Practice all three FRQ types — plan your response, write your essay, then reveal the model answer.
Standard American English (SAE) is the dialect used in most formal academic, professional, and institutional contexts in the United States. Many schools require students to write in SAE — even students whose home dialect is AAVE, Chicano English, or another non-dominant variety. Defenders of this requirement argue that SAE proficiency is a practical necessity for economic participation and civic life. Critics argue that requiring SAE while penalizing non-dominant dialects devalues students' linguistic identities, perpetuates inequality, and misrepresents non-dominant dialects as errors rather than as equally valid language systems.
Write an essay that argues your position on whether schools should require Standard American English in academic writing, or accept non-dominant dialects as legitimate forms of written expression. Use evidence, reasoning, and examples to develop and support your argument.
Sample thesis (nuanced position): "Schools should teach Standard American English as one powerful dialect among many — not as the only correct form of English — while ensuring that students who speak non-dominant dialects are never penalized for the grammatical features of those dialects in contexts where meaning is clear."
Why this thesis works: It avoids the false binary of the prompt (SAE-only vs. dialect-only) and instead reframes the question around how SAE is taught and whether dialect features are treated as errors. This is a more defensible and intellectually honest position than either extreme.
Alternative strong thesis (stronger prescriptivist position): "Schools have an obligation to teach Standard American English as the dialect of civic and economic power — not because it is superior, but because withholding access to it from non-dominant-dialect speakers is itself a form of injustice."
Suggested lines of argument:
Counterargument response: The strongest opposing argument is that accepting any dialect in formal academic writing will leave students unprepared for professional contexts that require SAE. Respond by distinguishing between academic writing (where the goal is demonstrating thinking) and professional writing (where SAE conventions serve functional purposes) — and by noting that explicit contrastive instruction in both codes teaches more SAE than penalization alone.
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. But there is another struggle, quieter and more pervasive, that runs beneath it: the struggle of the powerless against the language of the powerful. For those who control language control more than words — they control the frame within which the world is permitted to be seen.
Consider what we have been taught to call things. The homeless man is not a person deprived of housing by a failure of policy — he is a "vagrant," a word whose root means to wander, to lack purpose, to belong nowhere. The factory that releases chemicals into the river does not poison the water — it causes "environmental impact," a phrase so engineered for neutrality that it could describe a butterfly landing on a leaf. The soldier who kills civilians does not kill them — there is "collateral damage," a phrase that converts human death into an accounting entry, a rounding error on the ledger of strategy.
Language like this is not careless. It is precision work. Every euphemism, every abstraction, every passive construction has been tested, revised, and deployed with the intention of making the unacceptable legible. Legible, that is, to a public trained from childhood to receive language rather than interrogate it.
We were told, many of us, that grammar was the study of correctness. It was not. It was the study of submission. The rules we were given were not the rules of language — language needs no rules to function, as any two-year-old will demonstrate. They were the rules of power: a code that told us whose words counted, whose sentences were sentences, and whose speech was merely noise.
I do not say this to make you angry, though anger would not be inappropriate. I say it so that the next time a politician tells you that no civilians were "targeted," you will understand that you are not receiving information. You are being managed.
— Adapted from a 2022 essay by a writer and language criticIn the passage above, a writer argues that language is an instrument of power used to obscure accountability and manage public perception. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices the writer makes to develop this argument.
1. The opening allusion and the pivot: The first sentence ("The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting") alludes to Milan Kundera — invoking a recognized framework for thinking about power and historical truth. The second sentence then pivots to introduce the writer's own, "quieter" struggle. This move establishes credibility by acknowledging a major intellectual predecessor while claiming a distinct contribution. The contrast of "man against power" (visible, dramatic) with "quieter and more pervasive" signals that what follows will reveal something hidden in plain sight.
2. The three examples as accumulated evidence — and their syntax: The examples (vagrant, environmental impact, collateral damage) work cumulatively — each one more extreme than the last (stigma → corporate harm → civilian death). The parallel structure of each example ("does not X — it causes/there is Y") performs the writer's argument about language: by showing the euphemism alongside the blunt description, the writer makes the gap visible. The reader cannot un-see it. The syntax enacts the argument.
3. "Precision work" and the reversal of the neutral/loaded axis: The writer deliberately deploys the language of professional craft ("precision work," "tested, revised, and deployed") to describe euphemism — a word usually applied to careful, positive expertise. The effect is to make institutional language seem more, not less, sinister: it is not accidental sloppiness but engineered manipulation. This is a diction reversal that uses the language of competence to indict the competent.
