The Rhetorical Situation

What was your English education like? What memorable experiences did you have in school around reading, writing, and general language learning? Have you ever felt different or “othered” because of your heritage language? Have you ever seen someone close to you “othered” because of the way they speak English?

When I arrived in the USA, my English was considered good enough to start my college classes, but back home I was viewed as almost a fluent native speaker, with high grades and an excellent performance graded by my professors. Despite the heavy accent and some vocabulary’s choices, I didn’t face any particular challenge when it came to study and work in an academic environment, because I was used to that type of English that was used inside the classroom’s walls. This until my second year of college, when I had to declare my major in Journalism.

In some Journalism classes I was judged multiple times for my linguistic preferences, especially when I would write a British English word rather than an American English word, with the same meaning. At first I found those comments from my instructors harsh and unnecessary, sometimes even embarrassing, but then I learned to read their words and interpret their suggestions within a specific context. As a journalism major, there is in fact a preference in choosing one dialect and syntax, both attributable to the AP Style, which is fundamental in the media industry.

For this reason, in two years that I’ve been listening and learned from my professors’ corrections, I developed a professional awareness that allows me to recognize my mistakes and make changes depending on the environment I find myself in. At the beginning it was difficult to be coincise and brief, coming from also an Italian background: phrasing multiple paragraphs without sounding repetitive and using the exact amount of words is difficult for a person who grows up with a romance language, because the way phrases are structured and the grammar plays a role in a discourse changes abruptly, in English. With an hindsight, I can affirm that I am extremely glad for the multiple mistakes I’ve made and the many things I’ve learned from them gave me the chance to explore new styles and experiment multiple genres in creative writing, where content is most of the time more important than the grammatical rules themselves.

When I started engaging with more people outside the campus, I came across many different forms of English – ebonics, creole, pidgin, etc. – that shaped my perception and use of the English language. I consider myself lucky to have been exposed to this variety of dialects. With this exposure, I was given the chance to see the American culture, the one that isn’t taught in European schools . It was during this time when I started taking more conscience of my heritage, identity, personality, by living and actively listening other people’s realities.

In the Students’ Rights To Own Language (SRTOL) there are several points where I could see myself portrayed. “If we can convince our students that spelling, punctuation, and usage are less important than content, we have removed a major obstacle in their developing the ability to write“. I agree with this view on how children’s writing should be instructed more as a self-expressive form of art rather than just a strict practice to execute using only one dialect, Standard English.

Grammar is indeed part of any type of dialect too, not only official languages. “When students want to play roles in dialects other than their own, they should be
encouraged to experiment, but they can acquire the fundamental skills of writing in their
own dialect. Their experiments are ways of becoming more versatile.” This in fact should be the main and healthiest approach that educators should have with their students: being able to explain and explore with them multiple dialects and their grammar, while letting the students experiment and think about their personal style with which they want to communicate.

I think that if more instructors would be more open in teaching and learning with methodologies like the ones in the SRTOL, more and more children would appreciate school in general.