Part B Party

 In my experience as the English Language Learning specialist, I’ve supported mostly First Nations students who speak English as their first language but use a nonstandard dialect. This is considered a deficit and the Ministry of Education provides extra funding for these students as if they were speakers of foreign languages. Why? Well, to be quite honest: because it’s the government that made them like that.

The nonstandard “Rez English” is a direct result of the genocide of the First Nations peoples, especially those who experienced the Residential School system. These schools were meant to eradicate the native indigenous languages, but they did not succeed in replacing that language with English. The survivors of Residential Schools now no longer speak their native language fluently, nor English. There was no philosophy of second language acquisition at Residential Schools: you use English or you don’t communicate at all. English became the language of trauma, and yet it was the only linguistic tool these children could use. Upon return to their homes (if they were so lucky), the survivors then passed down their broken English through the generations. But language doesn’t stay broken for long. Humans have an immense capacity for grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

In linguistics study, a pidgin arises when speakers of non-mutually-intelligible languages try to communicate. This may have happened in the Residential schools on the part of the children. A creole is a pidgin that has native speakers. A creole occurs when the pidgin has developed into its own fully formed language. IF the Residential School administrators cared at all about sharing the linguistic burden of communication, the resulting creoles might have been more of a mix of both languages. Instead, the creole in this situation came almost entirely from English. Perhaps some of the first language is still evident—a comparative linguist might be able to draw some conclusions about the lost native tongues from relics persistent in extant non-standard English.

This is all information from my own professional development research on the subject, though, and not where I’m taking my LIBE 477 project.

Suffice to say, there are native speakers of a nonstandard dialect of English in our country who need explicit language instruction to find success in academics. Compare this Rez Dialect to African-American English (AAVE, now that the V has ben dropped). Both were created under systems of oppression, and both are fully-formed languages unto their own, and both are considered lower-class because of the sociolinguistic biases in our culture. Other nonstandard dialects like Scots English, Newfie English, New Zealand English, and Irish English—to name only a few—are comparable dialects with their own grammars, syntax, and vocabularies. Yet these are not as universally reviled as Rez or African-American English.

The internet has “flattened” our globe in a lot of ways, made art and academics more democratic and accessible, and has also had an effect on our language. Internet English is becoming its own dialect. With the advent of web 2.0, English is becoming even more diverse than ever.

What are the effects of the internet on language? What are the implications for English as a global language? What are the implications for standardization of English communication? What are the implications of the variety of communicative styles (emoji, ALL CAPS YELLING, nonstandard punctuation use, etc.) on academic language arts standards? What are the advantages to being multidialectal in the internet age? How do we teach code-switching skills explicitly?

I’ve found a place to start:

Jacob Eisenstein, the lead author and an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, explained that “Non-standard English is not a question of ability, but of reserving standard English for the right social situations. In this sense, heavy social media users have an especially nuanced understanding of language, since they maintain multiple linguistic systems.”

-         7 Ways the Internet is Improving Language, Gretchen McCulloch for Mental Floss

I’ve got this lovely little listicle, and a bunch of other articles by Gretchen McCullouch. I’ve skimmed 5 or 6 academic papers discussing the effect of the internet on language and academic standards. I’ve got a line on a couple books to flip through. I know I still need to narrow down to a single thesis, but I feel like I have some research to guide me now, and a lens through which to see.