All of us who speak English speak different varieties of English
depending on whom we are communicating with, the circumstances
involved, the purpose of the exchange, and other factors. Indeed,
creative and communicative powers are enhanced when students
develop and maintain multiple language competencies.
Nonetheless, some varieties of English are more useful than others
for higher education, for employment, and for participation in what
the Conference on College Composition and Communication (1993)
in a language policy statement calls “the language of wider
communication.” Therefore, while we respect diversity in spoken and
written English, we believe that all students should learn this
language of wider communication.
(National Council of Teachers of English 1996: 22–23)Teachers are directed to appreciate and respect the otherwise
stigmatized languages of peripheral communities, but at the same time,
reminded that those languages must be kept separate. This faux-
egalitarianism is well known to African Americans and others who fought
for the reversal of the separate but equal doctrine. As has always been the
case, the divide between socially stigmatized and socially sanctioned
language runs along very predictable lines: certain vernacular varieties of
U.S. English should be restricted to the home and neighborhood, to play
and informal situations, to the telling of folktales and stories of little or no
interest to the wider world.
With both feet firmly planted on the false assumptions of the standard
language ideology and the literacy myth, a teacher may be adamant about
the need to weed out the bad language and replace it with the good. To give
children what they really need, these educators believe, they must supply
them with a currency they don’t have: SAE, which is defined by default;
it is not what these children speak.
What is more destructive than this reliance on the idealized SAE,
however, is the way in which these targeted varieties of English are
devalued. Official policies draw strong distinctions: *SAE is preferred,
obligatory, appropriate, widely used, while Other Languages are narrow,
inappropriate, and something to be tolerated rather than accepted.
Fairclough, looking at similar problems in the English school system,
highlights the underlying ideology in formal policy statements and finds