Week 14

This week's reading began with chapter 5 in McKay in which linguitic diversity of English use. Throughout the chapter I began to realize that learners of English are using both their TL and their NL when communicating. I was wondering to myself if this would an example of interlanguage, since they're not just necessarily creating a system but also speaking with it. When we really stop and think about it, our world is becoming more bilingual everyday. English learning is present in countries all over the world, and this in hand creates different variations and dialects of English itself. Throughout the outer circle countries and expanding circle countries, the standardized varieties of English are growing in number. So, we have all of these immigrants coming to the United States, with their own standardized variety of English, but they're still put down and told to learn OUR standard English? What is even our standard, or "correct" English? You can't expect to have an immigrant come, having learned some English outside of the country, and being a native to ANOTHER country come without speaking differently, or with a dialect, or an accent.
It's been stated that a standard language is what is to be considered the "norm". Again, what does this even mean? What is considered the norm of English? Is it English in the south? In the midwest? The east? Is it English from the U.K? How can we as educators be expected to encourage our students to speak in their dialects, etc, but also expect us to tell them to use the "standard"? I believe that this concept is a hard one to really figure out because English learning has become so prominent in countries and the circles are expanding, changes are being made constantly, and this then leads to changes being made to this so-called standard.

I was surprised (but at the same time... not so much) when I read in Lippie-Green about the Hawaiin man who was turned down for his job because of his accent. His Hawaiin accent classified his speech as not standard English, even though he speaks English fine. Where and when will the line be drawn? It can't expected to have people come to this country without accents. You can't expect standard English to have a non-accent status. How does that even make sense?