As an English-as-a-second language teacher, I would never ever ever tell my students that TikTok English isn’t a valid and legitimate use of the language. I tell them that it’s a register of English that has appropriate contexts and inappropriate context, and “here’s how you say ‘no wait, let him cook’” in formal, standard English, or “this phrase that you’re asking me about means this but it should only be used with friends in informal context, there’s a time and a place for TikTok English”, but I’d never tell them not to use it or that it’s not valid.
Today’s internet idioms might be next decade’s “perfectly fine in a business email” idioms and I’m not going to stop my students from learning and embracing all aspects of the language. My job is to teach them the appropriate contexts for different things, and to ready them to use English in different contexts and to be able to use it to their benefits. It’s not to be the arbiter of what parts of the language are “real” or “not real” or to say that they MUST only use certain dialects. That would be doing them a disservice and not fully preparing them for the increasingly English-speaking, rapidly-changing world they’re about to face.
Shakespeare was once written for the unwashed masses who spared a little coin to go see a play in a register of their language that made sense to them. Now it’s the height of sophistication. I’m not here to make those decisions. I’m just here to teach my students to move through the world and to know how to use the language in different situations. I’m not so arrogant as to say “that’s not REAL English” because obviously that’s not true. People are using it, so it’s real English.
I’m here to say stuff like “it’s rizz with your friends, that’s fine. But let’s stick to “style” in your essays for now”
yousharknotpass
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