I have a suggestion for you as well, but best to leave it to the wind. 
If I knew I had to speak German, I’d probably start by picking up a book titled, Learn to speak German, then I’d worry about any gaps when I got over there. Pretty much the same for people coming to my country, I suppose. I wouldn’t get so caught up in dialect that I’d soil myself if my parents decided to slightly alter the geographical location at the last minute. I’d adapt.
Indeed, we did. I don’t see why you’re bringing back that strawman. DMC was pretty specific about **why **the kids in question are not wrong in this circumstance.
I took this advice and all I could find was post 411, where you argued that SAE has more utility than AAVE in American Society. Everyone agrees, but that doesn’t make SAE “correct” in a general sense. You acknowledged that in your post.
It’s a semantic issue, but in your example the screwdriver is still not a better tool than the wrench. It is the tool best suited to the task. If I show up to your carpentry class with a wrench you would be perfectly justified in saying I brought the wrong tool, but only with the understanding that you are referring specifically to the context of the class (and the skillset that the class is trying to teach). If you dont explain to me the difference between a screw and a nut, I might be inclined to ask “What’s wrong with a wrench?”
This is not about striking the word “wrong” from teaching vocabulary. This is about helping kids learn by not alienating them and by not making the teachers lose all credibility. For example, the child says “I be broke” and the teacher says “That’s just wrong, young Billy, simply wrong.” And the kid will think… “well, my entire family talks like this, and my entire block talks like this… in fact everybody I’ve ever met talks like this. Obviously this guy is out of touch, and I can’t trust anything he says.” It undermines the teacher’s credibility.
It seems like you are suffering from the common malady of railing against the woeful disappearance of objective truth. There are places where it’s appropriate to fight that fight, but language education is not one of them. In language education, it’s only important to teach the target language. It is absolutely unimportant and unhelpful to unequivocally tell the kids that their native language is “wrong”, it just serves no useful purpose whatsoever.
Yes I have. And if you read it over you will see that people that I have debating with have held both:
speakers of AAVE can’t be wrong–the language is continually evolving and expands as people speak it.
speakers of AAVE can, of course, be wrong. AAVE has rules just like any language, and rules, can by definition, be broken.
You skirt the issue. The question you avoid is CAN speakers of AAVE be wrong? (see above)
Have you read the read? Please review just the past day’s posts.
I agree with your entire post. This last point raises an important point. Is the failure restricted to teaching these kids AAVE, or is the failure more general. I mean, they aren’t doing well across the board.
But even if we restrict it to SAE, we can agree that something different needs to be done. That doesn’t necessarily mean being more embracing of AAVE.
I think that one thing that we can ALL agree on is that theachers should be more familiar with AAVE, so they can understand where their students are coming from.
Yes, but at any given point in time certain rules apply. Wouldn’t you agree. If not, then SAE is evolving just as AAVE is evolving. The linguists earlier in the thread stated that for something to be a language that it had to have rules. And they presented cites that showed these rules. It follows, that if there are rules, that they can be followed or not followed.
Please point out the post where someone said this. I don’t recall anyone here saying that no speaker of AAVE could be wrong - that would be the same as saying AAVE has no rules at all, which would make it mere coincidence that all AAVE speakers seem to use some of the same constructions.
I may be wrong on this, but I believe “SAE” refers to a fixed set of rules–a snapshot of a certain dialect spoken by certain people at a certain time–and thus it can’t change, by definition. That doesn’t mean the English language as spoken by average Americans isn’t evolving, though, and it’s conceivable that in a few decades, some of the rules of SAE will be ignored by nearly everyone in the country, rendering SAE as we know it obsolete.
I was merely alluding to the speech that the kids we’re talking about would speak while on the playground. It was not a judgemental statement.
Yes, it exists. The question I think you’re asking is where does it fit on the continuum does it fit: is it closer to “slang” or more of a formal “language”. The second part of your question is, for me, the important part and renders the first part moot.You stated in it exactly what I thiink the danger is.
Thanks for the well crafted question.
And I don’t think that we get you very far at all. That would jsut be bad teaching, regardless of the subject matter.
Thanks for the corrections.
How bizarre. To me, that seems like a world history teacher worrying that his kids will lose focus on other countries if they become aware that they already live in a country with history.
“You remember what I was telling you last week about Britain? Turns out they’re not really a country either. Huh. Anyway, class, open your books to the chapter about Mexico…”
Cite?
While I think language is slightly more fluid than this statement posits, I don’t have a major problem with the heart of this stance.
I’m not skirting anything. Of course they can be wrong. Hell, some of the opponents of the proposal in this very thread have horribly mangled AAVE in their attempts at inserting examples into their posts.
