering student language

Teach Me a Slang Word (Curzan 2014)

What does this word mean? How do you use it?

How do you change the form / grammatical category of this word?

How do you know when an adult is using it and using it wrong?

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Combating bias and racism by challenging beliefs about language varieties and their users

Prescriptivism in the Wild

Find an example of a prescriptive language ideology “in the wild”
What language “rules” does this person believe in?
What attitudes & anxieties does this person have about language?
Who benefits from this kind of prescriptivism?
Who is judged by this kind of prescriptivism?

Beth

Another activity we do is the “Prescriptivism in the Wild,” presentation, where students find examples of prescriptive language ideologies in the media, like this one from twitter.

Students analyze what language rules the person who wrote each example believes in, and what attitudes or anxieties this person has about language. Then, we ask students to consider who benefits from and who is judged by this kind of prescriptivism. When we, as a class, look at the patterns in the prescriptivist examples, it becomes clear that the users of marginalized language varieties get stigmatized, and they can see how language ideologies perpetuate existing power structures.

This year, they also noticed the prevalence on social media of the (often aggressive) arguments that “they” is not “proper English” when used as a

singular pronoun.

This was another very clear and sad example of how prescriptivism is tied to centering and privileging people in power and hurting marginalized groups (in this case, genderqueer/non-binary people)

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Giving students tools to be critical consumers of media

What is linguistic identity?
How does a person’s linguistic identity interact with other elements of their identity (race, region, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.)
How do authors portray language and linguistic identity in fiction and memoir?

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