Should schools ban street slang?
Some people have started arguing that schools and the younger generation are being encouraged to speak informally and use taboo language when speaking to adults and their friends. This could be a problem for the generation as it is placing this stereotype on them and creating the idea that all young people are the same and behave this way just because they are in school. However, schools around the nation have been discussing whether to ban street slang from the premises of any educational building.
Slang is a mixture of shortenings, abbreviations, taboo language and other informal uses of lexis. This 'street slang' tends to only be used in social groups, such as teenagers and pupils when talking to their friends, as to develop a certain grounding and understanding among the group, as if to separate them from other people, as they know the people in their social groups will understand them. This is where the problem of schools come into the situation, some young people have been using street slang whilst talking to adults such as teachers, parents and other older people which is considered disrespectful.
When young people call out to their teachers as if they are their 'buddy' or 'bestie' this can cause a problem of respect and disregarding of the teacher, and the teacher may take offence to this. This however could be solved through other solutions than banning the slang completely, such as putting rules against taboo language and swearing, giving detention to the disrespectful young people and to send letters home to parents if it carries on, as the children that are constantly using this need to be taught a lesson without completely restricting them of their own way of communicating.
On the one hand, very young adults swearing and using street slang can become a very judgmental thing as others will believe that this child had been brought up by their family to swear and be rude to their peers and this child would be looked down upon. This problem has also caused a large stereotype along with the ideology that 'all teenagers are dangerous', which doesn't help, meaning that adults and elderly people can become scared of teenagers just because of their accent and the way they speak. In contrast to this, getting used to this could be the way past this problem, but some people just won't accept anything but the Queen's English.
On the other hand, banning street slang altogether would stop the problem within school but the problem could get worse outside of school. It is the same situation as banning illegal drugs and their usage in the law, because you have banned it, people are more likely to use it and/or keep it a secret, people will still carry on doing it, even if it is banned, and maybe even get worse. This could revive the high prestige of the teachers in school but it would also be demoralizing the young people and depriving them of their rights and freedom of speech.
As well as this, if everybody sounded the same and used received pronunciation constantly, it would remove the unique set of language and identity behind a person, making everybody the same and as if they were in some sort of army or group of surveillanced people. The language barrier is changing over time and it always has been, some people believe that the Queen's English is all fully English, but it is not, some words and part of our language is from Latin, Anglo-Saxons and the French, This proves that this could just be another step in our language and the way we speak.
I believe the best way to stop children and young adults from treating their teachers and peers like crap would to put some rules on the language they can use in school, for example, stopping them swearing at their teachers. Even though they may swear in their friend groups, they would understand the boundaries as to not hurt their friends feelings or anything similar. I also believe banning street slang completely would be the wrong thing to do because some people are brought up with it and are used to it, most people would understand when they need to code shift and talk with a higher prestige. Some people even bother with changing their accent because of this, sometimes accommodation theory comes into this because of the way some people converge their speech closer to the other person, such as in interviews or when talking with a teacher or headmaster. We need to stop stereotyping the idea that all young people are like this and they are all disrespectful and punishing them for it, we need to deal with the problem where it is, otherwise it will not work.
