Morgan Ashley
Jamila Lyiscott in her spoken word poem 3 Ways to Speak English demonstrates that there is more than one way to speak English. The overarching question she asks throughout the poem is who has the authority to deem some forms of speech articulate and others as not. Language ideology, defining or judging someone by how they speak, is a common way of profiling the people we meet. It is also the basis for much social discrimination. For example, the language ideology that often follows African Americans or Latinx is that they are uneducated and or poor. Hence why it makes sense that Lyiscott would be taken aback when she is told that she is articulate. It reveals the underlying racism that exists surrounding African Americans and what that racism tells society to expect from African Americans. Being smart and educated is not one of those.
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One for home, one with her friends, and one at work. In her poem, she points out the discrimination against African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and that it is the reason why she needs to be “trilingual” because if she wasn’t she would face even more discrimination. Steven Pinker in his video African American English is not Improper English discusses how what we deem as proper English is just the dialect of English spoken by the higher class. As well as that copula absence and double negatives that occur in AAVE are not wrong but actually have their own set of complex rules to use properly. In fact, AAVE is viewed as improper simply because it varies from Standard English which is generally accepted as the