Image from: University of Louisville
The differing forms of English that we use to communicate isn’t really something that we spend a lot of time considering. We speak vastly contrasting than how we write, speak differently to our friend compared to our boss, filter or censor they way we phrase sentences or on which syllable we put emphasis. Each unique type of communication is complex and has many subtly divergent elements, depending on the exact context of the situation you’re in.
This gap in the way various ways we correspond with one another becomes rather obvious when you analyze the difference in say, the language used in a college essay versus the conversation you have with the professor after class. Both situations could be considered semi-formal, both taking place in a professional academic setting, yet there are still vast distinctions in word usage, sentence length/complexity, etc. In a formal essay, one would avoid using personal pronouns, use large words, write complex structure for their sentences and paragraphs, and overall attempt to convey an air of sophistication. When talking with a professor, you’re much more likely to refer to yourself in the first person, use filler words (such as: uh, um, or like), and use lingo or common vernacular. As noted in McWhorter’s Ted Talk, we don’t speak the way that we write, even if the situations or settings are nearly identical.
Image from: Harvard Graduate School of Education
This phenomenon could be considered a form of code-switching, which the habit of changing the particular way we communicate depending on the person we’re talking with and the context of the conversation. Though this idea is normally used to describe differing examples of the spoken word, it definitely fits this situation that I’ve laid out. To use an abbreviation such as “can’t” in a paper would cost you points, and referring yourself in the third person during a meeting with an instructor would feel extremely awkward and disrupt the flow of conversation. The shift in the type of speech is essential to properly get your point across, even if we don’t realize we’re changing anything at all.
Additionally, while this practice is subconscious in most circumstances, it’s often used as a form of protection by those with stigmatized dialects. As mentioned in Wolfram and Schilling’s American English: Dialects and Variation, there are certain modes of speaking that, due to racist and classist ideas that permeate every part of our culture, will bring immediate judgment and limitations onto those who use them. AAVE (or African-American Vernacular English) is especially targeted with the notion that those who communicate with it are uneducated. Those who speak with this dialect are often forced to intentionally and consciously code-switch when in job interviews, conversing with a person of authority, giving a speech, etc.
Image from: The Conversation
This more than anything highlights exactly how arbitrary language really is. There is no tangible, mechanical reason why the word “ain’t” is paired with the ideas of ignorance and stupidity. It’s borne from the socially constructed beliefs about the people who utilized this word that has bleed onto “ain’t” by proxy. Prescriptivist linguists tend to get hung up on the narrow definitions of words and technical grammatical rules when even when there is no formally agreed-upon, standard form of our language. This harsh judgment has a ripple effect on the way many academics and authority figures view what is considered “improper” English. All of those closed doors and missed opportunities, that social isolation and judgement, for something that is entirely arbitrary.
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