Abstract—Scholarly debates about Standard English in the
1970’s were, in part, instigated by the 1969 Task Force on
Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English. Committees like
this one charged by the National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE) gave rise to such scholars as Rodolfo Jacobson, Patricia
Cunningham, and James Sledd – all of whom considered the
role of Standard English in classrooms and possible
consequences of white supremacy tethered to Standard English.
The debate over Standard English and its position in
composition classes has evolved over the decades since the
1970’s, but the anxiety associated with Standard English has
never been extinguished or even fully addressed. Recently, the
2019 College Composition and Communication Conference
(CCCC) keynote address, delivered by Dr. Asao B. Inoue,
served as a call to action wherein Dr. Inoue encouraged
colleagues throughout rhetoric and composition to abandon
Standard English. This response considers an excerpt of Dr.
Inoue’s speech and then ultimately refutes the argument that
Standard English should be abandoned. Indeed, such a practice
could very well harm first and second generation students,
effectively isolating and marginalizing the most vulnerable
groups in American universities. Standard English has played
an historically seminal role in American universities and
broader society, and that role – academically, economically, and
socially – continues to reinforce the underpinnings of accurate
communication in current American and international
communities.
Index Terms—Standard English, defense, rhetoric,
composition, code-meshing, code-switching.
Paul A. J. Beehler is with the University of California Riverside, United
States (e-mail: paulb@ucr.edu).
Cite: Paul A. J. Beehler, "Cracking the Code (Meshing and Switching): Standard English as a Required Ticket to Influence," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 165-170, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).