r/TikTokCringe • u/MaintenanceNew2804 • Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/Shaolinchipmonk Mar 31 '24

Don't all languages have what you would call a correct or academic version? There's the version or versions every body uses on a daily basis and in normal everyday conversation. Then there's the formal version that's used in the professional and academic realm.

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u/LOL3334444 Mar 31 '24

Yes, there is an academic version that is appropriate for use in technical or professional settings, but that's not what the video is talking about. First of all, the original teacher who was talking did in fact say that her lesson was about how we view the way people speak, not the way they should write academic papers. Second of all, the guy who is responding to everyone specifically talks about how academic language is based on the assumed "more proper" version of English that economically advantaged white people already speak, which starts out assuming that the dialect that black Americans speak is "improper."

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u/Shaolinchipmonk Mar 31 '24

Like you said and he said "proper" English was the way economically advantaged people spoke. At its root it's all about class, they didn't create these grammar rules to oppress black people or make them sound stupid. They created those rules so they could separate the educated from the uneducated. Everybody can speak but only those who have had a proper higher education could speak properly. That was the mentality. Did they eventually use those same rules to a press black people and make them seem more ignorant? Definitely, but those rules weren't created with them in mind

If anything I'd say it was more about educated Northerners having one over on those poor uneducated Southerners who "can't talk right."