I think that the main reason why people have some difficulty understanding what is the proposed program, and how it can help young Blacks learn English better, is an unfamiliarity with the linguistic method and how it can be used in teaching. Most people have always been taught their language in a prescriptive way. In other words, “don’t say that, it’s wrong and lazy, say that instead”. The “standard” dialect is considered the perfect one, and every other one is mistaken or “lazy” in comparison. magellan01 has been taught English this way, and obviously in his case it worked. Either he altogether lost the regional dialect he might have had before, or he learned to use it only with friends or family, maybe while feeling guilty for speaking “wrong”. Or not. In any case, he certainly now knows Standard English and uses it in a formal setting.
Now, what the linguist does it completely different. I’m not a linguist, so certainly liberty3701 could explain it better than me, but the linguist doesn’t prescribe a way to speak, he or she describes how people talk. A linguist will now say that Blacks are “lazy” to speak the way they do, since, like John Mace says, there is no objective way to say which pronounciation of a word is easier to say. It depends on you native language. Maybe jimpatro thinks “aks” is easier to say than “ask” because he is Black himself and that’s how he learned to say it when he was young. But to me, none of these words seems easier to say. While speaking about AAVE, what a linguist will do is describe it (and how it differs from Standard English), then say that among the African-American community, this dialect is considered colloquial, while Standard English is more formal, and therefore young Blacks should be taught Standard English to succeed in the world.
None of this is “PC” or particularly “liberal”, it’s just a different way to see language education. After all, John Mace and Mr2001, who I seem to remember are rather conservative posters, seem to be in favour of this method. Conservatives are certainly able to consider change when they see that what we’re doing now isn’t working and probably won’t work in the future either.
So, the essence of the program seems to be to teach teachers that, when confronted with a student who speaks a dialect, they shouldn’t say that the way the student speaks is “wrong” in itself, just that it’s not Standard English, and explain how we could translate the idea into Standard English. From a linguistic standpoint, this makes sense, since dialects are not wrong in the same way that “1+1=3” is wrong, as someone mentioned earlier. And with young African-Americans, this would probably be a better idea. From what I read in this thread, it seems that they are usually rather attached to their language as a way to feel part of their community. Telling them that how they are speaking is “wrong” might have worked for magellan01, but it probably won’t work for most of them. Rather, we should tell them that this dialect is just a different dialect from Standard English, but that’s all right, except that when we’re in a more formal setting, the custom is to use Standard English. And certainly they’re going to make mistakes at some point, the same way Kimstu makes mistakes when speaking Dutch. Then we tell them “this is a AAVE structure, can you translate it in SE?” Makes sense to me.
That’s a great way to put it, and I feel negligent now that I didn’t say it before. It’s almost like we were speaking two different dialects, prescriptivist and descriptivist. As a descriptivist, I don’t believe anybody speaks “incorrectly,” which is different than they way a prescriptivist would use the word “incorrectly.” See how easy it is for two speakers of dialects that sound similar to get confused?
Of course, in my world view at least, these aren’t dialects because, dammit, prescriptivism is incorrect! But, of course, that’s why I’m a linguist and not an English teacher.
Point of order there… these immigrants of whom you speak, they don’t walk into a mainstream classroom with no knowledge of English, digest a little Dickens, and proceed to start their own internet companies. Many attend ESL/EFL classes that recognize these people lack English not because they’re stupid, but because they’re linguistically alien to what most people consider “standard English”. The unfortunately named “ebonics” was just an attempt to extend this same advantage to the African-American community.
Unfortunately, someone put a cutesy tag called “ebonics” on this initiative and made it sound like they were trying to recognize AAVE as an official second language of California. Unfortunately, some people use this as an occasion to go a little over the top in their evangelism on the linguistic equality of AAVE. And the invariable majority reaction is “Legitimize darky trash-talking slang? Over my dead body.” Thus, this very noble and courageous initiative will never go anywhere in a hundred trillion years.
I must have misspoken terribly somewhere if I’m getting a reputation as a rather conservative poster. I consider myself liberal (but primarily libertarian, so I do side with conservatives on some issues). No offense taken, though.
Ah, I had the idea that you were conservative; either I’m misremembering or I read a debate where you were agreeing with the conservative/libertarian position. I’ll have to check your posting history to see what gave me this idea. Sorry for that, even though you didn’t take offense.