4. The grammar paragraph as structural climax: The paragraph beginning "We were told, many of us, that grammar was the study of correctness" is the argumentative core. The short declarative sentences ("It was not. It was the study of submission.") use parataxis to land with blunt authority. The shift from "we were told" (passive — what was done to us) to "I do not say this" (active — the writer's own voice) marks the moment where analysis becomes call-to-action.
5. The closing direct address and its rhetorical effect: "The next time a politician tells you…" positions the reader as a citizen about to re-enter a world of managed language. The shift from "we" (collective victim) to "you" (individual agent) is strategic: it assigns personal responsibility for linguistic vigilance. The final distinction — "you are not receiving information. You are being managed." — uses parataxis for maximum rhetorical punch and ends on a word ("managed") that makes the reader its object.
Code-switching — shifting between language styles, registers, or dialects based on audience and context — is a common practice among public figures. Some critics argue that political figures who adopt different linguistic styles for different audiences are being inauthentic, using language strategically to manipulate rather than genuinely communicate. Defenders argue that code-switching is a natural feature of all human communication, a mark of audience awareness and rhetorical skill, and that criticizing it often reflects a bias against non-dominant dialects.
Carefully read the sources below. Then write an essay that synthesizes at least three of the sources to develop a position on whether public figures should be criticized for code-switching.
Code-switching is not a deviation from normal language use — it is the norm. All fluent speakers switch registers, styles, and sometimes dialects based on context: the way a person speaks to a close friend differs from how they address a job interviewer, which differs from how they speak at a religious service. This is not inconsistency; it is competence. Studies of bilingual speakers show that those who code-switch most fluidly demonstrate the highest levels of linguistic proficiency in both languages. Criticizing a speaker for code-switching is equivalent to criticizing them for being rhetorically aware.
When politicians adopt regional accents, use dialect features associated with specific communities, or suddenly become more colloquial at campaign events in working-class neighborhoods, the question of authenticity becomes legitimate. The issue is not code-switching per se — it is the gap between the linguistic style a politician uses to signal solidarity with a community and the policies they pursue that affect that community. When the language of solidarity is performed without the substance of solidarity, the code-switching becomes a form of manipulation — using linguistic familiarity as a substitute for genuine relationship.
Criticism of Black public figures for code-switching — particularly for adopting features of AAVE in some contexts and Standard American English in others — often reflects double standards. White politicians who modulate their accents or adopt regional speech patterns for different audiences are rarely accused of inauthenticity. When a Black politician is criticized for "putting on" a dialect, the implicit assumption is that their formal, SAE-speaking self is their "real" self and the AAVE-inflected register is a performance — an assumption that itself reflects the prestige hierarchy of American English, in which SAE is treated as neutral and AAVE as marked.
Audience awareness is not a moral failing — it is the foundational skill of rhetoric. Aristotle argued that effective communication requires adapting your argument, style, and evidence to the specific audience before you. A speaker who addresses a community of engineers the same way they address a community of elementary school students is not more authentic — they are less effective. The choice to adapt language to an audience is the choice to take that audience seriously. Criticizing code-switching as inauthenticity mistakes the map for the territory: it confuses adaptation of style with absence of substance.
A 2022 study analyzed the speech of 20 U.S. senators across three contexts: formal Senate floor speeches, town hall meetings with constituents, and informal media appearances. All 20 senators showed measurable differences in syntax complexity, vocabulary level, and speech rate across the three contexts — regardless of political party, region, or ethnicity. The study found no correlation between the degree of code-switching and public approval ratings. However, senators whose code-switching was perceived as "pandering" — based on audience perception surveys — showed lower trust ratings, even when the linguistic features themselves were identical to those of senators not perceived as pandering.
Sample thesis: "Public figures should not be criticized for code-switching itself — a practice that is universal, linguistically competent, and rhetorically sound — but should be held accountable when linguistic performance of solidarity substitutes for, rather than accompanies, substantive commitment to the communities whose language they adopt."
Why this thesis works: It separates the rhetorical act (code-switching) from the political question (whether it is deployed sincerely or manipulatively) — a distinction that allows the thesis to integrate Sources A, C, and D on one side and Source B on the other, while using Source E as complicating evidence about perception vs. practice.
Synthesis strategy: