Language and Power

Lisa Delpit writes about the dilemma teachers face in working with student populations of color. She is particularly adamant about the disinterest white administrators, colleagues and researchers take in the perspectives of those who know the issues best – teachers and parents of color. Rather than listen to facts based on life realities as voiced by those who know the students best, many white, middle-class educators turn to irrelevant research and hearsay. This harms both the students and the process.  Delpit writes about the codes of power hidden in both language and society, and suggests that the best way for those not in power to access the codes is through direct, explicit instruction.  She maintains that well-intentioned liberal white teachers use indirect, persuasive language that undermines their authority with Black students. Delpit lists examples of communication in Black communities that is forceful and direct, and gets the point across. The author also maintains that in order to access power, students of color need to both affirm the language of their childhood and learn the language of those who hold societal power. Both have value, but one rules the world. Through keeping one’s own voice but learning to speak and write with the codes of power (code-switching), writes Delpit, students can access powerful society without diminishing their own identities. Delpit maintains that soft liberal teachers who don’t know how to manipulate the discourse opt out of teaching Black children altogether, leaving their students to languish in a world that makes little sense to them.

In an almost diametrically opposed perspective, Vershawn Ashanti Young writes that code switching perpetuates inequities, and it is instead through an equal blending of languages, with no higher or lower powers, that students of color can access the business world. Young writes extensively about Black maleness, and how schools can preserve the cultural identities of these young men without disparaging others who don’t match the stereotype. Young, unlike Delpit, struggles with his own black identity in the face of macho imagery, and thus sees the immediacy of need for the Black Vernacular English (BEV) used by his students. He suggests that there is also a WEV for white people, and the two need to be wed in common power and usage.  Students who have only one or the other are not fully capable of communicating at their best.

Thus, language is a powerful tool for both positive and negative messages.  How we use language determines how we are perceived, and to a certain extent how we perceive ourselves. There is a language of power in every society, and those with access to it are perceived as stronger and more effective communicators, and are thus in position to fully access all that society has to offer, including elevated social and economic statuses.

My personal experiences with language are based on growing up in a community that was/is literally on the “wrong side of the tracks” in Cleveland, Ohio. My brothers and I learned street language right out of a Bowery Boys movie, whereas my sister was immune to the need for it. We used it to communicate in rowdy games of stickball and kick the can, while she was isolated in feminine indoor pursuits. However in our home, proper “Standard” English was required, in fact our bibliophilic mother (and grandmother) insisted on pronouncing the “h” in words like wheat and white. As I went through school and read-out two libraries, I acquired an elitist language of my own, full of encyclopedic vocabulary that only my mother could love.  However, it was not cool in my neighborhood to be smart, so like many cited in Young’s article, I used two languages, one for the street and one for the rest of my life. I still do it when I need to meld with people who are uncomfortable with what they would call “hoity-toity” language. And my mother still says “who-ite.” Despite my own experiences, however, it is difficult for me not to judge people based on my own language snobbery, and I particularly struggle with colloquial southern dialects. I really can be an insufferable language snob.

I was terrified, incidentally, by both Delpit’s and Young’s articles. As I attempt to become a teacher I know I am bound by the same foolish middle-class good intentions that both of them reviled. I don’t know anything, really, about BEV, and so I am bound to screw it up. I am exactly one of those mild-mannered moms who will use all the wrong terminology despite wanting desperately to teach in an urban situation. I think I need coaching beforehand from a black teacher so that I can begin to learn both the language and the social codes.