A Nonstandard Approach to Standard English

Abstract

Recent attempts to establish English-only public policy and legislation reflect declining support for sociolinguistic diversity in the United States. This trend has important consequences in education, not only for speakers of languages other than English, but also for speakers of minority varieties of English. In this article, assimilationist ideology is rejected as a way of legitimizing the educational experience of language minority groups. Instead, a pluralist position is adopted, one that views the teaching of standard English as a second dialect (SESD) as “additive bidialectalism” rather than remediation. The terms dialect, creole, and standard are discussed with reference to the harmful effects of linguistic prescriptivism. Research in two areas is then reviewed: (a) studies examining differences in varieties and their influence on communication and (b) sociolinguistic work on classroom participation structures involving language minority students. It is concluded that differences in varieties are not trivial and that culturally appropriate modifications to classroom discourse patterns, such as those implemented in a program for Hawaii Creole English-speaking children, are useful models for other SESD settings.