To say that AAVE “is” descriptive linguistics is like saying the planet Jupiter is astronomy.
Your claim had no more validity than telling a French speaker that their unfamiliar usage could be corrected to English with proper schooling. Claims like this are perfectly correlated with ignorance of the nature of language, and to be brutally honest you appear to be no exception. If you’re interested in changing that, I’d recommend The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. It’s highly accessible, non-technical and entertaining.
AAVE is a dialect with rules of grammar that are just as strict and consistent as any “standard” dialect. They are just different rules. The is no objective linguistic sense in which standard English is “better” or “more correct”. It is just the dialect spoken by the hegemony.
The relationship to education is not that AAVE needs to be “corrected” to standard English. It is that native AAVE speakers who want to succeed in a world where all the power is held by people who speak a different dialect must learn that other dialect. To them, it’s a second language. They then switch into standard English in certain situations according to pragmatic social considerations. AAVE speakers with less education obviously tend to be less skilled at this.
Not all African Americans speak AAVE; and even if they did, the majority of people do not have good insight into the nature of their own language (or language in general). But what “many in the Black community” certainly do see is that their kids will have poor prospects in this world if they don’t learn to code switch.
Are you asking whether any linguist would endorse your offensive and misguided derogatory characterization of AAVE? I’d suggest you read the Pinker book and go from there. You could also try reading this thread, which addresses these issues.
It’s valid in reference to your derogatory comments. You wouldn’t tell a French speaker that their language is shit. So why would you take that attitude with a speaker of a different dialect of English? Why does the fact that French is more different from your own dialect grant it the respect that you deny AAVE?
Yes, AAVE is a dialect of American English, like Cajun Vernacular, Chicano-English, Pennsylvania Dutch English, the geographical dialects like Inland North (here in the Chicago area), Texan English, Appalachian English, Southern English, etc. They all have their internally consistent grammars and vocabularies; some stray more from Standard American English than others, but they all deviate in ways. They are all dialects. There is no “valid” or “invalid” about it. Read the AAVE Wikipedia article linked to above if you want to educate yourself a bit about it.
And each have contexts in which it would be a good choice for a native speaker of the dialect to use the dialect, and contexts in which speaking somewhat fluently in the dominant culture’s dialect would be a better choice.
A French native living in Chicago would be at a disadvantage if they could not express themself in a manner clearly understood by Chicagoans. Speaking a language or a dialect that is not clearly understandable by the intended audience, or which gives the impression of poor education, can perhaps be considered an incorrect choice?
Dialects and languages are not objectively valid or invalid, correct or incorrect, but they are appropriate or inappropriate for different contexts. Using a dialect in a context inappropriate for its use communicates meaning beyond the intended message.
We can double back to the person LHOD invited to speak to the class of schoolchildren. The words and language usage employed was very likely decent standard English AND they were a bad choice for the audience. Referring to concepts as “orthogonal” to each is clear communication in a few venues but will be at best not well understood in another, or even interpreted as being a condescending pretentious egghead in some.
The default appropriate dialect is not always the one used by the most highly educated class. Politicians at least often recognize that.
An interesting note on this usage that came up recently in a conversation, is that an American will say this even in a city with several hospitals, even when more than one of which is in the person’s medical plan, and to the statement “I need to go to the hospital,” it’s a legitimate response to say “which one?”
Generally, when something is preceded by the definite article, “which one?” is not an appropriate response, except as humor, ie, “The president is holding a rally tonight” / “Which one?” You would not say “The university” in a town with two, unless, you were, say a registered student at one, or standing on the campus of one, or there were some other reason that the definite article would be understood.
The underlying assumptions may certainly be classist or racist without any conscious intent or awareness on the part of the pointer-outer.
So have I. That they are usually wrong, and therefore not really pedants. In order to fit the definition of a pedant, you must be a a bit of a jerk; but it is also a necessary condition that you must be correct. If you claim that “less people” is an error because it should be (in some ill-defined absolute sense beyond just a stylistic preference) “fewer people”, then you are not a pedant. You are simply wrong.
So I guess I would agree that it’s true that commentary from “pedants” has granted me insight in some things, but that’s largely through the motivation to try to understand it better, not because they taught me how to understand it better.
Again, it’s asking folks to conform to bourgeoinics. There is an inherently class-based criticism involved. Whether it’s “classist” depends on the nature of the relationship and of the critique.
