DW3a

Lisa Zuidema

“Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice”

            In Lisa Zuidema’s journal on the comparison of different dialects, including Standard English, Appalachian English, and Ebonics, she looks to find the roots of where linguistic prejudice comes from.  Zuidema talks about the assumptions that people make when hearing how a certain person speaks or writes.  Zuidema also talks about the CCCC resolution “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” (SRTOL).  Zuidema brings up the fact that although the resolution addresses the need to educate teachers and administration of students’ right to their own language, it does not address the problem of educating other students of everyone’s right to their own language.  This point shows that although educating teachers is a step in the right direction there are still moves to be made in the elimination of linguistic prejudice.  She selects four myths about language and explains how they are incorrect.  Using her research to back her up, Zuidema disproves the main ideas that many people have about different dialects.  Zuidema shows that does not need to follow the rules of grammar, all dialects have grammatical rules, Standard English is not better than other dialects, and English is not worse than it used to be.  She goes on to say that not only pointing out the myths is enough.  We need to be sure to prove that the myths are wrong and show the ways that the myths can be disproven in everyday life.  In this writing it seems to say that Ebonics is a legitimate dialect of English and should be accepted by people in many different environments.  It shows the reasons for why Ebonics should be appropriate in school settings because of the large amount of students who use Ebonics.  An argument of Ebonics role in composition studies is not made clearly in this journal, but if put into motion, the suggestions Zuidema makes could lead to using Ebonics to work with composition studies.