Exploring language in Memes and Facebook through Gee and Andrews
 
Andrews tells us throughout his book "Language Exploration and Awareness A Resource Book for Teachers", but particularly throughout chapter eight that there are lots of classist issues that exist within languages.  The way that most people grow up talking is typically what they expect to hear when conversing with others.  Deviations from familiar speech in terms of pronunciation, dialect, syntax, etc seem peculiar to many speakers.  As a result, we know that many people judge others based on language use and/ or language misuse.  As we see in the Facebook Bitstrip that is featured above, a teacher in this image is clearly put off by a student's use of the word "y'all".  Clearly, she is likely someone who is not from the same region as her students.  As a result of the difference in background between this teacher and her students, one could imagine that there is a level of distance between this teacher and those she educates.  I believe that spending instructional time addressing the use or non-use of y'all in a classroom setting would be an irresponsible use of classroom time, and as a result, it would be irresponsible teaching.  Andrews tells us, "emphasizing language form over function is dubious pedagogy!" (140).
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Here, we see a meme that again relates to Andrews' point about language use and misuse being used as a point to judge those around us.  The sad implication of this meme is two fold.  The first dimension we notice is this meme is the blatant linguistic discrimination being displayed by the man's apathy towards his fellow conversationalist.  The second disappointing factor we see in this meme is that Walmart is being treated as a language and subculture, in a derogatory way.   The connotation we have here, based on this man's simple response is that Walmart (culture) is beneath him and not worthy of his time and superiority. 

A third image that supports this idea of linguistic ethnocentrism is taken directly from Facebook.  You will find the image below from a post that not only is meant to mock the accent of a person, but intended to mock the seeming misalignment between the race of the person and the person's accent.  This image is found below. 



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