If my brother sends me an email including the word “alot,” and I correct it, there’s no reason for me to do so except that I’m confusing middle-class orthography with “correct” orthography. I think that’s inherently classist.
If my student uses the word “alot” in a written paper, or if I’m editing someone’s college essay, or if I’m in any other context with an editorial/pedagogical role, it’s appropriate for me to help them write in middle-class orthography.
By way of example, if I see someone walking, is it appropriate for me to tell them that they’re walking incorrectly in some way? Perhaps it is: maybe I’m a dance instructor who needs to remind them to lead with their left foot, or maybe we’re playing a game together that forbids both feet being off the ground simultaneously, or maybe even we’re in line, and they’re behind me and keep bumping into me.
But absent some strange context, it’s really obnoxious, and factually incorrect, for me to tell them that they’re walking incorrectly. As long as their feet are taking them to their desired destination, that’s what walking is, there’s no “correct” or “incorrect” about it.
I have great confidence that my baseline ignorance of “proper” language usage far exceeds yours. In short my mileage varies, as I have more to learn. Most of the time I find either they are right, or someone else comes along to correct the correction … either way I learn. So long as it doesn’t hijack the main discussion, I am happy to be that marginally less ignorant than I was.
Let’s stick with the French analogy. Imagining myself as a native speaker of English now living in France trying to gain fluency as I struggle along. I’d actually appreciate some gentle corrections to my confused usage and poor pronunciations. I might get frustrated but I would not consider those correcting me as inherently expressing cultural superiority. They might have such, it is France, but not necessarily!
The struggle and lack of fluency is a key distinction. A person who uses “alot” is presumably fluent in English and can communicate with other fluent English-speakers just fine. I am their peer, not someone more fluent than them. If I’m struggling along in French and say “en droit” to mean “to the right”, that’s no the sort of mistake a fluent French speaker makes. I’m not the Francophonic peer of a native French speaker; and if I’m clearly struggling, it’s cool for someone to help me out.
Is my analogy above fair? The answer hinges on whether or not there are contexts in which the dialect of the land is in fact clearly the language of the more educated class, if that is the room we are in, and social contexts of the room.
I don’t mind a peer educating me in my use of English. I like it.
I previously shared how I had misread “alcove”as “aclove” and then said it like that for a long time until someone finally pointed my error out. I was happy that someone let me know. Yes it may be etiquette to have my zipper closed, but if it is open someone letting me know is better than pretending to ignore.
There’s a difference between “alot” and “aclove.” Saying “aclove” is an understandable thing to do if you’ve only encountered the word in its written form, but if you say that, it’s going to run afoul of the #1 rule of language. Namely, you’re unlikely to get your intended meaning across to your intended audience. Even if you do, it’s going to take them a lot of processing power to figure out what you’re trying to say, so you’ll break the #2 rule, i.e., you won’t get it across smoothly.
Whereas if you write “alot,” you’re likely not breaking the #1 rule. It’s tricky to think of a non-contrived example where a reader would be confused. You might break the #2 rule, depending on context.
Your comparison to etiquette is a good one. Having your zipper down is this weird edge-case in etiquette where the faux pas is so great that almost anyone is allowed by etiquette to correct it. There are very, very few etiquette matters where it’s considered acceptable to correct a stranger. I think the linguistic equivalent of having your zipper down would be the unintentional use of outdated or offensive language. If someone said something about the Oriental lady at the bank, or about how they’d been gypped by an Ebay seller, it’d be okay to mention that maybe they don’t want to use that word, in the same way that you might tell someone their zipper is down. Short of some egregious linguistic faux pas like that, correcting a fluent speaker’s language because it doesn’t conform to middle-class dialect isn’t something worth doing outside of a teacher/student (or editorial) relationship.
I thought of this when I was composting my post and concluded that the probability was greater than 50%, given that your analogy was historically inaccurate.
I think this is where you get in trouble with any analogy involving astronomy — the “prescriptivist” rules were based on observation, i.e. how the planets were perceived to move by an observer on Earth. In fact, the most precise observations were by Tycho Brahe, who rejected heliocentrism and had logical reasons for doing so. The right combination of circular orbits could explain planetary motion, along with a stationary Earth. Of course, Scripture did interfere.
