According to Leah Zuidema's "Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies For Teaching Against Linguistic Prejudice", Standard English is better than other varieties. This myth categorizes people into how they speak, the dialects they use, and what “Standard English” is really portrayed to be.
“ The belief that ‘good’ English is the everyday spoken language of the most educated and intelligent people.” This statement summarizes the thoughts of many because of the way we were brought up to think. Many people who were taught white English believe that the word “ain’t” is not proper or appropriate. We judge people by the way they speak and write, we tend to believe we know the person from just having a casual conversation. By the words we use, we can influence and portray ourselves as intelligent. In my experience, I have indeed found myself judging others by the way they talk. If someone uses what I feel is “bad grammar” such as, “ain’t, ya’all, or double negatives, I make the assumption that they have learned very little in English class and that they are dumb or stupid.
My literacy log has shown many similarities and differences to this idea that Zuidema has portrayed orally and written. My everyday conversations with people through the Internet is very different because the way people write on communication sites like Facebook and Instant messanger is abbreviated and put into incomplete sentences. Yet, if you were about to fill out an application for a college, you would use “good” grammar, complete sentences, and intelligent words.
When we were in grade school, we were taught to speak with respect and to address adults with “Sir” and “Ma’am”, and we were to always say please and thank you. We were corrected to ask “May I” instead of “Can I”, which taught us to believe that non-standard English is bad. We know depict Standard English to be anything but what is appropriate. When speaking to authorities or important figures in our lives we apologize for bad grammar and correct ourselves if done so.
In conclusion, Standard English is taught to us to be the only appropriate way of speaking, which is a myth. People get categorized as being stupid and dumb from the way they speak. They are looked at to be inferior to people that speak Standard English because of the words, phrases, and dialect they speak. Should people really decipher how intelligent you are by the way we talk?
