comes time to write or utter that statement, the home dialect wins the competi-
tion and one utters or writesFred and me went fishing.
What is especially interesting is that, on a random basis, the competition be-
tween the coexisting constructions will cause the person to use the most famil-
iar form—typically without even being aware of it. Such observations lead to
important conclusions. One is that for most people the content, or meaning, of a
message is more important than the form. We understand bothFred and me
went fishingandFred and I went fishingequally well. Another is that changing
a person’s language—or more precisely, dialect—is difficult and does not con-
sist simply of giving students grammatical terminology and exercises. In some
cases, students already will have the standard form coexisting with the
nonstandard. These two conclusions lead to what is perhaps the most important
and the most difficult to address: Students must be motivated to shift dialects
before instruction will have any measurable effect.
Appropriateness Conditions
Although most teachers in our public schools are prescriptivists, linguists
dropped prescription long ago, replacing it with the concept ofappropriateness
conditions.This expression signifies that language use is situation specific and
that there is no absolute standard of correctness that applies in all situations.
People modify their language on the basis of circumstances and conventions,
which means that in some instances—as in the case ofIt’s me—the preferred
form of expression is technically nonstandard. Generally, what is appropriate
(and acceptable) in one situation may not be appropriate (and acceptable) in an-
other. However, this principle is not as clear-cut as we might wish because the
issue of appropriateness is almost always unidirectional:Standard usage is ac-
ceptable under most conditions, but nonstandard is not.
With the exception of a few nonstandard expressions that have become so
widely used that they are preferable to the formal standard, nonstandard usage
is deemed appropriate only in informal conversations or notes among friends
and family. It usually is deemed inappropriate for school work, the workplace,
or any other public venue. On this basis, we can say that language study in our
schools should be guided by the idea that we are helping students differentiate
between public and private discourse. Achieving this goal requires an under-
standing of the conventions that govern appropriateness and public language.
In addition, the unidirectional nature of appropriateness requires close atten-
tion to usage, to what differentiates Standard from nonstandard English. Much
of what this text has to say about appropriateness and acceptability, therefore, is
tied to mastering standard usage conventions.
52 CHAPTER 3