Michelle Lefebvre
Have you ever thought about how you explain new grammar points to your ESL class? How about the way you give corrective feedback? I noticed something about the materials I use in my own teaching practice, and once I noticed it I started seeing it everywhere.
I want to talk about the word “we”.
This past summer I took on part-time a job as a content editor for an e-learning platform. My job was to read through all of the introductions to new grammar points and try out all of the exercises to make sure there were no errors. I noticed that every time the platform introduced something or offered feedback it used the word “we”. Things like: “We never say fastly”, or “We use the present progressive tense to talk about actions that are happening now”. It started to bother me a little. The thing is, once I noticed it, I realized I was saying the same kind of things to my own students too! That made me even more upset. Here’s why.
Who am I referring to when I say “we”? The more I thought about it, I realized that this “we” is probably referring to speakers of “standard” English. You may be thinking, “Okay, so what? Shouldn’t English teachers teach “standard” English?” The problem is that “standard” English has less to do with the language itself, but rather with who is speaking the language (Lee & Handsfiled, 2018).
Language education cannot be separated from social and political factors (Wiley & Lukes, 1996). That’s because language is a social construct and dominant groups position their language variety as the model in order to promote the idea that their language and culture are superior (Wiley & Lukes, 1996). “Standard” English is an excellent (maybe the best) example of this in our society.
Most linguists agree that what is considered “standard” English is based on the communicative norms of upper and middle class white people (Young, 2009). What’s really annoying about this is that “standard” English was completely made up in order to marginalize and oppress people. What’s more, the majority of English speakers don’t even speak this manufactured “standard” English (Lee, 2014).
So, what do you think? Could using the word “we” be reinforcing dominant or standard language ideologies? Does it imply that language learners need to learn “standard” English in order to gain access to this mythical club?
For more information on inclusive language visit: https://consciousstyleguide.com/articles/
References
Lee, A. Y., & Handsfield, L. J. (2018). Code‐meshing and writing instruction in multilingual classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 72 (2), 159-168.
Lee, M. E. (2014). Shifting to the world Englishes paradigm by way of the translingual approach: Code‐meshing as a necessary means of transforming composition pedagogy. TESOL Journal, 5 (2), 312-329.
Wiley, T. G., & Lukes, M. (1996). English‐only and standard English ideologies in the US. Tesol Quarterly, 30 (3), 511-535.
Young, V. A. (2009). “Nah, we straight”: An argument against code switching. JAC 29 (1-2), 49-76.
Hi Michelle:
I thought about my own practice, and how I tend to express these types of general prescriptive points–the ones that elicit a “we”–to students. I might have stopped doing it by accident! I definitely notice when a “we” slips out, because I have an immediate guilty response to it.
I think this might have been produced by a background in writing, since a lot of what I do is talk to students about their professors’ expectations for academic work. Since writing is a cultural act, I try not to invalidate a student’s previous writing in their mother tongue by talking about what they’ve done in English as “wrong.”
Kicking puppies is *wrong.* Wearing a t-shirt to a wedding is not wrong, and in the same way, writing an English paper in a French style is also not wrong–but it’s also not what’s expected. I think this descriptive inclination has spilled over into a lot of what I say to students, so I often come up with phrases like “you’ll see X” or “you’ll hear X.” When I’m talking about student error in things like grammar or syntax, the subject of the sentence is usually the grammatical piece, so you’ll hear (<–oh goodness, I just wrote it right there, look) "the verb takes an -s".
I wonder if my students dislike this and would just like for me to tell them how we do it correctly…
Hi Michelle,
Your article has made me reflect upon my use of “we” in the classroom; thank you for this insightful and thought provoking blog post. I agree that using “we” when explaining how to speak correctly, appropriately can reinforce standard language attitudes and ideologies. The question I ask myself is the following: Who are “we” to say that this is or is not “standard” enough? This idea of wanting to be part of this mythical club makes me think of native-speakerism. This narrative of how having access to this prestigious club means having a social and political advantage over “others” not only exists, but is encouraged when things like “we think this is not ok” are said. The pronoun “we” can be employed to reinforce dominant language use and consequently place “standard” language up on a linguistic pedestal. As students listen to teachers using “we”, consciously or unconsciously, it supports the idea that there are right and wrong, good and bad ways to speak English.
