7 - Labeling Ethnolects

Summary

The Principle of Error Correction (PEC) holds that changing people’s harmful misconceptions about language can reduce the effects of racist beliefs and practices in society (Labov 1982). In a recent piece, Lewis (2018) critiques this claim in asserting that getting rid of ignorance does little to rid society of racism. Rather, we need to look at how society allocates privilege and status based on racial hierarchies. Considering Lewis’ proposal, this chapter asks whether trying to change people’s ideologies about African American Language (AAL) is an efficient strategy for combating racist beliefs about African Americans and whether there are better ways to achieve this. I question my positionality as a European American teacher educator working in the Bronx and share my ambivalence about the utility of the PEC. I discuss a series blog responses by New York City public school teachers of color which frame the sociolinguistic categorization of AAL patterns as part of systematic and age-old attempt to set apart and belittle the cultural practices of black Americans. These reactions raise questions about how we as sociolinguists construct AAL as a bounded set of practices (Makoni & Pennycook 2005).