Oh, come now. There must be SOME standards somewhere. Or is all you do is describe what people say and how they say it? (shades of Jane Goodall, observing her chimps forever and anon). If I start making up words to mess with you, I think you’ll say that I am “incorrect” in my usage of English.
I am NOT equating AAVE with “making up words”–just trying to get at something. I thought that linguistic studied the history of a language and its developement over time (I have a fascinating book about place names in Britain over the centuries-how they got the names, the patterns that evolved etc). But you as a linguist can’t just start calling something squirvish when you intend to refer to schwa “e” or whatever.
I keep thinking of Lewis Carroll and the Jabberwocky: one reason it is so funny and fun is that he plays with language and linguistics in the poem. He MUST follow some commonly recognized grammar rules, as well as cadence, phonetics and even the sounds of words (I am sure there is a formal term for what I’m trying to get at.) His poem sounds like English–but another nonsense poem in German would have to take its traits from the commonalities auf Deutsch. I doubt you could successfully translate Jabberwocky into say Cantonese or even German. I bet you could translate it into AAVE, though. I have no idea what I am trying to say anymore…gack!
Is anyone following me?
I just can’t believe that there is no such thing as “incorrect” in any form in linguistics. Perhaps incorrect is the wrong terminology.
I like your attitude and don’t want to confuse you, but formal English is spoken in many dialects! (I prefer the term formal to standard when talking about the spoken word.)
Those of you who have mentioned “lazy” speech may be confusing it with a particular speech impediment. I don’t know if it is even called that anymore. I think it was used to describe the way certain people formed the letter r, and, of course, it had nothing to do with real laziness.
liberty3701, I think my favorite linguistic moment was discovering that a young woman I knew in Natchez, Mississippi had testified in court as to her whereabouts on a certain evening with, “I bes at the opera.” That one should have broken a few stereotypes!
I think you’re totally misinterpreting what I’m saying. I’m not saying people don’t make mistakes. And I’m not saying people don’t make up words, but made up gobldygook is not natural langauge.
What I am saying is that linguists don’t make value judgements on different varieties of language, which is what the original poster did. We don’t say one language or one dialect or one syntactic feature is “better” than another. That just doesn’t make any sense in the world of descriptive linguistics.
And, yes, that is what linguists do: study and describe language. Some do applied linguistics, but the bulk of linguistics is description.
You’re thinking of historical linguistics, a small subset of the larger study of linguistics. This is what linguistics classically was, what J.R.R. Tolkein was. It is not what Chomsky or Labov or Lakoff or Wolfram are. But that’s still just observation in the end.
No, we can’t, because that’s not communicating.
Neither do I, but I think it was reinforcing what I’m saying.
Not to be circular here, but made up gobldygook (what you seem to be calling “incorrect”) is not usually studied by linguists because it isn’t language. Some would argue that even made up gobldygook has some underlying pattern that may explain some cognitive process or other. People also make mistakes, like I was saying before about suburban white kids using “incorrectly.” But I don’t really study that stuff. I merely study the way people talk, don’t make value judgements, just look for patterns and the ways to explain those patterns. Forever and anon…
Speech is incorrect when, within its own frame, it confuses.
Note the earlier comments about white suburban kids picking up some of the hip hop words and phrases, but getting the grammar and syntax wrong.
The linguist studies the patterns of speech among groups of people and identifies the rules within each group’s speech patterns. Thus there are rules that can be broken in SAE and AAVE and any number of other dialects. The point is that it is not correct to try to impose the rules of SAE or AAVE on the other dialect.
I suspect that when liberty3701 said that no one spoke incorrectly, she(?) meant that the language or dialect used was not, itself, incorrect, not that no person could commit an error in language. If I were to say to my child, “Go across the room and bring me this pillow.” I am pretty sure the kid would be confused. “This” implies a closer object where the farther object would typically be identified using “that.” By introducing confusion, I would have committed an error.
Hmmm… Yes, I guess so. What I meant to say is that when in the business world, in the United States, the custom is to use a “formal” dialect of English that is “standardized” in some ways (i.e. it doesn’t vary much from place to place). There might be a formal version of African-American English (when speaking to elders, maybe?), but that’s still not what is required when, for example, looking for a job outside of the community.
And yes, liberty3701, I also enjoy your posts and if you’re able to stay with us, you would be a great addition to the board.
