By
Obododimma
Oha
Honestly, I
did not want to blog about this dimension of the fictive WhatsApp interaction between
Mike and Dora for some reasons. First, I did not want to go down the slippery
slope of prescriptivism, to suggest that one variety of English is beatified
and better than another. When Dora says: “Who telled you? It is unpossible. I
went to saw the resalt yesthathey....I passed all my educations,” one may be
tempted to say that she speaks a lower variety of English, or that she has a
language deficit, following Basil Bernstein’s notions of “Elaborated Code” and
“Restricted Code;” maybe she is more competent and fluent in that “Restricted
Code” of English, and that her switching to it when we expect her to speak a
standard one makes us look at her differently and inferiorise her. In that
case, she is just her language, her utterance! Who wants to be inferior or to
be identified as inferior, what more because of speech? We will all cluster
around fine speech! So, sorry for you, Dora!
Further, I
did not want to implicitly suggest the "standard" form as better or best (ironically, "standard" suggests that); I did
not want to treat it as the norm (except, maybe, when hypocritically standing
before my students. You need a norm for your language of instruction!). But we
know that mothertongue or pidgin can be used for teaching, for instruction. In
a home where only pidgin is the lingua franca, are we saying that the language
cannot be used in constructing and dispensing knowledge? Who says that one's
parents are not one’s initial professors and that the language of instruction
they deploy has to the standard variety? You see; it is dangerous to be normative!
Now, gender
trouble. In this case, I tried not to rush in where angels fear to tread, even
if I am a fool! Gender experts may want to know why I seem to be on Mike’s
side, laughing at Dora’s expense and why the woman is made a character that
speaks demotic English. Generally, why I should be laughing at the woman. Also,
why is the woman underlined as the one whose code-switching is an exposure and
who only uses emoticons and their so-called competence as a protective shield.
Well, gender experts, don’t crucify me. She only happens to be a a woman. Is
your anger assuaged? Should I offer rams and fowls and goats as sacrificial things?
The fact,
however, remains that humour and the use of codes and code-switching are
intertwined in the discourse. We cannot “experience” the laughter, the
humorous, until Dora shifts inevitably, exposing her English. It is as if she
is undressing and we can see through the deception placed before our eyes by
emoticon. That set me thinking: Is the author by any means calling our
attention to the linguistic decay or incompetence that the use of emoticons or other short forms in electronic writing by
the younger ones in the shithole actually reveals? If that is the case, we are
really in trouble with modern technology and electronic writing!
Towards the
end of the interaction, it is Mike who switches to emoticon to signify his
surprise and utter amusement at the exposure of Dora. He invites Dora back to what
she is running away from: “Hmmmmm lets (sic) go back to smileys pls” and he
indicates being competent in that mode of communication by writing down his
amusement in emoticon. Dora accepts, but has fallen into a trap and has already
exposed her weakness.
If we insert
young learners of English to replace Dora and Mike, the problems of hiding
under technology and exposure and amazement with their attendant, painful humour would
stare us in the face. Worse still, if these learners use cement blocks as
writing desks and the so-called “classrooms” are overcrowded. Now language-learning software. No. And the computers sit like ancestral gods, the learner sometimes staring at them with awe. They may also be made in the 19th century, with their outdated printers close to dot matrix models.
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