Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

A few scattered thoughts on today’s presentations and readings:

I am not a gatekeeper of language.  I do not possess the skills or the will to protect so called “standard” English against other invaders.  I do agree that there is a time and a place for different registers, but this needs to be taught explicitly.  Different registers should not be condemned in and of themselves.  Informal language has it’s place in our lives, as does academic or standard English. But we should not be placing different registers or dialects of English (or other languages) in hierarchies to each other.  As Carrington notes, arguments and crisis such as the one presented by the Australian media on the decline of standard English “establishes battle lines between competing textual forms and social practices” (168-69).  Language helps us communicate, think – particularly about more abstract constructs, and express ourselves.  Both Standard English and texting are used to communicate but in different arenas at different times.  We cannot the practice of communication in one area and context because it does not look like what we expect or want it to look like.

There are also unintended benefits and spin-off effects of being fluent in several registers or dialects.  For example: I grew up without the internet.  My family did not have a computer until I was 13.  I was terrible at typing in school and it was A CLASS.  JC! – we had a TYPING CLASS, and was terrible at it.  FML.  Anyways, it was not until MSN Messenger came around that I could actually type. It was slow at first; it wasn’t instantaneous, but if you wanted to IM, it was less embarrassing to not take fifteen minutes crafting a three sentence paragraph all the while your chat partner looking on watching the screen as “typing…” flashed.  The more I engaged socially, the more adept I became at a very real life skill – typing. And the more engaged I was with the medium, the more fluent in it’s lingo and structure I became.  So this debate is not brand new.  This text language did not just show up with the advent of the popularization of the cell phone.  I was saying “G2g”, “LOL”, “BRB” before it was kool too (I AM a hipster, why do you ask?).  Being fluent in this speak/text did not impair my learning or knowledge of standard English; if anything it deepened my understanding of it.  Being fluent in one register, dialect or form of language does not need to impede on the other.   As noted, “all competent language users shift between various types and forms of textual and other language use on a daily, even hourly basis in the course of our daily activities” (Carrinton 168) already. Going from talking to your boss, to your co-workers, to your clients/employees, family, parents-in-law, people you went to high school with, lovers, spouses, or friends, already takes a lot of skill.  These language skills are slowly honed and (sometimes) taught; why is texting treated any differently?

Languages evolve, mutate, change and go backwards.  Languages are lazy and constantly adapt and look for shortcuts.  As Carrington states on this discussion: “[p]olemic, or oppositional positions, between Standard English and texting are
discursively constructed, with txting represented  as the abnormal intruder” (167).  Setting up this black and white dichotomies is not a valuable or useful activity.  English is not that simple.  Our job as language arts pupils is not to be complete prescriptive in our approach to language (there is obviously some prescription in the classroom, but we have to be flexible). because language itself never stops changing.  We have to observe how it adapts, describe that adaptation, and deal with the new and resulting patterns and forms.  We can TRY to hammer English down, peg it, classify it, and make it  one thing all we want, but the only language to stop changing is a dead one (ex. Latin).

Carrington, Victoria.  “Txting: The End of Civilization (Again)?” Cambridge Journal of Education 35.2 (2005): 161-175. Online.