First, a point of clarification: You imply that I have some infatuation with the concept of lazy speech and you would like me to define it. As I’ve mentioned, I do not profess to be a linguist, but I’ll play. I hope it will help you understand where I’ve been coming from. Maybe it’ll help sort things out in your own head, as you seem to hold two mutually unsupportable positions:
“I don’t know if “lazy speech” exists or not.” - Post 210
“So, let’s not get into the “Black English” = Lazy Language nonsense.” - Post 11
So, you DON’T know whether or not something called lazy speech exists, yet you DO know that when you compare it to “Black English” that it is “nonsense”.
In your Post #175, the confusion continues. You say: “You are simply confusing a non-standard dialect with a “lazy” speach pattern. Sorry, but you are simply wrong.”
Your sentence seems to imply that there IS such a thing as lazy speech after all. And, from the way you use it, it might very well be a valid category of poor speaking. Or do you mean that the two of us are each using a different phrase to describe the same phenomenon? In which case, you agree that phenomenon exists, but you object to the term?
Is that right?
And just for the record, the first mention of any connection between speech (language) and lazy was by you in that Post #11. Actually, it was mentioned in no fewer than five posts, not to mention some of the links provided by tomndebb (Post 23) and others, before I used the language myself in Post #148. So for you to imply that this is my concept that I pulled out of thin air is disingenuous and unfair. The word and conept was in use in this thread, as well as in the links supplied by the moderator and others. Check if you’d like.
That said, even though you introduced the concept into this thread and should have defined what it was that you did not know whether or not existed but was, in fact, nonsense, but then again, might be a term for a category that you call "standard dialect, here we go.
Let’s start with what I’ve said so far:
“People say it is a dialect, not slang or lazy speech. I don’t think it matters much what you call it.” - Post 148
“I have no expertise. But–and please correct me if I am wrong–if something is a dialect, wouldn’t someone from two generations ago be able to undestand the new generation? If not, isn’t it merely slang?
So far as separating it out, that’s part of the problem I’m having. The attitude seems to be that whatever comes out of the mouths of these kids is perfectly fine. Is there any of it that people are willing to say is just plain wrong and is not attributed to “dialect”? If someone could separate it out for me I would be grateful. I also think it would help the debate.” - Post 162
"Because lazy speech does exist. When one drops a consonant, as in “I was talkin to me friend about goin’ to Harvard.” - Post 166
“And yes, some juvenile speech patterns are the result of laziness. I remember being told to prounce “ing” with the “g” and there was so such word as “gonna”. Or am I wrong and thatall these articles that mention lazy speech are referring to some other habit?” - Post 208
Here is further explanation of how I would define the terms you mentioned. Remember, I am not a linguist.
There is Standard English, and there are, of course deviations from it. When spoken, deviations from the “language” are bound to occur. Those deviations can be attributed to certain factors, including: dialect, slang, and sloppiness (lazyness).
I think that’s clear and there is not much to debate. (No mention of AAVE.)
Next, I think those three forms of deviations appear in ALL of our speech. Speech is colloquial, filled with regionalisms and slang. And at times, for most of us, our speech can be sloppy, i.e., lazy.
For instance, when not paying attention my “no” can turn into “naw”. I say “gonna”. Sometimes I say “Whach you wanna do?” I maintain that my doing this can be attributed to a lazy mouth. I consider this lazy speech. I know what the SE verbage should be, but I take the easy way out. It is not a big deal. Not at all. Is it lazy speech? Yes. Is it wrong or incorrect? If it is my goal to speak correct SE, yes.
Dialect seems to be regional. When I went to school in Wisconsin i was introduced to a “bubbler” (water fountain) and was offered a “pop” (soda). In Hawaii, a coworker “got into a big beef” (fight) in a bar. In Texas, I don’t know how my friends got anything done, as they were always “fixin” to do it. Then there was, of course, “Y’all” and the more formal “You all”.
Slang, I think points to word or phrase substitution. When we want our group to starting heading to the movie, we might say. “Let’s book.”, “Let’s roll.”, or “Let’s get a move on.” When in highschool, if we had a really cold day we used to say “the hawk was out”. Why? I haven’t a clue, but I think that came from the black kids.
I do not know if my categorizations are correct. I woud appreciate a critical eye from the linguists in the group. (liberty3701, are you out there?)
I would also be curious how they would categorize the inclination of some young African-Americans to use “Ize” instead of “I”, as in “Ize headin’ over to the football game.” or Ize be headin’ to the bank." Is it a modified contraction of “I is”? And is that slang or part of the dialect?
Mr. Mace, I hope that helps clarify my terminolgy and my position some.
