If IDA Known: The Speaker Versus the Speech in Judging Black Dialect

Abstract

While a single standard for speech may be functional, dialects that differ from those used by the people in power have come to reflect inferiority, regardless of their actual merit. This teaching note shows how the devaluation of black dialect is based on the power structure and not on the inherent value of a dialect, revealing how our social norms unfairly disadvantage an entire segment of the population. This note provides a concrete example of how to teach students that who makes the judgment and about whom can affect the perceived worth of a particular practice. Students learn that in the case of dialect, even if one form is as objectively sound as another, once it is labeled as substandard it becomes difficult to see the disparate dialect as anything other than inherently inferior because it has different, but not deficient, rules.

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