Autobiographical Essay #V

Krystal Robinson
Professor Boland
English 329
17 February 2009
Autobiographical Essay V
I have noticed that my use of language shifts in various ways depending on my audience. Recently, I had an appointment with one of my English professors at CSUSB. Professor Smith’s line of expertise is linguistics. Because of this, I undoubtedly found my language shifting into a more standard form. In spite of this shift, Smith asked me if I was from the south. This is a question I’m asked frequently, although at times I tend to change my language skills. When my audiences are people who speak Standard American English, I find myself attempting to speak in that convention. On the other hand, when I am around my own, meaning family or other members of the black community, I tend to speak Black Vernacular English. I think the tendency to become lackadaisical around people of my race is due to their inability to accept a black person speaking Standard English. Oftentimes, blacks are criticized by other blacks for speaking Standard English. The criticism stems from many blacks believing that if you speak Standard English, you’re trying to be proper and speak like white people.
The negotiation to speak Standard English when I am speaking with a highly educated person like Smith is intuitive. The language shift is duly because I simply don’t want to use bad English in the presence of a linguist. I don’t think for one moment that she or any other linguist would criticize my bad use of the English language, I just feel compelled to at least try to speak the language they are accustomed to speaking. I instinctively lower my standards of speaking Standard English when I’m trying to accommodate people of my race. I do this mainly because it’s just plain ole instinct, and to avoid the criticism as well.
In my formal writings, of course, I use Standard English. The goal here is to receive a good grade on those term papers. Linguist believe that Black Vernacular English is indeed a language just as Standard American English. However, if I were to write and turn in a paper using BVE, I’m sure that I would lose several points for using bad grammar. When I am writing informally, I consciously do all kinds of weird stuff. My spelling may be off, I may forget to use the proper punctuation, and more than not, the paper is saturated with grammatical errors.