high degree of knowledge to prevent inconsistency, and few people have the
necessary degree of knowledge. That is, when teachers make prescriptive state-
ments concerning language, they must be certain that their own speech and
writing does not violate the prescription. This seldom is the case. Even a casual
observation of how people use language illustrates that deviations from the pre-
scribed standard are common. We can observe teachers correcting students
who use a construction such asFred and me went fishing(the problem involves
case relations, discussed on pages 61–64). The formal standard isFred and I
went fishing.But if these same teachers knock on a friend’s door and are asked
Who is it?they probably will sayIt’s me—even though this response violates
the same convention. The formal standard isIt’s I.
This reality is related to the second problem, examined in chapter 2: Every-
one acquires language as an infant, and the home dialect rarely matches the
more formal standard used in prescriptive grammar, which generally is learned
in school. The illustration in Fig. 3.1 suggests how one’s home language and
the formal standard overlap in some areas, but not all. In addition, the two forms
coexist and compete with each other, as in the case of someone whose home di-
alect acceptsFred and me went fishingbut who has learned thatFred and I went
fishingis correct. Both sentences are grammatical, but the second is congruent
with the conventions of Standard English, whereas the first is not.
The gap between acquired language and the formal standard can be nar-
rowed through a variety of input: classroom instruction in usage, reading, writ-
ing, and association with people who speak Standard English. Unfortunately,
such learning is slow and difficult. The home dialect acquired in infancy is so
strong that it usually dominates, but not always. As a result, one may have
learned thatFred and I went fishingis preferable in most situations, but when it
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR 51
FIG. 3.1. Formal Standard English and the home language/dialect coexist in the child’s total lan-
guage environment. Some features overlap, as indicated in the diagram, but many do not.