The inimitable Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing has linked to a BBC news story about a school in Croydon (South London) that has banned students from using slang. Here is the original article and here is Cory’s post. Students who use slang will be asked to “reflect” on their usage of language and how it is apparently improper. This irks Doctorow as a writer and it irks me as an English teacher. Language is a vibrant constantly changing thing. It evolves, sometimes in ways that I don’t personally like (I’m still hoping that text-speak dies in a fire before becoming fully enshrined in our lexicons) but it is always shifting. That is what is to be celebrated about language, both its precision and its elasticity.

Harris Academy’s ostensive reasoning is that (as the BBC article states) “In addition to giving students the teaching they need to thrive academically, we want them to develop the soft skills they will need to compete for jobs and university places.” So, the school claims, this ban is not about reducing student expression that is tied directly into things like their heritage, their culture, and the places and classes they grew up in, but is all about teaching students how to function in job interviews where more formal language is required. Doctorow’s response to this is right on the money:

The argument is that privileged British people look down on people who talk “poor” — using words like “woz” and “ain’t” — and that the inability to code-switch into rich-person’s English makes it harder to get a job. There is some validity to this (that is, rich people are indeed bigoted against poor people), but my experience in my own neighbourhood is that people are perfectly capable of code-switching to formal registers if they want to.

There are a couple of things that should be noted here. When we talk about the context in which discourse takes place we often use the term “rhetorical situation.” The rhetorical situation is made up of the audience, the venue, and the various other factors that create the “space” in which we speak. The rhetorical situation I confront each day in the classroom is far different from the one I confront in a bar on the weekend. The language I use in the classroom is not the same language I use in a bar. Each space is made up of different audiences with different expectations, needs, purposes, and relationships. Harris Academy’s ban on slang suggests that there is only one important rhetorical situation—the space of middle class working discourse—and that student use of slang gets in the way of engaging in that rhetorical situation. But Doctorow is correct when he observers that many people from numerous walks of life, including the economically disadvantaged, understand quite well the differences in rhetorical situations and adapt the way they respond based upon that. This is especially true about people whose discourse is not the dominant or controlling social discourse. I am reminded of Dave Chappelle’s contention that African Americans speak two languages “business” and “street.” The disenfranchised and underrepresented are often forced to engage in multiple distinct rhetorical situations because the one they have inherited is not the one which controls mainstream culture.

It is our job as English educators to help students recognize those different rhetorical situations, and hone their responses to them. It is not, however, to cut off entire avenues of expression from them by telling them there is no situation where the language they speak at home and with their friends is truly appropriate. This delegitimizes their own creativity—not mention their culture, heritage, and home life—and ultimately further others people that are often already othered due to race or socioeconomic status. English instruction should be about building students’ abilities to move between discourses. It is about helping them discover their power. It is not about dismantling the place where they come from and telling them their own personal rhetorical situations do not matter.