ENGL 110-64

Spring 2022 / College of Charleston

Modern Writing and Code-Switching Vs. Code-Meshing

April 5, 2022 by lamontagnedm · No Comments · Rhetorical Choice (Project 3)

By: Devin Lamontagne

In modern times with social media and new slang popping up everywhere, it can be difficult for some to separate vocabulary learned on TikTok and from peers versus the vocabulary learned in school. “Should people be allowed to write as they speak?” In my opinion, I don’t think that people should be taught to write exactly as they speak, but I do think that we should allow for the self-expression of cultural variation in writing. One might ask themself, “Why can’t I just write like I would send my friend a text?” In most cases, this is how they speak. In reality, you can. You have the freedom to do so, but I would suggest that you don’t write as you speak, or at least not yet anyway. Grade-School English classes have ingrained in students that writing this way equals a bad grade on your work. The world is indeed becoming more and more accepting of different vocabularies and ways of writing. This newfound acceptance goes alongside the expansion of various cultures and new ideologies, but that is a discussion for another time. For academic and professional purposes though, the formal style of writing is still expected in school and at work. Why not? Why do we as English learners need to separate formal writing and casual everyday text? While the English language has become a lot more slang-infused, a formal style of writing remains. While phrases like “lol” or “omg” shouldn’t be put into a formal piece of writing or an academic paper; other forms of the English language such as AAVE (African American Vernacular English) should not be looked at as informal writing.
Every person’s vocabulary is different, stemming from their upbringing at home and early years of education. Stanley Fish and Vershawn Ashanti Young, two authors who’ve previously covered this topic give their perspectives on this debate. Young thinks that people should be able to use their grammar in text, also known as code-meshing. Fish thinks that students should continue to be taught the structures of standard written English and be advised against using other types of English, which we would call code-switching. “Code-switching promotes internalized racism and prevents students from bringing their authentic selves to the classroom” according to the University Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “Code-meshing, in contrast to code-switching, encourages students to draw from all their linguistic resources. It prompts students to mesh, or bring together multiple language traditions” (UWC Texas 1 ). With this small preview of these authors’ arguments and a University’s standpoint on the topic, one without prior knowledge of this topic can begin to create their own opinion as to whether or not we should be able to write as we speak.
Stanley Fish notes in What Should Colleges Teach? “If students infected with the facile egalitarianism of soft multiculturalism declare, “I have a right to my own language,” reply, “Yes, you do, and I am not here to take that language from you; I’m here to teach you another one.” This is the way that we have been teaching students to write. Instead of stripping them completely of their cultural variances, we suggest a ‘better’ way of doing it. While this may seem progressive, it is just teaching students that there is only one way to write. Young’s argument directly comments on Fish’s. Young writes in Should Writers Use They Own English? ”dont nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them “vulnerable to preju-dice.” It’s ATTITUDES. It be the way folks with some power perceive other people’s language.” In other words, he is arguing that it’s not the way people write that makes it informal or incorrect, as they’re often regarded, but rather the people reading that writing that decides it is. I partially agree with his statement, but this goes back to what I’ve previously stated, that the ‘better’ way of writing Fish advocates for is explicitly what is taught in schools, setting the standard for what the formality of English should be. Viewing Young’s argument from a different stance, if students are taught from the start of their academic careers a more inclusive approach similar to the one I’m advocating for, their attitudes will be less harsh to variances in writing styles. My argument is that while there still needs to be a formal style of writing, create a new formal style of writing with more inclusivity and fewer restrictions on cultural variances, while still guiding students in making that writing comprehensible to all. This guidance should include correct word choice, some punctuation rules, sentence structure, and paragraph structure. For example, a sentence like “you comin to the sto wit me or nah” (McClellan 2014) is written in AAVE. If we changed this sentence to one with slightly more traditional rules (while keeping the original vocabulary), we would have a more comprehensive sentence like “Are you comin’ to the sto with me or nah?” This sentence now includes proper punctuation (an apostrophe on the word comin’), capitalization, a question mark on the end to clarify that this is a question, and an added “Are” at the beginning to include a verb before ‘you’.
In the spirit of fairness, I don’t think that everyone’s attitude toward informal writing is the same in today’s society. We have a lot more diversity in our school systems and professional places of work, who may very well be okay with receiving work that includes some informality. I don’t completely agree with either author’s standing on this discussion. This is not to say that all rules of traditional English should be completely disregarded from here on out. I believe that people need to be taught to be more accommodating to AAVE and other variances of English when it comes to formal writing. It’s not that these forms of English are informal, it’s just a cultural difference in the way that people express themselves. It has been taught throughout years of English classes that sentences like the one quoted from Young in paragraph two or the other quoted in paragraph three are severely informal from the vocabulary down to the structure of the sentence. This even seems informal to me, but this coming from a college student who has been in English classes his entire life thus far and taught traditional English is the only way to reach a good grade. To achieve a more versatile way of writing, I think the first step should be teaching students at a young age that it’s okay to use their vocabularies and be themselves in a piece of writing. Offer students new ways of shaping their writing into a work that is comprehensible for everyone. After all, it would be the teacher’s responsibility to guide them into making their writing make sense for those who don’t come from their background to promote the spread of originality and diversity in writing.

Works Cited

Fickling, Teri. Code-Switching-and-Code-Meshing. Apr. 2021,
https://uwc.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/Code-Switching-and-Code-Meshing.docx.
Thompson, Matt. “Five Reasons Why People Code-Switch.” NPR, NPR, 13 Apr. 2013,
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/13/177126294/five-reasons-why-peopl e-code-switch.
Fish, Stanley. “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3.” New York Times, 7 Sept. 2009,
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/what-should-colleges-teach-part-3/.
Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Speak They Own English?” Iowa Journal or Cultural
Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2010, pp. 109-118, https://lms.cofc.edu/d2l/le/content/268138/viewContent/3465819/View. Accessed 28 March 2022.
McClellan, Charnelle. “‘What Yo Name Is?” – Realistic Modern Examples of AAVE/Slang.” The
AAVE Blog: A Closer Look at African American Vernacular English, 21 Feb. 2014, https://acloserlookataave.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/what-yo-name-is-modern-examples-of-aaveslang/.

No Comments so far ↓

There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

Leave a Comment

Skip to toolbar