Episode 88 Grammar shame

Structured Visions

What's your most mortifying experience of grammar shaming? Mine involved a misplaced apostrophe in an important email, and I still burn with shame to think of it.

Grammar for many has a spectrum of negative associations, which ranges from the imposter syndrome you might get when you realise you can't tell a preposition from a conjunction to more serious and oppressive forms of linguistic prejudice.

An example of the latter can be found in Geneva Smitherman's account of her childhood experiences in her book Talkin That Talk. After her family moved from rural Tennessee to Detroit, Smitherman's teachers decided that the way she spoke indicated a lack of intelligence and put her back a year in school. Later she was placed in speech therapy because the educators didn't recognise her linguistic variety, African-American Vernacular English, as a legitimate form of English.

Ann Phoenix's work describes similar racism encountered by Afro-Caribbean children in British schools, who spoke perfectly grammatically in a variety that was not White enough for their teachers and peers.

As I've written, 'To be grammar shamed is to be told there's something fundamentally wrong with the way you've expressed yourself. The implication is often that there's something wrong with you: you're not smart enough, you're not well educated enough, you're not savvy enough, you're not "in the know," you don't have the right kind of cultural capital and/or you shouldn't be taking up space on whatever platform you're using.' (Clark, 2023, pp. 5-6)

The story I read in this episode, 'Little red grammar hood', hints at a deeper grammar, a welcoming grammar, one that is not shamed.

Clues about such a grammar can be found through an exploration of what babies know about the grammar of the language that surrounds them, before they've even begun to speak themselves.

In my forthcoming book, Refreshing Grammar: an easy-going guide for teachers, writers and other creative people, I offer ways to tap into what you've known about grammar since you were a little cutie pie. Before you even knew you knew it.

Check out my new website, jodieclark.com, for information about Refreshing Grammar, the book, and Refreshing Grammar, the course. Prepare to be refreshed!

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Works I discuss in the podcast

Clark, J. (2023). Refreshing grammar: an easy-going guide for teachers, writers and other creative people. GFD.

Naigles, L. R. (2002). Form is easy, meaning is hard: resolving a paradox in early child language. Cognition, 86(2), 157–199.

Phoenix, A. (2009). De-colonising practices: negotiating narratives from racialised and gendered experiences of education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 12(1), 101–114.

Smitherman, G. (2000). Talkin that talk: language, culture, and education in African America. Routledge.