“‘God Don’t Never Change’: Black English from a Black Perspective”, Geneva Smitherman

IWA: 2/27/13

Summary: In her article, “‘God Don’t Never Change’: Black English from a Black Perspective”, Geneva Smitherman attempts to tell her audience, grammar experts and language specialists, that Black Idioms (BI) shouldn’t be judged like White English (WE) because it’s just the way some people speak. She argues that BI tend to be criticized more by teachers and that students’ writing in this style tends to be torn apart more because of it. She feels it should not be this way and even proves it by writing her article in that style.

Synthesis: This article made me think of “Good English and Bad” because both discuss the language people use today and how it’s constantly changing. They both agree that we should be able to use terms that we can relate to and that people shouldn’t shoot down these terms.

QD 2: Smitherman uses BI rhetorically by writing her article in this manner to prove to her audience that people can write in different ways and still get their point across to their audience.

QD 4: I think people believe British English is a more proper way of talking based upon a cultural perspective. To me I think of the British as all being rich, fancy people who sit around eating tea and crumpets discussing their daily events in a very proper way with good manners. Obviously this is a stereotype and not everyone in the UK is like this but because it’s a stereotype, people automatically assume it to be true and so view British English as more proper than BI.

QD 6: Basically Smitherman argues that good writing is being able to use your voice and convey your ideas to the audience. Even though the grammar in the paper was awful, she feels he was able to promote his cultural heritage while properly conveying his ideas as compared to a paper using proper grammar but lack of voice and argument.

QD 7: Mastery of a dominant discourse can be a risk because it takes away personal voice. Typically if people ignore the dominant form of writing they can give their pieces a special standpoint because they’re able to use their dialect and give their writing style a different flavor from everyone else’s.

AE 2: I see a “either/or” argument because papers should eventually be able to be written using one’s voice, not just a style that everyone is forced to use.

AE 3: The idea of “laziness” plays a large role in the way people view BI because they tend to feel people writing in this tone are ignoring proper grammar because they just don’t care. Laziness is oftentimes the reason why BI is criticized, people just can’t relate to it and come up with the idea that the writer didn’t care.

AE 4: Basically she’s saying language isn’t about what the general society uses, it’s based on a micro perspective. She believes language is based upon the individual’s way of speaking. This relates to Greene’s piece in that both believe the individual needs to use their own opinions and voice to frame their argument in their writing.

MM: I would keep my language because I like who I am and the way I write. I would not want to comply to some new form of writing that somebody (who I’ve never heard of) tells me is correct. To me, I like to write in a way that people will understand as opposed to some dry, boring, yet somehow proper way to write.

Afterthoughts: This article was okay but kind of annoying. To me she was basically, for lack of a better term, “bitching” about how teachers shoot down an individual’s voice. I mean, I agree that we should have our voices in a paper but at the same time, for a scholarly piece you have to follow the guidelines no matter what. Basically the whole time I wanted to be like, “yes I agree but suck it up. Write the way they want you to and move on…I did.”