Smitherman

Before you Read

I have definitely prejudged someone by there voice.  For example, when I heard a British man talk on a recording, I thought they would look very proper and put together, but it was a 20 year old British boy that was not put together and looked like a normal teenager.

Summary

In Smitherman's article she talks about black English and how it is taught.  She focuses on dialect and how people are taught in the classroom.  She uses examples from other literature and how it is used in the discourse.

Response	Quotation
What she is saying is, whats right and what wrong? The classroom is worried about what is right and wrong.	“A quick look at the tradition of schoolroom grammars and the undergirding ideology of early English grammarians reveals that the current ‘national mania for correctness’ has been around a long time.”
People that don't know where they are in society, don't really know their personal identity.	“So Americans, lacking a fixed place in society, don’t know where they be in terms of social and personal identity.”
So interesting to see how language works.	"It is interesting to note the way this class consciousness neurosis is reflected in the area of language.”
There is no right and wrong language.	“Because, you see, the plain and simple fact is that language does not exist in a vacuum but in the socio-cultural reality.”

QD 7

7. Mastery of a dominant discourse sometimes is a risk for disenfranchised individuals because they are nervous about not fitting in and being forgotten.

Thoughts

This article was a little confusing.  I did like that she was taking about slang terms and and how black language is taught in schools.