Abstract
The author argues in this text, how speaking English with an accent should be acceptable and not pointed out as incorrect or as something that is not acceptable. He mentions an example of a truck driver who got pulled over and was given a ticket only because he spoke English with an accent. He does not agree that the only accepted form of English should be Standard English and he does not see how speaking English with or without an accent is related to road safety. According to the author, all types of English should be treated equally and accepted, because what matters is the ability to be able to communicate. The “Standard English ideology” is leading immigrants and minorities to leave behind and lose their language for the sake of better communication. (190) He talks about something that he calls “interdependence-in-difference”, which shows how different languages coexist and try to be overheard over the other languages. (191) The author believes that all form of English are acceptable and none of them is more or less important than the other. Some of the points of his text are that English should be accepted in all its different forms and teachers should encourage multilingual learning and “interdependence-in-difference.” Teachers should teach students how to intersperse languages. They will not only be working on teaching English to the students, but also on teaching them how to use both languages. The main point that he makes is that speaking with an accent should not be treated as a weakness but as strength, because the speakers can speak another language and intersperse different languages. Everybody should be able to speak with an accent without being treated differently or inferiorly.
Works Cited
Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Paul Kei. Matsuda, and Mao Luming. "Why Don’t We Speak with an Accent? Practicing Interdependence-in-Difference." Cross-language Relations in Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. 189-95. Project MUSE. Web. 23 Feb. 2015.