RE_5539

As I was reading the chapters for this blog entry, my mind was racing. I found myself shouting "YES!" in my mind, as each person's language experience unfolded. Everything ties together with one line of Joanne Kilgour Dowdy's experience when she said "...The issue is about having enough opportunity to practice that language (the home language) in "legitimate" communications... having the freedom to go back and forth from the home language to the public language without feeling a sense of inferiority." I didn't realize it, but I relate to the plight of Dowdy and Ernie Smith and their struggle to be accepted with language - but I NEVER quite realized it until now.

I was born in the poorest county in West Virginia: McDowell County. I lived there until I was nine years old. My family then moved to another WV county in an area that was incredibly rural. I never thought much about where I was from until I grew into my teens. We had family that lived in Missouri and Michigan who came to visit each summer. When I was fifteen years old, my cousins made a comment about how "funny" I sounded when I talked. They teased me about adding extra syllables to words (ie: saying "precious" like "pray-shuuuus") and dropping the "g" from words ending in "ing." (ie: saying puu-ddin' for "pudding") I never thought I sounded different because I spoke in the same manner of those around me. I remember feeling very embarrassed and ignorant. For the first time I felt like a hillbilly. I never thought of myself like that. For the first time I felt ashamed of where I came from.

From that point, I began to consciously try to lost my southern WV dialect. I was very deliberate in my speech. I wanted to sound as intelligent as I really was, so this became a strong goal I set for myself. My dialect is something that, even today, I find to be embarrassing. I am very aware of it when I'm speaking to someone from another region of the country. Strangely enough, I didn't quite realize how long this bothered me or that it affected me so negatively. After reading these chapters, I'm a bit ashamed of myself. I love my home state and my hometown, but if I wouldn't have taken the steps I've taken to lose the majority of my dialect I don't think I would be respected as a professional. I don't think others would view me as having high intelligence. The stereotype that follows southern dialects dictates that idea. I know that when I hear someone with a deep southern dialect speak, I wonder about their intellect. I automatically assume they're not well-educated. This is crazy because I have the same dialect and am the antithesis of an uneducted "hillbilly." Society, unfortunately, views those with southern dialects in the same manner.

As a first grade teacher, I embrace my students' dialects. When we're writing and spelling, I say "Boys and girls, I know that when we say the word ^running^ that we actually say ^runnin'^ without a 'g' on the end. There really is a 'g' on the end, so when we spell the word it looks like this... " and then I write it on the board. Unfortunately, I don't do the same with ebonics. If a student says "mines," then I correct him or her and tell them that the term is "mine." Now I wonder, is that wrong? Through my own experience it would be corrected because I would be taught to say the word correctly. With ebonics does that mean that I should let it pass?

When Dowdy said "...I could travel up and down the continental shift, moving from Caribbean to English intonations, without anyone being offended... " she was speaking of moving from her home language to the public language. Don't we each do that everyday? We live in a society that, in order to be respected, we must speak in a certain manner. We don't use slang in a professional setting. Would you go to an interview and say "I ain't been here before."? Or would you trust a surgeon who was about to perform an operation on your brain who said "Your brain has a tumor. Mines don't."? Of course not. We choose the language "game face" we want to wear for the setting. If I'm around family and friends from my hometown, my dialect flows freely. If I'm standing in front of a classroom of students, it does not. There isn't one person who doesn't modify their language to fit certain settings. I liken it to a social cue. And while I say that we should embrace our differences, I also say that to pretend that each of us doesn't use certain "intonations" when communicating would be simply a way to lie to ourselves.