When teaching English as a second language in the classroom, I will certainly try to avoid using “we” when explaining language use as the underlying message when using this pronoun may reinforce the division between native and non-native speakers.
Elizabeth M.
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for this post. It truly put things into perspective. I tend to use the “we” pronoun from time to time without even realizing it. But of course as you pointed out, who is “we” and how did this “we” gain the power to deem what is appropriate and what isn’t? This year I have many students who speak English at home, though far from what we consider the “standard” English that we teach in class. Naturally, I do not dare to tell them that they are speaking incorrectly, yet on a standard test the answers would be deemed incorrect. I am doing what I can in educating myself on this topic and learning how I can approach it differently from the way that I have been taught to do it. The first step is going to be avoiding using the “we” reference in class. 🙂
Natalia M.
Hi Michelle,
You brought up a very common phenomenon! Honestly I have never felt the word “we” could imply such a negative meaning before I read your blog. This way of speaking sometimes happens to me as well, rather subconsciously than consciously. When somebody asks me how to say something in Mandarin or Cantonese, I can’t help but starting my sentences with “we say”.
But interestingly, I realized that I never used this strategy when I was teaching English. I assume that there are two reasons. One is that I am not an English L1 speaker, so deep down I feel like it’s improper (or perhaps unconfident) for me to say “we”. It has something to do with my identity. The second reason is that in order not to discourage students, I tend to use a circumlocutory way to point out the mistakes, like “you could say….”.
From my perspectives, “we” isn’t necessary to be reinforcing dominant or standard language ideologies, although it could be. But this word is me more like a way of “othering” to me, indicating other that “you are excluded”. If “we” is frequently used during second language teaching, it is adverse to build up a good connection between teachers and students, which might also lead to unexpected teaching and learning outcomes.
Dongqi/Katie Z.
Hi Michelle,
I really enjoyed reading your blog post! I think the point you bring up is very interesting and valid. I think by using “we”, it does reinforce a certain standard of that language, but more than that I think it creates an ‘otherness’ in the language learning context. (the language learners being the ‘others’). I feel like if teachers/educators were to use the word ‘we’ in the examples you provided, it almost creates this barrier between ‘native’ speaker of the language and the language leaners and implies that language learners don’t belong in the ‘we’. Therefore as a teacher, I think I need to be extra careful with the words I use and ensure that my language doesn’t reinforce the ‘native’ standard nor make my students feel excluded from feeling a part of the language community.
-Rahman.S
Hi Michelle,
I like how you conjure the notion of elite or standardised English out of the use of ‘WE” pronoun when giving feedback. Personally speaking, answering this question satisfactorily will require a lot of contextualisation.
For example, in Canada, English and French are both recognised as official languages, so it’s no doubt these two languages exist in all life aspects. Therefore students in Canada may be exposed to a variety of speech variations (I don’t like the use of “dialects” here). Therefore, it wouldn’t be a right thing to conform them to the standardised English or French.
However, in Vietnam, Vietnamese is the official language and it’s used in all aspects of life. Therefore, English is acknowledged a foreign language to us, since we are not born and brought up in English. Therefore, a presumably “norm”, or a set of approved rules by the native speakers of that language, need be taken into account for references when teaching it to the local students. And I think it makes sense. The only thing I or my fellow Vietnamese co-workers can do is to not only emphasise the English they are learning is widely used in a particular context, but also teach them the appropriate attitudes towards other variations of that language -English.
Henry Luong
Hello Michelle,
Thanks for the post. I think saying “we” depends on the intentions of the person saying it. If “we” means “us standard English people”, then yes, it is not right. If it means “all of us, you and me” then that would be better; even then, the focus would be on integration and letting the students know that “we” are expected to speak like this. And this is often untouchable because learners may never speak with the “perfect” standard English. Language teaching can be a form of power over those who are historically oppressed. At a local level, promotion of “standard” English historically advantaged those who were born speaking that variety. Those who did not speak that variety had difficulty getting the best jobs or being accepted at the most prestigious universities. This would include working-class, ethnic minority and newer immigrant varieties of English and therefore these people along with people from less developed countries remained socioeconomically disadvantaged. So yes, learners need to learn “standard” English to get access to the mythical club, but many will be investing a lot of time and money to never reach it fully.
Kevin Anderson