Written by: Emily S.

Our amazing consultant Emily S. speaks on our new four-part video series: “Language Variation and the Writing Center!”, which is a short series that walks us through the value of all language, information about different dialects, and so much more!

Language is hard. It’s a complex subject with many different layers, and unless you study linguistics, learning about language can be difficult too. As speakers of a language, we tend to know the rules of that language, but we might struggle to explain how those rules work. Opening a book and trying to learn more can be really overwhelming and discouraging, especially if you find unfamiliar terms like morphology, semantics, and language prejudice. To help make things a little easier to understand, we’d like to introduce you to our new four-part video series: “Language Variation and the Writing Center!”

In our first video, we describe what language is and the equal value all languages hold. Though every language is different, they all share the same basic structure and rules. Our second video shares information about dialects, which are variations in language due to close contact within regions or within certain socio-cultural groups of people. In the third video, you’ll learn more about how language prejudice forms and what exactly it is. Our consultant Anna also shares the implications that language prejudice has on society. Lastly, our final video discusses code-meshing. Through the content in these videos, we hope to not only introduce information about language, but also to start a conversation about what language looks like both in and out of the University Writing Center

At the UWC, part of our mission is to “value multiple literacies and language diversity” and to “promote a broad understanding of writing, language, and literacy.” Understanding what language is, how it works and changes, and its social implications can help us build a solid foundation to achieve these goals. In the Center, we value and appreciate every language that writers bring into sessions and their writing. We also understand the validity and importance of all dialects of languages and encourage writers to use their own dialects in their writing. Though language prejudice still exists, at the UWC, we actively work against this prejudice through our programming and interactions with writers.

If you want to learn more about language and how we here at the Center interact with language, make sure to watch our series! Links to each video will be posted on our social media within the next few weeks. We hope you’ll see us soon 🙂

Check out the first video of the series below!