I grew up speaking Spanglish. We should still use SAE.

Enforcing linguistic rules isn’t oppressive; it’s liberating.

Monument to Cuban victims of communism at Florida International University (credit: Ivan Curra)

Last week, Greta Long ‘28 wrote an op-ed in the Claremont Independent criticizing the training she received at the Center for Writing and Public Discourse (CWPD) for claiming that correcting grammar in accordance with the rules of Standard American English (SAE) was “racist.” This article sparked substantial debate on campus and social media regarding language and its standardization. 

Why should we standardize language? As someone that comes from Miami, a city where the majority of the population, including myself, speaks English as a second language, I find it silly that a community shouldn’t standardize its language. In Miami, words and phrases that would be considered improper in academic English are ubiquitous. I use those words and phrases regularly when speaking to my friends back home, but if I were to use the phrase “pero like” (which means “but like”) in an essay for a class, the professor would and should mark it as an error because this phrase is not used in academic English.  I do not expect my professors to understand these words—after all, they are not from Miami. Likewise, it’s common to tell someone to “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car” because that’s the direct translation of the corresponding phrase in Spanish. This Spanglish isn’t academic, it’s a purely colloquial language, and in any context outside of South Florida, its usage would be deemed incorrect. I don’t think it should be accepted academically because that’s not what it is for. 

Standardization exists for the same reasons language exists, it provides a shared means for communicating with others. We cannot communicate if we do not agree on the meaning and structure of words. Modern Standard Arabic has no native speakers, but it has 335 million speakers, because even though a Moroccan and an Iraqi would not be able to understand one another speaking in their local dialects, they are able to by speaking this standardized form.

Saying we should speak SAE in our academic writing is not racist. In fact, it promotes dialogue by allowing people with completely opposite backgrounds to be able to communicate with one another in a manner that is easily understandable to both. To use and insist on the use of SAE is not to claim its superiority above other dialects of English, it is to invite someone to a common table from which we may all eat. Does this mean other dialects of English should never be spoken? No, languages are fluid, variant, and it is natural for them to be diverse. A language like English with a far reach across the world is going to have several different variations, however, there are certain aspects common to the language that still make it English.

In Italy, you will hear people speak different languages across different regions, and these are separate languages rather than mere dialects. These languages spoken, such as Sicilian, Lombard, and Sardinian, all evolved directly from Latin, rather than a separate Italian language once spoken across the peninsula, largely due to Italy’s late unification in the mid-1800s. The language we know today as Italian largely draws from a specific Tuscan dialect spoken in Medieval Florence. This dialect was standardized upon Italian unification to enable better communication in the new nation. If a Sicilian tries to order a meal in Rome in their native Sicilian tongue, the waiter won’t be able to understand. It isn’t racist or imposing Florentine supremacy to ask him to order in Italian.

If we choose to get rid of the standardization of language, we might as well abolish language in general. If we don’t want to correct people’s grammar for fear of trampling on their personal expression, then why make any language the common language? Why have languages at all, if we can’t all agree on how they should look? Languages are imperfect tools by which we interpret and explain our reality, they are never going to capture the full picture. We speak English at this college because it is the language most available to us all, and we use SAE because it is the version of English that is most available to us all. If correcting grammar is racist, so is insisting on any given language. And as someone who did not learn English until I was three years old, I am grateful for the fact that I did because it has allowed me to communicate with others.

If we refuse to correct grammar on the basis of racism, if we do not enforce the common standards that allow us to effectively communicate with one another, the language falls apart. Languages need rules to function, and to abolish those rules would destroy the language.