Discussion Post question for Carol, Celestina, Erin, Ryan and Sam

Throughout the course of this semester, we have spent much time discussing how personal language really is - the only exception one could argue being standardized American English. One's language allows others who hear it a window into the speaker's world: their culture, their background and even their way of life. Some linguists have argued that our language literally shapes our world and way of thinking. And despite the evidence that the face of the United States of America is rapidly changing, our way at looking at languages not our own is stagnant. We, as a people too often forget the irrefutable fragments of identity that are intertwined and embedded within our language. Despite the fact that this country was created as a safe haven for the marginalized, we continue to marginalize the minoritized. We do this in blatant, violent ways such as creating and upholding laws that allow for police to stop and frisk a man of color at random, and in more subtle but equally damaging ways of stripping a person of their tongue.

One of the most poignant points that I took away from David Harrison's podcast on the revitalization of the Ojibwe language was that often times Native people use negative traits and portrayals of themselves to identify with being Native. They use the fact that they were conquered by outsiders as an identifier to being native, or that they have faced a myriad of struggles that their counterparts have not to identify with being native. This is a heartbreaking revelation. And while I am a believer that much of how we define ourselves is through our views of the 'other' (whatever your other may be), he does not look at negative traits that his counterparts exhibit to prove that they are not native. In a way these natives are fortunate in ways that other minoritized groups are not because there is a movement to revitalize their rich language, while there may not be the same push for hundreds of other languages that used to live here.

My question is: How do we as educators tear down these self identifying techniques that are based on negative traits that were given to them? Could we as educators allow students to say in their native tongues what may not be captured in the English language? What about minoritized students that have lost their language? 

Also something that is not tied to these questions directly, while Schleppegrell discusses how one could teach functional grammar, I was wondering if you all would think it worthwhile for educators to include the functional grammar of other non-standardized dialects of English as well?