To all Posters:
I think this thread has been both passionate and confusing–a perilous recipe for a high-quality debate. As I and, I think John Mace, pointed out independently, we often seemed to be arguing different facets of the issue at the same time. Then there was the confusion in the article itself. In fact, it was so misleading that the San Bernardino School District had to issue a press release distancing themselves from the remarks of Mary Texeira. Thanks to Tomndebb for sharing that with us today.
In the quest for further clarification I have a call into the San Bernardino School Board. The news release did a good job of expressing what their goals are and in distancing themselves from having ebonics as part of the curriculum, but it is mute on how it plans to achieve those goals. As soon as I hear back from them I will report back to you.
One final note. Two or three times throughout the thread posters implied that I or my ideas were racist. I do not take this lightly. It is as untrue of me and my motives as it is unhelpful to candid debate. I think the accusers show a closed mind and little imagination when they see no other explanation for beliefs that run counter to their own. I would also point out that many African-Americans would agree with my comments and my “tough-love” approach (Ward Connerly and Bill Cosby quickly come to mind). It doesn’t make me right, no. But, hopefully, it will allow those so quick to throw out the race card to see that the world may not be as black and white as they think.
Almost forgot. liberty3701 and tomndebb (or was it Mace), I haven’t had time to extract the information regarding the successful Charter Schools. I will try to get to it. In the meantime, the information resides in a an excellent book called No Excuses. Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. I highly recommend it to all interested in the topic called out in its title.
Thanks. Now I understand why we were both so confused with the other. That link, like many of the others, were borne of the movement in Oakland ten or so years ago. And while it does a good job of both explaining ebonics in general and how it applied to Oakland, I didn’t see it as pertaining to what may or may have not been proposed in San Bernardino in 2006. I was more focused on the methodology they were going to use. And the passage I focused on has since been disclaimed by the School District there.
Ahhh, Natchez. The Natchez Trace going up to Nashville is one of my favorite drives in the country.
Since I’d like to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I’m just going to hit a few main points tonight…
Still not clear on what you call sloppiness/laziness. From my rosy linguistic outlook, it’s merely variation in pronounciation … Calling it lazy is a value judgement; it implies the people don’t care or are too stupid or, well, too lazy to speak “right.”
To translate this into linguistics speak, I would say that most of us vary the way we prounounce things.
You’re just changing vowels. There is no change in difficulty, there. It’s like -in’ versus -ing, merely a change in sounds (phonemes).
What you call laziness, I again call variation. There are a multitude of linguistic processes going on here, but if you actually prounouce all the letters in “What do you want to do?” then you sound like a freak show or an alien. No one pronounces every single phoneme that we write. Try it some time. It sounds funny. “I am going to dance a jig.”
Since you seem to be focusing on phonetics in your definition of lazy, I’ll admit something: AAE (in it’s most vernacular form) has a simpler phonemic structure than standard English. But so does Tagalog, spoken in the Philipines, or Spanish. Navajo has a much more complex phonemic structure than standard English.
On the other hand (and other people have touched on this), AAE has a much more complex aspect and tense system than standard English. Just thought I’d throw that out there, hope that clears something up.
You mean you talk like a human being? that’s good. oh, and “verbage” isn’t a word. (Part of me is still a bit of a prescriptivist…)
Not gonna tackle this tonight; just suffice it to say that the goal of every “ebonics in school” program is to teach kids how to speak standard English.
Dialects can be regional, based on ethnicity, class, even gender.
As good a definition as any … I’ll try to look up some linguisticy-type definitions in the office tomorrow.
While this is a bit out of my field (I study phonetics, ie sound production, and this seems more like a syntax or morphology thing), I would venture to say it’s a dialect feature, probably not a contraction of “I is.” I can ask around tomorrow if you would like to know its roots.
I don’t think many people are confused. Maybe I’m reading it wrong…
I did not mean to insinuate that you, yourself, are a racist. I just feel that such positions have racist roots. I’m not sure I have the energy at the moment to explain language ideology and its ramifications, but I can try a little. Look at what we call standard English (more appropriately, standard Englishes, since it can vary regionally), what we expect everybody to speak. Now, look at who speaks these dialects from childhood: white, upperclass, educated people. Do these dialects have anything inherently better than the other dialects? No. From a linguist’s point of view, which I hope I have been portraying well, is that all dialects are inherently equal: equally logical, equally expressive, equally consistent. So why is the standard what white, upperclass people speak?
