Teaching Pluralism As Opposed to Code-Switching in The English Classroom

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “The Great Wall of African American Vernacular English in

   

     the College Classroom.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 16.2 (1996): 265-83.

     ERIC. Web. 9 February 2013.

Howard argues there are three possible instructor responses to non-standard dialects in the classroom: eradicationism, code-switching, and pluralism, but the majority of instructors do not give students the choice of pluralism, instead relying falling on code-switching as the “benevolent alternative to eradicationism” (266). The concern with code-switching is how it perpetuates the notion that standard English is the best for academia and workplace and that a non-standard dialect has no place in these settings.

She discusses a class activity from a previous race and language course where all the students agree to speak AAVE for an entire day.  All but 2 African American students come to her privately and say they are unwilling to participate in publicly speaking AAVE because it is seen as either a parody towards AAVE speakers or is a hindrance on their own public persona. This leads Howard to the conclusion that AAVE “is a private language of one group, and neither the members of that group nor any other group feel comfortable with it as a public language” (270).

Howard points out that while AAVE is actually a plantation creole it is also considered a deviant non-standard dialect, associated with racial prejudices. While there are other non-standard varieties like Appalachian English, they have not become the “object of code-switching pedagogy” (276). She questions why AAVE users would continue using a code that impedes attaining their own educational objectives? Her answer is that group solidarity persists because “the loss of an ethnic language amounts to the loss of culture” (276).

In the final pages, she questions what right a college instructor has to make social choices for a student (276). She references academics like Gilyard and Villanueva, who say code-switching is hegemonic and Freire, who notes that the job of the instructor is to respect the students without imposing ideas on them (277). Howard agrees with all of these theorists that the barrier is the educational system. She also notes that while some theorists recognize the rhetorical power available in code-switching, it has to be the choice of the speaker, not imposed. Howard does not believe the pluralistic choice is an option often given by instructors, although it is a pedagogy that “asserts that all language varieties are equally effective in their communities and that language choice should therefore be made only by the user” (267). Howard ends her piece also suggesting that a curriculum be implemented that teaches the positive values of AAVE, although she does not detail what this curriculum would entail.

While I see a great deal of value in adding to my own research about nonstandard dialects in the English classroom, my concern with Howard’s piece is the lack of time spent in actually spelling out how a pluralistic classroom would work and what type of curriculum would go into the AAVE course she suggests. Getting beyond the theory and actually discussing how to apply these to the classroom are an essential part of the conversation.