Politics & Power Quote by William Labov

"An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write"

William Labov, Writer

About this Quote

Labov is naming a panic, not a pedagogy problem. The line’s engine is “social reaction”: the real story isn’t literacy instruction but the way language becomes a proxy battlefield for race, class, and national belonging. By framing home language as something merely “suggested” for the “first steps” of reading and writing, he underlines how modest the proposal is - and how outsized the backlash. That mismatch is the point.

The context is the long fight over whether African American English counts as a legitimate linguistic system or a “broken” version of Standard English. In classrooms, that fight gets disguised as common sense: kids should just learn “proper English.” Labov’s phrasing exposes the ideology inside that common sense. The resistance isn’t only about fears of lower standards; it’s about refusing to grant authority to a Black linguistic identity. Accepting home language as a bridge implies that the child’s speech has structure, history, and value. For some publics, that recognition feels like surrender.

The subtext is also tactical. Labov is defending a linguist’s view of language acquisition: learners move best from the known to the unknown, from a stable grammar they already command to the conventions of written Standard English. He’s not arguing to freeze students in their home dialect; he’s arguing to stop treating their starting point as contamination. The quote works because it redirects blame: the obstacle to literacy isn’t the child’s language, it’s the adult politics attached to it.

Quote Details

Topic	Teaching
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About the Author

William Labov (born December 4, 1927) is a Writer from USA.

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