Blog #7 Smitherman

Summary:
Smitherman talks in his article about the black English we see in our world today. Throughout history and even today we have seen English as being the dominant language but we also see varies variations of it. African American has showed over the years as having some slight differentiations in language and it almost is similar to slang. But it is now used all the time like instead of saying. "It is" we now say, "It's." We have over time gotten very lazy with our language and changed ways of spelling words. In his article he really explain more on the Black English.


Connections:
It was very hard to think of connections that were similar to the topic or point in Smitherman's article. After reading the article the first thing that came to my mind was Mclouds article about symbols. Overtime we all have changes language and it so century to century. Just like the pictures we still get the word even if it is not in full form. For example if we read, "do not" we would still read it the same even if it said,"don't." Just like the pictures that Mcloud describes we do not care how much detail is shown we still will get the idea with less-detailed work.


Teachers Assignment:
Smitherman talks about a teacher assignment talking about the Vietnam War and students were to write about there opinions. The student obvious had bad grammar, but more importantly the structure and the sentences in general were not thought out at all. Instead of the teacher telling the student to fix the whole thing he or she only said "fix your grammar." He uses sloppy as being correct and usually we do not correlate sloppy with something positive. But because writing has advances we have been able to have sloppy correct ways of writing where we use correct grammar but out thoughts are not backed up by sources and we do not have to have supporting details behind our thoughts. Although sloppy can be correct it can also be on the line of just plain sloppy. Which is like the sample he gave from the student.

Opinions:
I really likes the article because it is something I always really wondered. I always was so curious about slang and other cultures slang. The article gives a clear topic about African American. I thought the topic was really well thought out and the author did a great job on talking about it. I did get confused at some points about what he was talking about but all in all a great short read.