Scott

ENC1011-0106

Major Assignment Final Draft

“Slang is not real English”… But is it really? Should every text be formatted in MLA?

Every tweet double spaced? Is it a sin to start essays or arguments with a question? Yes, but,

seriously. Most anyone who’s had a formal education, whether the institution be private or

public, has been told the same things about English. Taught the importance of formality, led

away from the use of slang or non-standard terms, and forced to conform their literacy to be

compliant with their sponsor. Not to insinuate formal writing is bad, not at all, but as a sponsor of

literacy, educational institutions attempt to guide students to read, write, and speak in a way that

conforms to a standard, set-in-stone American dialect. But the question posed is, are these

sponsorial efforts successful?

To assess the present, one must look upon the past. I recall back to middle school, to

English class. Middle school serves as a transition between the more carefree environment of

elementary and the rigor of high school, and part of that transition involves the education system

maturing the literacy of their students. This maturation, for me particularly, involved rigorously

whipping student’s vocabularies into shape. Every year there was at least a week or two purely

dedicated to “improving the vocabulary” of students. Now, these courses were valid, in some

regards, such as teaching students to diversify their vocabulary (which typically amounted to

telling students to not overuse “because”). But one point that was driven quite a bit, in every

instance, was to absolutely not, under any circumstances, use “slang” in formal matters. This

usually also extended to avoiding dialectal words all together like “y’all”, and later in high
school extended to not contractions all together. This serves the system's primary goal of

sponsoring literacy, to promote a “standardized” English, unchanging and formulaic.

Unfortunately for public education, standard English is a farce, a quote of Julie Wan

paraphrasing a quote states as such “Code-meshing advocate Vershawn Young refuted the notion

of a standardized English, performed invariably by White Americans, by exhibiting the

dismaying illiteracy of even the most affluent, purportedly educated, public officials (164-5)”.

This lofty goal of public education to enforce a “standard” English extends even to teachers,

countless times I’ve witnessed or been on the receiving end of rants by teachers who are simply

“fed up” with kids’ new fangled slang, with such slang being especially prevalent in the

ethnically diverse schools of the U.S. and specifically Florida, mirrored in this anecdote about

New York schools by Wan once again “the classroom was filled with the varied dialects of

Black, Muslim, and Hispanic students. Most likely, none of us had access to reliable sources of

‘standard’ English”. Some may then point to their teaching of “standard” English as a means to

provide these non-standard speakers with access, however even ignoring the falsehood that is

“standard” English, one must still acknowledge the results.

Slang is absolutely ubiquitous in modern society, especially in the internet age. With the

creation of tight-knit communities and new hobbies, the language has had to shift and conform to

allow the conveying of new concepts and ideas, leaving very little room for the school taught

“standard” English. For instance, I am a casual member of the fighting game community both

online and offline. Many gaming communities have morphed and added to the English language,

mainly in order to concisely speak and write about gaming. In fighting game circles, there are

many terms that have no place in the sort of English you’d use in a college essay, like

“quarter-circles”, “DP’s”, “teching”, and many more that would simply cause more confusion if I
just listed them off instead of using them in a sentence. There are many such cases of this, in a

way, fighting game dialect, online and offline. You can tune into any fighting game tournament,

read guides and publications from the FGC (fighting game community), or even speak to

someone who is engrossed in the community, and you’ll bear witness to the terms laid out here

and more. Here’s a personal example:

This is a conversation between me and a good friend of mine about a new fighting game that’s

coming out next year, Tekken 8. In this image, you can see various terms popular in the fighting

game community and specifically popular in Tekken and other 3d fighting games. They seem

rather self explanatory but I’ll go ahead and explain them just in case. Homing attacks refer to

attacks that “track” the opponent, meaning they follow, and will hit the opponent regardless of

whether they’re directly in front of your character or not. In Tekken specifically this refers to

attacks that hit when characters are side stepping into a different “Lane”. In 3D fighting games,

players move as they do in the more traditional 2D fighting Games like Street fighter, I.E. back

and forth on a 2D plane, however, hitting down or up on the directional pad (on a controller)

twice in quick succession causes the player character to move left or right onto a different 2D

plane, which is referred to as a “lane”. The community and my friends have served as sponsors

of literacy in the sense I have learned these terms from them, and they’ve promoted my further
learning of them. This details an important aspect to literary sponsorship in relation to standards,

the isolation of “standard” English from the community and evolutionary aspect of language

ultimately aids towards its downfall. Education’s sponsorship of literacy falls flat on its face

when the literacy it promotes stays only within the classroom. Since this form of “correct”

English isn’t even used, it paints the picture that “Standard” English is more of a myth or

abstraction, and not truly a language we ought to be using. In some languages such as German or

French, there is an official, very tangible Standard dialect of the language, controlled by a board

or organization and taught in schools around their nations. In these cases however, the standard

variety acts as a lingua franca in countries with thousand plus year histories, where different

varieties of their mother tongue can almost be indistinguishable from one another, this is best

exemplified by Swiss German and High German (the standard dialect of German). These two

dialects are almost unintelligible to each other, when a Swiss speaker is on television in

Germany, they are required to add subtitles so people in Germany can understand what they are

saying. In these languages, sponsoring a standard way of speech and writing is born from

necessity, in America however it is born from prejudice. A study conducted among Michigan

residents, who were asked which dialects of American English were the “most correct” to them,

the results are attested by Dennis R. Preston, “These responses immediately confirm what every

American knows—the least correct English is spoken in the South and New York City (and

nearby New Jersey)” (page 398). American public schools have sponsored literacy in Standard

English because of the general idea that there are “incorrect” manners of speech, this ties back to

teachers on an individual level critiquing the use of slang, but there is no objectively correct way

to speak or write, so long as the medium of communication effectively gets the point of the

speaker or writer across, it should be considered correct. In many cases, Standard English itself
cannot get the point across effectively, as demonstrated with gaming terminology. American

English will continue to evolve and diverge, and perhaps at some point the Standard variety will

tag along and move on.

Bibliography:

Wan, Julia (2017) Chinks in My Armor: Reclaiming One’s Voice

https://webcourses.ucf.edu/courses/1435479/pages/chinks-in-my-armor-reclaiming-ones-voice-p

gs-1-9?module_item_id=17438555

Preston, D (2000) SOME PLAIN FACTS ABOUT AMERICANS AND THEIR LANGUAGE

https://webcourses.ucf.edu/courses/1435479/pages/some-plain-facts-about-americans-and-their-l

anguage-by-dennis-richard-preston-pgs-398-401?module_item_id=17438556