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Vivian is absolutely corrrect here, and some of you in the comments (who I like), are showing a real ignorance of sociolinguistics in your responses. So instead of working on my WIP this morning, let's dive into Privilege-and-Grammar 101. As a writer, you need to know this stuff.
English is highly illogical. Its grammar is needlessly convoluted. Its spelling and phonetics are highly irregular. Just start counting how many sounds the letter A can make and you'll see what I mean. It's one of the most difficult languages to learn to read & write fluently.
In order to learn all these rules fluently takes 12+ years of consistently good schooling. Huge numbers of poor children, particularly children of color, do not have access to consistently good schools in the United States. Like. We all know this.
So if you graduated from high school having memorized every comma rule, that says nothing about your skill as a writer. Sorry. It says EVERYTHING about the level of privilege you had, that millions of poor and minority children didn't. Your stories are not BETTER than theirs.
So that should make it clear why insulting others, acting superior to others, who make grammatical or spelling errors is inherently classist. Now, let's shift gears to talking about racism, which means we need a basic understanding of dialects and their history.
A dialect is a variety of language with a consistent set of rules, spoken by a certain demographic or regional group. In the United States, we have numerous dialects. The one you were taught is "correct" is the one spoken by white people in the Northeast. It's not the only one.
African American Vernacular English (Ebonics) is another. AAVE has been around as long as standard English in the US, it is valid, it has a consistent internal set of rules, and it is NOT "standard English with mistakes," as laid out in this req'd reading: stanford.io/29bccqa
Please, please read that link, writers, and notice how certain features of AAVE, such as double-negatives, are actually closer to the language of Shakespeare, closer to how romance languages operate, more historical than usage in white English.
However, most children are taught that the grammatical features of AAVE are "mistakes." Why? White supremacy. White people have had a stranglehold on wealth and opportunity in this country since its founding, and grammar is a powerful tool they use to maintain that supremacy.
If white English is "correct" & black English is wrong, that conveniently props up the myth of meritocracy while excluding people on the basis of race. A job hunter throws out a resume without a 2nd thought for containing "mistakes," and they are insulated from charges of racism.
And AAVE isn't the only dialect. There's Appalachian dialect, Latinx dialects. Again, these dialects aren't just chaotic wrongness eroding the language--they're LANGUAGES, with internally consistent rules, but because they're spoken by marginalized people, they're called wrong.
And of course there's an INTERSECTION of classism and racism at play, and let's not forget ableism. Do Dyslexic people have no valuable stories to tell? Should they be barred, humiliated, bullied out of the writing community because they need a copy-editor slightly more than you?
I propose that it's no accident that English--the language that has viciously colonized the earth more than any other--is one of the MOST classist, racist, inaccessible languages. Needing SO MUCH PRIVILEGE to fluently wield this language benefits oppressors & colonizers.
And of course all this plays out in publishing. Why is it so hard for diverse authors to find success? to get published? Well how many editors & agents are ignorant of these linguistic basics and throw out pitches for "mistakes?"
I wonder how many black or latinx authors feel like they have to code-switch their narration to be palatable to white editors. Sure dialogue can be in AAVE, but can the author's voice be? Very few successful books I've come across are written with narration in non-white English.
And don't give me this line of "Chaos will reign! No one will understand each other if we don't enforce the rules of grammar!" Bullshit. Those pitmad pitches you judged--you could understand them just fine. You just wanted an excuse to look down your nose at them.
I also wrote (towards the end of the take) about how the gender binaries in language (much worse in the romance ones) are oppressive for trans and nonbinary people for out.com. Here's that: bit.ly/2XQq4B0
So this is me giving you an opportunity to listen and learn. But from here-on-out, if I see members of the #writingcommunity bullying people for grammar errors, I am calling you out & unfollowing/ blocking if necessary. Because, like Vivian said, it's racist & classist & ableist.
Someone just tried to QT me to make a 7-part rebuttal (no thanks) which boiled down to: my daughter’s been studying violin for 3 years, & she’s not as good as Itzhak Perlman, so isn’t someone who’s studied writing more (or in better schools) better at it? So let’s address that
The comparison between language and music/drawing/pole-vaulting 🙄 is not valid, because language is not optional, not a hobby. We ALL use language to communicate, form relationships, and express ourselves. Our language is inseparable from our identity & humanity.
So if you invalidate someone’s language because it wasn’t studied at a wealthy, elite school, you are invalidating their humanity, identity, and story. People who speak in non-white dialect or misspell words shouldn’t be compared to a squeaky child violinist, that is MESSED UP.
Also I want to point out that even though I went to private school most of my life, come from two generations of published authors, &’ve had ALL the linguistic privilege, I STILL made “errors” above that I bet you didn’t even notice. But you might’ve if my face wasn’t white. 😬
Thanks @mixedlinguist for clarity here. I should've said English's phonics (letter-sound correspondences), not phonetics (sounds), are what's highly irregular. Also go read her excellent, educational sub-thread in the comments!
