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It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.
John Mcwhorter
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Black English is a valid dialect, not a series of mistakes.

In this quote, John McWhorter emphasizes the importance of recognizing Black English as a legitimate form of communication rather than treating it as incorrect or inferior. He advocates for an educational approach that enriches students' linguistic skills by adding to their existing dialects instead of trying to eradicate them, thereby promoting linguistic diversity and cultural understanding.

Themes

Black EnglishDialectEducationLanguageCultural Understanding

In practice

Example use cases

In a lecture about linguistic diversity, you might say, 'As John McWhorter explained, understanding Black English enriches our approach to education.'

More from John Mcwhorter

People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
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People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
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People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
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