DW1b

Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching Against Linguistic Prejudice

Leah A. Zuidema

            In this reading, Leah Zuidema discusses the linguistic prejudices that are present in America and suggests strategies for stopping these prejudices.  In my experiences over the last couple weeks in my literacy log I realized things that wouldn’t have occurred to me had I not been looking for them.  People use language as a main source of judging who you are, along with other things such as intelligence, as suggested by Leah Zuidema.

            The ideas that the author brings up in the journal are good ways to stop linguistic prejudices.  The education she speaks of is the best way to inform people that the way you speak has nothing to do with intelligence or beliefs.  Speech is simply a way for people to communicate with one another. 

            In my literacy log I saw that people make overall judgments off of simple sentences.  One example came from when I was talking to a girl that I had met here at MSU.  In casual conversation I explained that I was due for a haircut, but apparently the way I said it led her to make a judgment.  I was just talking, not thinking about how I was speaking, and I said, “Yeah I needa get ma’ haircut, ma’ shits long.”  I thought nothing of the sentence but she stopped immediately and said, “You’re ghetto.  Why don’t you just say hair, instead of ‘my shits long’”?  I didn’t really have an answer, as I hadn’t thought about it I was just talkin.  Now, in this situation, I found it funny that she had made this assumption on one sentence, but nonetheless, in many circumstances judgments like this can be destructive. I connect this assumption to a passage from “Myth Education”.  Zuidema writes “We act as though dialects and accents are windows to people’s souls.  And sometimes, we dare to ignore or dismiss entire groups of people because of what we assume their linguistic habits reveal about them.”  Reading this after having the experience in my literacy log brought up questions in my mind.  Would this girl assume that people I hang with are “ghetto”?  And what exactly did she mean by that?  Because, true or not, it is a ridiculous assumption off of such a simple sentence.

            Zuidema hits the nail right on the head in this writing, in my opinion.  Not only does she point out the linguistic prejudices we see daily, but she gives legitimate options for changing things.  Teaching the idea that different dialects are simply that, different, not wrong, is something that should be started in elementary schools in order to stop the cycle of linguistic prejudice.  If everyone in this world spoke the same way I did, I would "Go Crazy" (like Jeezy).