Читать книгу Living Language - Laura M. Ahearn - Страница 15

During the 1995–1996 school year, a special anti-drug class was run as an elective in a large high school in the San Francisco Bay Area.¹ Students were trained as peer educators in preparation for visiting other classes to perform skits about the danger of drugs and tobacco. The class was unusually diverse, with boys as well as girls and with students from many different class ranks, ethnicities, and racial groups. On the day that the students were preparing to perform their skits in front of an audience for the first time, they asked the teacher, Priscilla, what they should say if someone in the audience asked whether they themselves smoked marijuana. Priscilla recommended that they say they did not. Then the following exchange took place between Priscilla and the students:

Priscilla:	Remember, you’re role models.
Al Capone:	You want us to lie?
Priscilla:	Since you’re not coming to school stoned – (students laugh)
Calvin:	(mockingly) Stoned?
Priscilla:	What do you say?
Calvin:	I say high. Bombed. Blitzed.
Brand One:	Weeded.
Kerry:	Justified.
Brand One:	That’s kinda tight.

Figure 1.1 Cartoon demonstrating how certain styles of speech can both reflect and shape social identities.

Source: Jump Start © 1999 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.