A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.
Languages form under pressure to communicate urgent realities; their structures follow communicative needs.
Supports: Functional/necessity-based account of Black English.
Dr. Flores (mentioned earlier) and Dr. Jonathan Rosa, Professor ofLinguistic Anthropology, have crucially pointed out how the idea of stan-dardized English (both written and spoken) as the “appropriate” languagerelies on the racialization of students, regardless of their actual languageuse (157-158)
Appropriateness standards are tied to raciolinguistic biases that judge students independent of how they actually use language.
Which part of the theme this supports: Links language standards to structural inequity.
We shouldteach how to let dialects comingle, sho nuff blend together, like blending the dia-lect Fish speak and the black vernacular that, say, a lot—certainly not all—blackpeople speak.
Paraphrase: Instruction should train students to blend mainstream and vernacular dialects within the same piece of writing.
Which part of the theme this supports: Pedagogy that operationalizes code meshing.
AAVE fits the story's main theme: wealth is unequally and unfairly distributed in American society.
Paraphrase: Heller links AAVE to the story’s critique of economic inequality, showing how the dialect highlights distance from mainstream wealth and power.
Which part of the theme this supports: Language choice as social critique.
In the workplace, we’re communicating with people we don’t know personally or even have never met. All they know about us is what they can infer from reading an email or a report we wrote. And on that basis, they will make inferences — about our competence, our intelligence, our level of education.
Paraphrase: In professional settings, unfamiliar audiences judge competence and education from language alone, so using SAE affects perceived credibility.
Which part of the theme this supports: Audience diversity and stakes of impression management justify SAE.