5-Minute Debate – Slang in the Classroom Transcript



5-Minute Debate – Slang in the Classroom TranscriptLindsay:Michael street slang is anathema to me and I want it kept out of the classroom because for me and for the young people that I mentor down in Peckham in south London, I tell them language is power. When I hear young people speaking street slang they sound as if they’ve had an extremely painful frontal lobotomy with all the “innits” “yeah get me bluds” and “yeah basicallys” they sound stupid and uneducated. I want the young people that I mentor to be taken seriously by those that have the power to take decisions which can affect their lives for the better, for better or worse, Ed Miliband and David Cameron do not speak street slang.Michael:Well, it’s very interesting and if you like, I agree with some of that from the point of view that we want young people to be empowered. But first of all, let’s go back on your notion of language is power; I’d say that’s pretty reductive. I think if you’re going to have a single sentence about what is power I would say money is power. If we talk about street slang, it is only one kind of slang, somebody like David Cameron, he spoke another kind of slang when he was at school; he spoke Eton slang. So when we talk about slang we have to be pretty careful because we all talk slang. We have no evidence that simply speaking one kind of slang or one kind of local dialect actually prevents you from speaking another. We are all capable of being bi-dialectal, that’s to say speaking two kinds of language or more. So the key issue is why don’t your mates in Peckham choose to speak Standard English? Or maybe they can or maybe they know how to and choose not to so that’s one of the key issues.Lindsay:If street slang was the lingua franca of power and the key to social mobility in this country I would be the first to advocate it to the young people I mentor in Peckham but it’s not, so I don’t. I personally am not a big fan of code switching or cultural relativism because I think that actually under pressure, for example in that all important college, job or university interview the young people revert to type so they revert to street slang and therefore it prejudices their application.Michael:Ok so, let’s say I agree with the idea of the desirability of your friends learning Standard English. So the question is: how to get from the street slang that they speak to speaking or knowing how to speak in Standard English or Received Pronunciation or whatever you think is the most desirable. Now, as far as I understand it, you think you should ban it, now my view would be no, you study it. Lindsay:I have a zero-tolerance policy with my young mentees down in Peckham and I try to correct the way they speak so for example, if it’s “basically”, “ye get me”, “like”, “bruv”, “cuzz” all those kinds of slang terms, I think they are best kept out of the classroom.Michael:If you go to Shakespeare, you’ll find that Shakespeare used the word “cuzz.” Now my starting point would be: if, let’s say one of your friends uses the word “cuzz” and say well let’s have a look at that word “cuzz”, let’s see what its history has been in the English language, let’s have a look, here, in this scene in Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, ok, there’s street violence going on in Romeo and Juliet, here is a fascinating way in which street slang is being used by a dramatist, let’s look at it. So we start from the language that you students, your friends are using and we say “let’s have a look” here is this vehicle of theatre, this vehicle of language, sometimes a vehicle of power Shakespeare and he’s using some of the similar language that you use.Lindsay:I think that it’s very easy for liberal academics and writers who are often, not always cocooned in a very safe, cossetted world, an ivory tower. In my opinion I think it’s actually very hypocritical because I think that you’ll find that the majority, not all, but the majority of those liberal academics and writers they themselves enjoyed the benefits of a Rolls Royce humanities education and I’ll wager, with no slang whatsoever. I deeply struggle with the notion that, for example, when we hear young people speaking street slang we’re hearing the authentic rhythms of Africa.Michael:Oh I wasn’t saying that.Lindsay:I want to help and empower young people because we live in this society and, as far as I’m concerned, 99% of the people who have the power to tangibly affect and boost the life chances of my mentees don’t speak using the word “nam” for example.Michael:So how do you get from A to B? How do you get from street slang to the way you’re speaking? You see this is the key issue. You start from the speech and the writing that your students have and say well look, here is another way of writing, look, here it is in the Guardian newspaper, they don’t seem to be writing in the way you’re speaking, why is that? Simply banning won’t do the work. People have been trying to ban local speech, dialects, whether it’s Cockney, Geordie or whatever, they’ve been trying to ban it in education for over a hundred years ok, and the obvious survival of dialect and local speech is evidence that it has never worked. ................
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