I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive myself for the ways that I’ve let academia and classism do irreparable harm to my dialect. I never have found out how to say what I need to say without losing it. Particularly in writing.
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Not dialect but I fight for my authentic voice in writing too, and it’s an uphill battle. The most beautiful and true way to say something is often the simplest and least convoluted yet academic writing rarely encourages that. I see the harm you describe and it wounds, but I believe we can repair.
The important thing is you found a way to victimize yourself as though idiolect weren't a conscious matter within your control
Both my parents were academics yet I still talk like my neighborhood's white trash largely because the kids there used to beat me up for showing off, an object lesson
School didn't abuse you into communicating as you do post-grad, you did that to yourself and it's time you owned this and to be comfortable doing so Ryan
For me it's a decision to spurn columnist fart-huffing in discourse, rather than any love for the yokels I grew up with
As a fellow educated privileged white male, the last thing I need to hear from another is how he lost agency in establishing his own voice as a writer. Nut up.
Living where you do, it can heal. I take a LOT of flak for speaking Pittsburghese unabashedly but man, I cannot give it up. The things I’ve been privileged to learn don’t take away from where I come from. I live the Carnegie dream of the educated worker, even if he had his fingers crossed.
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Both my parents were academics yet I still talk like my neighborhood's white trash largely because the kids there used to beat me up for showing off, an object lesson
For me it's a decision to spurn columnist fart-huffing in discourse, rather than any love for the yokels I grew up with
That said, Imma say this in my best Appalachian English… fuck off