The why and how of “don’t talk like that”

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of acquisition over assimilation in language education. Acquisition refers to the process by which learners naturally and organically develop language skills in addition to the ones they already possess, whereas assimilation involves forcing learners to conform to a predetermined standard or norm. Under the assimilation model, learners are often subtly or explicitly told that certain ways of speaking are inferior or unacceptable. For instance, students may be told that they will not be successful or taken seriously if they use certain words, phrases, or grammatical structures. This can be done under the guise of “standardization” or “correcting” language errors, but it ultimately reinforces a dominant ideology that certain varieties of language are superior to others.

Many educators, often unintentionally, subscribe to the monolingual ideology that learning the dominant language requires abandoning one’s native language and cultural practices. This ideology posits that one prestige variety of language- i.e. standard English, metropolitan French, Muscovite Russian- is the language of power and that students must conform to its norms and standards in order to succeed. Most educational systems do not offer support or training in any language other than a prestige form of the dominant language, centering proficienty in the dominant language as the ultimate goal. Thus, they contribute heavily to the minoritization and marginalization of “non-standard” language varieties by showing students that they can only use this type of language in their private lives.

Acquiring proficiency in a prestige variety of a dominant language is not only seen as the natural end goal of language learning, but also as a sign of intelligence. This conflation of language learning with intelligence has serious implications, as it perpetuates a discriminatory view that speakers who are deemed to be “far from standard” are somehow less intelligent or less capable. This bias is often used to devalue the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of marginalized communities, leading to the marginalization and stigmatization of their languages and dialects. Furthermore, this narrow focus on standard language proficiency ignores the fact that language learning is a complex cognitive process that involves many skills beyond mere linguistic accuracy, such as cultural competence, creativity, and adaptability. It is important to shift towards a more inclusive and accurate awareness of multidialectal language acquisition as a form of multilingualism, rather than relying on a narrow and elitist definition of language proficiency.

Multilingualism differs from monolingualism in that language acquisition is not linear or uniform process. Unlike monolingual learners, who typically follow a more predictable trajectory of language development, multilingual learners’ language skills are acquired at different paces across their multiple languages. This means that a multilingual learner may have a more advanced level of proficiency in one language and a beginner’s level in another, or they may exhibit greater fluency in certain linguistic domains, such as vocabulary or grammar, than in others. Additionally, the cognitive and neurological processes involved in language acquisition are also unique to multilingual individuals, with research suggesting that the brain’s ability to reorganize and adapt to new language information is more flexible and dynamic in bilinguals and multilinguals compared to monolinguals. As such, it is essential to recognize that multilingual learners are on a distinct path of language development, one that is shaped by their individual linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and to not evaluate them based on a monolingual language model.

Learners who are required to modify their language use in order to be understood or accepted, such as speakers of African American English, Scots, and Dagestani Russian, are often forced to do an extraordinary amount of linguistic labor as a condition of participation in mainstream society. This process of language standardization can be time-consuming, stressful, and emotionally draining, and can also lead to feelings of shame or inadequacy. Speakers of non-standard varieties are not lacking in intelligence or education, but rather, they are exhibiting a different form of linguistic proficiency. To address this issue, educational systems and pedagogical methods must dismantle monolingual and often white-centric notions of language proficiency and adapt to acccommodating speakers of non-standard varieties of language. Language skills must be taught from an additive perspective of acquisition, not a reductive perspective of assimilation.