Page 15 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

Addressing the problems of poverty and justice requires that we not view persons who live in poverty as all the same . At least one defining important difference between people who live in poverty is whether a person is impoverished due to a fairly recent event such as divorce, illness or loss of employment (situational) or a person’s situation is a product of generational poverty . Generational poverty generally is defined as having lived in at least two generations of poverty .35 Individuals in situational poverty will generally have a better ability to communicate and slightly better access to resources .36 Persons in generational poverty will have different issues and problems that the justice system must embrace and address .
Each class has its own non-transparent rules . Generational poverty rules value the present and are based on feelings or survival; the view of the future is fatalistic, money is meant to be spent, language is about survival, and communication is based on a casual register .37 A casual register is “language between friends and is characterized by a 400- to 800-word vocabulary . Word choice [is] general and not specific . Conversation [is] dependent upon non-verbal assists . Sentence syntax often [is] incomplete .”38 The discourse pattern in casual register involves the speaker going around the issue until finally getting to the point .39 The story structure starts with the end or the most emotional part of the story first .40 Middle class rules value the future and planning for the future, belief is in the ability to change the future, money is to be managed, language is about negotiation, and communication is based on a formal register .41 Persons who are experiencing situational poverty will most often also use the formal register .42 Formal register communication is “[t]he standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school[,] [and] [h]as complete sentences and specific word choice” .43 In formal register the speaker gets straight to the point, and the story telling starts at the beginning and proceeds chronologically to the end .44
Experts point out other distinctions with communicating or culture with individuals who live with generational poverty . Generational poverty involves oral culture while other classes rely on print culture . Oral culture characteristics involve spontaneity, which is exhibited by jumping from subject to subject, being emotional, needing to repeat things over and over in storytelling and as a way to maintain knowledge, being attuned to the present and unable to plan for the future, and being focused on the big picture and unable to focus on a single idea . In oral culture, individuals are highly connected to their senses, their environment, and the people immediately around them .45 The majority population relies on print culture . Characteristics of print culture that are distinct from oral culture are: ability to process and analyze by breaking things down according to parts; reasoning developed by reading; ability to filter out big picture ideas to focus on a single idea; and ability to think in a linear, first this, then that fashion . Print culture involves the ability to delay gratification, prioritize time in daily activities, and plan for the future by setting goals .46
35 payne, supra note 9, at 49 (rev. ed. 2009).
36 Id.
37 Id. at 44-45.
38 Id. at 31.
39 Id. at 32.
40 Id.
41 Id.
42 Id.
43 Id. at 31.
44 Id. at 32, 34-35.
45 communicaTion across Barriers, communicaTion sTyles (2007), http://www.combarriers.com/CommunicationStyles.
46 Id.
The Challenge of Economic Inequality
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