Anonymous #2 19h

I do think we have a discriminatory system that portrays dialects that are not white and upper class as being “improper.” This is wrong. There is no proper and improper language

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Anonymous #2 19h

But we do need a standardized system for academic writing. All writers in a field need to be able to understand each other. The use of too much slang or different grammar conventions will reduce capacity for understanding, thus decreasing the value of academic writing as a way to spread information.

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Anonymous #2 19h

But it is still a legacy of the primarily white upper class origins of academics that we use that language. I just don’t know that there’s an easy fix

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Anonymous #2 19h

There literally is improper language though. If I don’t use the correct verb tenses, modifier placements, and conjugations in my sentences, then they are poorly written sentences. A language with no rules is simply not a language. Every language has conventions, and I don’t think any language is better than another, but there is absolutely “proper” and “improper” within the same language, in every language.

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Anonymous #1 19h

See this isn’t really correct. Languages are subjective, they shift over time. Different verb tenses? That’s just a trait of that dialect. Nobody had standardized rules 5,000 years ago. That was just how you spoke.

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Anonymous #2 19h

The English dialect most often unfairly treated as “improper” in the United States is AAVE. It has a different grammar structure than standard white English. That’s not due to “improperness.” That is just the grammatical systems of African languages being carried through into an Africanized English dialect. But it’s treated as improper because it’s lower class.

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