Awritingreader’s Weblog

It didn’t take long from the start of reading the Richard Ohmann section to stop and find something interesting to ponder. In fact, I didn’t even have to start his essay. In the introduction to the Ohmann reading, the editors quote and summarize Ohmann’s writings from a previous work, English in America. The quote reads, “We train young people, and those who train young people, in the skills required by a society most of whose work is done on paper and through talk, not by physical labor. We also discipline the young to do assignments, on time, to follow instructions, to turn out uniform products, to observe the etiquette of verbal communication” the editors continue quoting, “we eliminate the less adapted, the ill-trained, the city youth with bad verbal manners, blacks with the wrong dialect… and the rebellious of all shapes and sizes” (1877).

I paused at this quote for several reasons, let’s start with the pseudo-confessional one. I have always, always prided myself on my neutral accent. I don’t know exactly where I picked up the notion, but I certainly knew from a young age that I would speak “properly” and pronounce my words just as they were innately intended to be pronounced and I would furthermore take on the added responsibility of correcting others who might not be as enlightened as I was, and share my correct speaking abilities with them. By the time I came to college, I had learned that perhaps my correction of others was unnecessary and unwelcome. I still spoke perfectly, but at least now I didn’t point out other’s constant errors (at least not often). I had let go of many of my pretensions surrounding the use of certain words, phrases or pronunciations, but nevertheless, it came as something of a shock to me when during the study of chapter 10 in my Linguistics course (the chapter on language variation), my professor, and the book both quickly pointed out that accents meant nothing more than a variant, and even certain dialects (let’s say a typically imagined ghetto slang), was nothing more or less than any other type of language. I never considered myself in need of a marxist ideology to correct my presumptuous elitist thinking, but perhaps I put far too much stock in these differences and labeled them according to how my capitalist society viewed them. Surely someone who said “ain’t” or used the term “ya’ll” was mistaken in their speech and obviously didn’t know enough to correct themselves or care about the impact it had on people’s perceptions of them.

Little did I know that I, and many with similar assumptions as me, were really walking around the ignorant ones. A Linguist can so easily see how language variation holds little to no value in terms of linguistics. A difference was simply a difference and the result of common groupings, the differences hold no internal or intrinsic value. As Ohmann (assumingly) rightly points out, these differences and demands we place on people to conform to regarding the input of information and its subsequent output in the form of assignments and tests, is nothing more than a cultural construction. And yet, as I read his description of how young people are disciplined to do assignments and follow instructions and turn out a uniform product, I couldn’t help but notice that despite the contribution of Ohmann and many like him to the cultural conversation in this country (and many others), we still haven’t learned from our Marxist theorists. Children are still taught to write using the five paragraph essay format. We still read the same literary canon to our children and then sink into our own adult versions, happily ignorant that we are non-active consumers. Perhaps now and then we see glimpses of a break from these systems, but more often we simply oblige and tag along. We may be living in what some consider a post-marxist or neo-marxist society, but we have learned nothing from their lessons.