The rine in spine sties minely in the pline, or, language is power

Yikes! It's funny how fast you can fall behind when you're traveling and swamped with work. While I'm sure no one put their life on hold while waiting for my post, I promise to be more consistent in the future.

I was in Albuquerque having great fun with my brother Kelly and his wife Debra. See pics below. We went to the zoo, and while I'm not normally a zoo fan, the cats were prowling, the gorillas fighting and the the birds were beautiful. Did you know a black leopard has spots? We waiting for him to walk into the sun so we could see his spots. Stunning!

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I met with my friend Mahmoud a few weeks ago. He is Iranian born, and is now a U.S. citizen, having been here since he was sixteen. He’s a linguist, and has fascinating ideas about language.

As a learner of English, he was determined to match his language to that of native speakers. He studied every type of English language pattern possible, from children’s nursery rhymes to Olde English to southern dialects to Boston dialects. And he still couldn’t figure out what made his speech different. So he went to the head of ESL at the University of Minnesota and asked her, “What is it that makes my English different from native speakers?” She told him, “When you find out, please let us know.”

Many years later, Mahmoud has yet to discover those intricacies of language that identify a person as a non-native speaker. But he has discovered how powerful those differences are. As a younger man he took a job in the restaurant industry. He was promoted five times in six years, moving from wait staff to the head of a multi-million dollar business. He says he did it by adjusting his language with each promotion, tailoring it always to the people around him.

Mahmoud believes two things. First, language has always been used, and still is, to separate people by status. Think "My Fair Lady" (see Eliza and henry below). Think the movie "Fargo". Second, language, thoughts and behavior are a package deal.

We judge people by their language. After the movie “Fargo” was released, there was a strong backlash from Minnesotans over the way their speech was portrayed. Check out this hilarious clip and you’ll see what I mean. An editorial in the Brainerd Dispatch ("Fargo was filmed in Brainerd) read, “ But the film's depiction of a typical Brainerd resident is particularly illuminating - a vapid moron presumably the product of inbreeding by a 100 percent Scandinavian population.” Much of the depiction was a product of language, which the Brainerd Dispatch shows great sensitivity to in a side bar reading, “Dey didn't show ya dis here really big watertower dat we're so attached ta in dat der movie, did dey?”

For Mahmoud, it’s not about sacrificing your native language. Instead it’s about gaining power through learning new dialects. Just as I am more effective if I know Chinese in China, I’ll be more effective in landing a job if I speak the dialect of a potential employer simply because I am communicating better.

Some of the work I do is in the field of education. The twist in thinking from, “this is the right and only way to communicate” (which rejects the students’ heritage, and hence their personal identities) to “people use many forms of language and the more you know the more powerful you’ll be” has profound implications. It’s interesting that young ESL students are often grouped with special education students. We treat them as needing remedial work. But in fact, they’re doing double the learning as native speakers, because they have to learn both the material and English at the same time. Instead of celebrating their dual language abilities, we punish them with inferior test and classroom grades. In fact, research is beginning to show that dual language speakers develop superior intellectual capacities as they mature.

I’ve noticed in my work with alternative school students that their writing is pretty dreadful by traditional standards—specifically, their grammar and spelling sucks. But their stories will tear your heart apart.

why is every little girls dream to become princess? No matter what color no matter rich or poor that seems to be every little girls dream. I used to always imagine I was the princess of the Ida B. Wells (that’s the name of the projects in Chicago that I grew up in) I use to stand between the orange poles (that’s where my throne was at) and imagine my prince charming was coming to take me away from my hell hole of a house. See my father was a well known drug dealer when I was born and by the time I was 5 we had lost everything dew to his full blow crack addiction...my mama spent her nights looking 4 him in the crack houses he use to own right on the rock block. When he wasn’t on the rock block he was stealing our TVs , vcr’s and ect. To provide for his problems.

If language is about communicating, surely this student has mastered a form of language, whether or not we approve of it. We often dump students with poor writing skills into the discard pile. They are made to feel “stupid” (their words, not mine). We fail with our own communication in helping them understand that language and writing are about power— it’s about developing the skills to thrive in a world of multiple dialects. Ultimately, they fail to master the language skills they need to prosper after high school.

Thanks Mahmoud! Hope I didn’t bastardize your elegant thinking too much.