William Vargas Ruiz
Professors Nagales and Miller
All The Same
In this narrative I will discuss the ideologies some people have towards language and some examples of this ideologies. These examples show the thinking of people who discriminate based on language or related characteristics.
When it comes to perception people tend to assume that their own as the better one or just normalize it and assume this perception is what everyone else’s is perceiving too, this kind of thinking leads to a rejection of all perceptions and opinions that are different than theirs. When some of these different perceptions belong to a group can lead to rejection of an entire group of people, this by a “superior group” assuming whatever opinion or trait they have is good or bad based on the idea that the closest it is to their own perception is better. This type of thinking can be seen in today’s U.S society where the dominant race (white American people) judges other race’s opinions, perspectives, and language based on how much this type of culture different from their own. When it comes to language depending on race, socioeconomic status and other environmental variables many dialects of the English language have been coming across, these dialects have been discriminated and categorized based on its proximity to the “standard” English ideology. The idea of having a standard way of English or consider something of this matter as “neutral” is wrong because it takes off the individuality and diversification that would make a richer culture, but instead the United States society has been separating each culture and making a hierarchy where the “standard” is at the top and depending on how much something differs from it will be seen as not American enough. When we have all these dialects that have been American made have been rejected and categorized as broken because of its different rules and words used, and how these I just mentioned are perceived by the higher class as not good just because of how much it differs from their own perception of what English should be like. Even though this matter can be taken to so many different subjects we can see how some Americans keep using their race and their culture as the standard or as some kind of scale that the other races should try to reach.
One effective but exaggerated and humoristic example of this issue in society can be seen on the tv show “The Office” Season 1, Episode 2 (Diversity Day), where everyone in the office its been called to come into the conference room because of the celebration of diversity day. All the workers go into the conference room and Mr. Brown who is the person coming from a higher office who it is conducting the conference mentions how the most part of the problem’s in the office is because of simple ignorance, then Michael Scott who is the manager of that office and it’s a white male (and also conducting the diversity conference) states “This is a color-free zone here”, then the camera turns towards one of the workers whose name is Stanley and is African American while Michael Scott says “ Stanley, I don’t look at you as another race”
(I forgot I can’t talk a screenshot from Netflix but I’ll leave the image so you can see the exact minute and episode) . To what Mr. Brown replies that they don’t have to pretend to be color blind, that instead of pretending there are no other races they have to celebrate their diversity.
This example shows how for some people is possible to believe that is better to pretend that something doesn’t doesn’t exist instead of understand it, or sometimes force it to be assimilated to what’s ours in order to have the same, in the example of the t.v show it was easier for Michael to pretend they both were the same race than see him as different but equal, which is the same thing that’s happening with language where people preferred to have everyone speaking the same kind of white “standard” English instead of trying to understand and embrace all the other dialects. In Lippi Greens writing “English With An Accent” she brings the idea of everyone having an accent, where one person from certain place would think that the other person has an accent when at the same time from the perception of the other person the first person is the one with the accent, this relates to the episode because while Michael Scott has the idea of Stanley ( the African American worker) being the different and seeing himself as the standard/ neutral and needing to see Stanley as one of his own for him to see him as equal or as someone not discriminated.
One example of a wrong attitude towards language can be described on the following image. https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&id=F4CCC373689ABA186E657277451B1021F9AF173A&thid=OIP.yyg0KeRjGAlFaWHPFzNLGAAAAA&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F6%2F67%2FPatriotic_propaganda_%252816627007085%2529.jpg%2F150px-Patriotic_propaganda_%252816627007085%2529.jpg&exph=96&expw=150&q=Discrimination+Based+On+Language&selectedindex=3&ajaxhist=0&vt=0&eim=1,2,6, where we can see a poseter that says “We are Americans, talk the American language in this place” assuming that the United Stated have only one standard language with a set of rules who everybody should follow. This attiduted is wrong because of the many dialects which also accomplish the main purpose of language which is communicate ideas effectivly. The idea of an standard American English is wrong because is only based on the way white American people speak and not all the other ethnicities and dialects that also belong to the United States.
The idea having a standard form for Language is wrong because its based on the idea that the white standard English is the right one and everything that differs from it is not American enough, this idea is dangerous because limits diversification and the possibility of a richer culture where each dialect and way of speaking will have parts from each other.