It seems like it would have been a lot easier for you to just answer “Yes” or “No” in response to my question, but since you didn’t, yes I did read the thread. Here is the entire text of every post you made to this thread yesterday:
I don’t see you answering the question in that text, so I’ll ask it yet again. This time, feel free to either answer or to point out specifically where you already did answer the question explicitly.
Do you consider AAVE to be wrong, invalid, or lazy?
I’m sorry. I’m gettint lost in the thread. Can you please refresh my memory as to what your question was? Thanks.
Yes, that’s why it’s important to clarify up front. “You are here to learn proper English” (or SAE, whichever terminology you prefer.)
And that was exactly my frustration. I don’t have the concentration to go find it now, but it was near when liberal3701(?) joined the debate. I’ll try to find it tomorrow iof I have time.
Absolutely. But I’s say that SAE changes more slowly than its many dialects.
Somneone else asked for this (see a post or two north). I’ll try to find it tomorrow. (It might have been ascenray (sp?) or Kimstu, or liberal 3701.
(Sorry, I hit submit by accident. and my reference may have been the day before.) Regardlesss:
Wrong? Yes, in the practical sense. All languages are equally valid in the absolute sense, as tools that facilitate communication between people in a society.
Invalid? See sentence above.
Lazy? Some of it is. I would say that most dialects, which tend to be more colloquial than the language from which they are derived, take short cuts. They are primarily oral languages and often default to what is easier on th mouth. Also, as I stated days ago, most people’s speech is often lazy. For instance, “gonna” and “wanna”.
There is no failure to teach AAVE because students are not taught AAVE. It will be helpful in this thread to keep that in mind.
Some students who began life speaking AAVE actually have done reasonably well “across the board.” Don’t be fooled into misjudging a person’s intelligence and potential by the way she speaks when she’s young. I knew a student when I was first teaching that would have ruined your stereotype. You would know her too. Not all success stories are quite so stunning, but they are common.
Please be so kind as to post some linguistic research that shows:
[ol][li]A particular dialect is lazy.[/li][li]That a particular dialect is “more colloquial” than another dialect.[/li][li]That speech defaults to "whatever’s easier on the mouth.[/li][li]That the current phonetic inventory, along with its phonotactic rules, is “easier on the mouth” than the current phonetic inventory, along with its phonotactic rules, of the current prestige dialect of American English.[/ol][/li]
I suppose you should also post a definition of “lazy speech” first, and provide some linguistic research to back that up.
The rules they have, are rules that each language has to itself, not to each other and certainly not to the spelling of words. You keep applying rules such as spelling, which don’t translate into speech and question why if spelling cement as SEEment is wrong, shouldn’t saying that way be too.
Further the rules you keep trying to apply, are based on SAE being right. In every example you give, you gear the the choice to making SAE the right answer and AAVE the wrong one, as opposed to being which one is best suited for the task at hand.
To modify your tool example. Say I walk by my deck and see a raised nail. Within my reach are a hammer, a wrench, a large screwdriver and a good-sized rock. According to what you have posted, the hammer is the correct tool to use and if I use anyother tool, I need to be corrected.
Why?
All I want to do is drive the nail back into the wood, ANY of those objects will serve that purpose. What you need to tell me, is why I should use the hammer. You don’t do that by telling me the hammer’s the correct tool, to drive a nail when I just used a rock, the wrench or the handle of a large screwdriver to do just that.
Hell, what if I have 1/2 dozen different types of hammers, all which can drive a nail, but were designed for different purposes and may either become damage or do damage if I were to use them? Do you just point to the standard claw hammer and tell me ‘just use that’ or do you explain why and when each hammer should be used?
**Monty. ** I personally can’t be bothered to look up research of what my obervations and experiences tell me is true.
You’re misunderstanding his point. He’s characterizing diction in some dialects as being “lazy,” i.e., not as precise as the parent language.
You misunderstand again. magellan01 is saying dialects tend to be more colloquial than their parent language.
Speech does tend to default to whatever’s easier on the mouth. Happens all the time to axioms and colloquial sayings – The Britishism, “Spirit and Image” morphed to “Spittin’ image” in American Southerner’s mouths. All tongue twisters observes that principle – trying saying “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” aloud. Try saying “toy boat” as fast as you can four times.
Again: diction and dialect are two completely separate things.
I don’t buy that speech defaults to whatever’s easier. For one thing, that would invalidate the cycles observed that languages tend to follow.
{I forgot to type the second point before hitting the submit button.}
For another, if speech defaults to whatever’s easier on the mouth, then all languages will have the identical phonetic inventory and phonotactic rules.