comments:
While I’m not an expert on it, one of my very close friends and colleagues is a Haitian woman, and we collaborated in redesigning a writing course with a unit on the plurality of languages (that literally includes Boroditsky’s and Young’s work as readings), and we’ve spoken at length about her experiences. I already agree with your point, and it just seemed like something you might find interesting if you appreciate Boroditsky’s work on the way language shapes thought. My mistake? It’s possible to do both. Yeah, that’s why I recommended that you check out Young’s work. The article I linked is just a brilliant use of rhetoric by challenging the idea that only standardized forms carry power. His other work centers on code-meshing. From the Amazon description: The original essays in this collection offer various perspectives on why code-meshing―blending minoritized dialects and world Englishes with Standard English―is a better pedagogical alternative than code-switching in the teaching of reading, writing, listening, speaking, and visually representing to diverse learners. This collection argues that code-meshing rather than code-switching leads to lucid, often dynamic prose by people whose first language is something other than English, as well as by native English speakers who speak and write with “accents” and those whose home language or neighborhood dialects are deemed “nonstandard.” While acknowledging the difficulties in implementing a code-meshing pedagogy, editors Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez, along with a range of scholars from international and national literacy studies, English education, writing studies, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, argue that all writers and speakers benefit when we demystify academic language and encourage students to explore the plurality of the English language in both unofficial and official spaces.