A.L. Kennedy on silencing people (and their languages)

"Beyond the west end and before Broughty Ferry, was another Dundee. It was a city of adults as short as children and children with old faces, of drunks in men-only bars, poverty and powerlessness. I was taught – by my school, my parents, my radio, my television – that nobody wise should sound as if they came from there. Get a vowel wrong and somewhere harsh might come to claim you. I learned what so many children in non-dominant cultures learn – that the inside of your head was wrong. There was one way of speaking indoors, another in school and another for the street, while well-meaning attempts to save children from the prejudices of others left me feeling inwardly deformed in a muddle of competing languages. 

So often, what could allow individuals to be polyglot, adaptable, as linguistically experimen­tal and joyful as Shakespeare’s many-voiced London, simply leads to silence and insecurity."

all of it, here.
the picture, from here