In my quest for wanting to represent a great review of Geoffrey Nunberg's The Way We Talk Now, I realize that doing it essay by essay has not been a good plan. There is no way I can comment on all of the topics he has touched on. Therefore, what I have here in this blog is more of a highlights reel. I have deliberately chosen topics which were relevant to either class discussions or to personal research for this course -- beyond that, my choices are decidedly arbitrary.
This week I want to comment on "Standard Issue," which deals with the 1997 eruption in the Oakland, CA School system about Ebonics and whether we should treat it as a second language or force students to learn the language of Shakespeare, Angelou, Updike, Baldwin, and Whitman at all. Nunberg argues that the language these kids need to learn "in order to enter the cultural and economic mainstream has nothing to do with these high-flown models -- it's the semigrammatical, jargon-strewn talk that you hear in corporate conference rooms or on the floor of Congress." He goes on to assert that:
"... when corporate cheifs or government officals do find themselves in need of a little eloquence, they can just go out and hire it on the cheap. At a rough estimate the ability to write correct and lucid English has a market value in modern America about one-third as great as the ability to install Windows on a PC. " (p.120)
It is this --subplot, for lack of a better word, to this essay that I take issue with. According to the arbitrary rules of English grammar, I just committed a sin by ending that sentence with a preposition. I agree that perfect English is not always of paramount importance. But to imply that you can get it on the cheap is an insult. Here's why: Just last night, I spent several hours helping my sister with her entrance essays to a college professional program. Of course, I charged her nothing. But people are asking me to write things all the time. When I was teaching, if something needed to be written and "profound" -- like, say, for a Mass -- at the last minute, I was a go-to person. I was honored -- flattered, even -- but never got paid an extra dime. Writers are among the starving artists of this word for precisely the reasons Nunberg asserts; being able to write and be understood is an assumed skill that we are all taught in school. No one thinks it is particularly fee-worthy. But not everyone on earth can write well. Correctly -- this is something I think is attainable by most people. To write well takes a vested interest in the craft of writing, not just getting from point a to b on paper. This is further exacerbated by the fact that every Madonna, Glick and Harry in Hollywood think they can write memoirs or children's books, never pausing to think that people are buying their books not because they are good or well written, but because someone famous wrote them or they have bawdy photos. (A dare in my undergrad days to digest Madonna's Sex cover-to-cover made me want to hurl -- not only from the subject matter, but from the less than seventh grade command of the English language this material girl seemed to have. Note that her next literary effort was a picture book. )
Do I think it is the responsibility of schools to make every effort to teach students how to effectively manipulate the English Language? YES. Does this mean that we can all be Vonneguts, Fitzgeralds, or even Dan Browns? No way. That said, despite the fact that I have yet to be paid a brass farthing for my writing, I still assert that I have already left Mrs. Ritchie in the proverbial literary dust.
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