Vershawn Young & Jamila Lyiscott Response

After reading Vershawn Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English”. My initial reaction to the text was the writing style young used. It’s a much different form of writing than what is typically considered formal writing. He is using slang words and that way of expressing himself in a way that is considered informal  After watching Jamila Lyiscott, “Three Ways to Speak English”. my initial thoughts about the video were the way she spoke it was very unique and inspirational. She called herself a “trilingual orator” because she has three types of Englishes she uses around her surroundings. The first one she speaks in a informal  way mostly used with friends or acquaintances.The second one is the formal way society portraits standard English, and the third one is with family in her native Jamacian tongue. All the Englishes that were used were considered “broken” because of Eurocentric ideas that if you don’t use the proper way of speaking a certain kind of  English you are not considered articulate, but Jamila Lyiscott counters that argument by saying t hat her different forms of English does not mean she is not intellectual or not willing to code switch but she express that its part of her identity. Something that grabbed my attention in young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English” “If he meant everybody should be thrilled to learn another dialect, then wouldnt everybody be learnin everybody’s dialect? Wouldnt we all become multidialectal and pluralingual? And that’s my exact argument, that we all should know everybody’s dialect, at least as many as we can, and be open to the mix of them in oral and written communication.”(Young,111) I agree with the statement young made because learning different forms of dialect is a positive. There is not such a thing of a proper style of English. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our way of expression but embrace it. Something both Vershawn Young and Jamila Lyiscott tried to convey is that the way people speak in their own forms of English should not be frown upon because using different kind of forms of Englishes does not mean your not getting the point across to people.