University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Cracking the Code: A Look at a Misinterpreted Dialect

Glasper, Curtshone

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/16371

Description

Title
Cracking the Code: A Look at a Misinterpreted Dialect
Author(s)
Glasper, Curtshone
Issue Date
2009
Keyword(s)
  • standard English
  • dialect
  • RHET101
  • Fall2009
Abstract
In the study of dialects this piece of work examines the connection between a “standard” English and the dialect of African American Vernacular English. The piece addresses issues with the prestige of dialects, and the relationship with culture and education. A dialect is often viewed as the language of the uneducated and if one cannot adequately use the standard language at person is setting him or herself up for doom. Sources include Stephen Park’s Class Politics, PBS’s documentary “Do You Speak American” and Langston Hughes’s “Dig and Be Dug”. Also I will use a poll yet to be conducted closed survey to gather information on how student view dialects in American education on the U of I campus.
Series/Report Name or Number
In Rhetoric 101/100 students are expected to: 1. develop skills as readers and writers by reading and writing sophisticated prose; 2. experience writing as a process of revision, where longer, more complex pieces grow out of earlier work; 3. reflect on their processes as readers and writers as you read, write about, and discuss the texts of the course: published work, peers’ writing, as well as their own; 4. become more practiced at using writing as a means of investigation, of figuring things out, thus challenging the commonplace belief that all writing is designed to prove something once and for all; 5. see connections between, on the one hand, the insights personal essays allow us to grasp as both readers and writers and, on the other, the contexts in which we’re living our lives day to day; 6. accomplish 1-5 above within a course context dedicated to theorizing and practicing the art of the personal and academic essay.
Type of Resource
text
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16371

Owning Collections

Diversity on Campus/Equity and Access PRIMARY
This collection examines ways in which the U.S. university and the American college experience are affected by diversity, and difference. In particular, these student projects examine experiences of diversity on campus, including important contemporary social, cultural, and political debates on equity and access to university resources.