Reading: English Varieties and Intelligence

Slate has an article this week titled "Which English You Speak Has Nothing to Do with How Smart You Are." This article takes an intelligent and straightforward look at the problem of stereotype and language:

So why do people think of speakers of standardized English as being smarter, of a higher status, and as having more positive personality traits than speakers of nonstandardized English varieties? These values have more to do with who is in power: If people are devalued for some reason or another—race, gender, socioeconomic class, and so on—their language gets the same association.

PowerPoint: Dialects and Discourses

At the end of a week-long discussion on dialects and discourses, I used the following PowerPoint in class to wrap up the key concepts and focus on what students need to know about dialects and discourses in academic and professional contexts.

The main takeaway from this presentation is that Standard Academic English is no more "correct" than any other dialect of English but that mastering it is often a necessity for participation in professional and academic discourse communities.

Reading: Differences in Sign Language Highlights Discourse Communities

This article from The Washington Post demonstrates that there is a racial difference in American Sign Language usage. It traces the difference back to practices in segregation and could be used as a place to start a discussion on the way different dialects form. It is also a very useful way to discuss that there is no "right" way to use language and that language develops through usage.

Lisa Wade also talks about this post over at Sociological Images.

Reading: Exploring How Language Shapes Thought

Since language is how we make meaning out of our world, it makes sense that language would impact how we view the world around us. Many researchers have shown that the way we use language impacts the way that we think.

This article from Cracked (Warning: contains some profanity and sexual innuendo. For a more formal version of similar content, see this WSJ article.) puts several examples of language shaping our perception into a relatable, comical list. Everything from how we visualize time to how we perceive colors to how we follow directions is ultimately controlled by the words we use to explain those things.