Decades of respectable research also said that Jews have a smaller brain than Germans, and that black people have an extra thigh muscle that’s why we dominate sports and made such good slaves.
As I said in another recent thread:
You might ask, “if it’s a sociolect, then why aren’t other sociolects like, say, ‘geek talk’ also documented and talked about so thoroughly?” The fact is that it’s a very interesting regional, ethnic sociolect. It shares things like grammar rules very similar to African creoles, without actually being a creole, and is spoken by a very large amount of people.
It’s not just a way to separate black people into the “other” (though non-linguists may attempt to wrongly use the term to do so), and it’s not to imply all black people talk like that, or only talk like that, or have difficulty talking in any other way, or anything else unsavory. It’s just that it is a very interesting, very unique subclass of English that has interesting rules that linguists can use to get more complete and better data about how language works. Though, and I admit this openly, people who talk about AAVE and aren’t using it in a linguistic sense (or perhaps a sociological one) are probably using it either mistakenly or maliciously.
Trying to make AAVE sound like a racist classification is disingenuous. Have you ever taken a linguistics class? One of the reasons AAVE has been so intensively studied is to prove its legitimacy as a dialect. Mostly because stupid white people think those blacks are just speaking lazy/improper English. Apparently you agree with them. I imagine you must get the vapors whenever a Midwesterner uses the word ‘‘ain’t.’’
Well, ain’t no skin off my back. Believe what you wanna.
On preview: Okay, it’s a sociolect. We all have them.
Wikipedia mentions it being a dialect too, I have to admit I’m not entirely certain on the finer points here, at an academic level I’ve never heard to it referred to as anything other than a sociolect.
Either way, Olives brings up a good point. Linguistics is in many ways a celebration of language. No way that anybody speaks (“speak” used broadly in include sign language) is wrong – not unless you have a mental disorder like an aphasia or something. A linguist will be the first one in the room to chastise you for implying that somebody’s dialect is “incorrect”, “lazy”, or “illegitimate.”
At best you might get some to agree that the way they’re speaking is inappropriate or atypical for the situation or environment they’re currently in, but you’ll almost never get one who flat out says any dialect or sociolect is wrong. (Which isn’t to say linguists can’t and never do have personal pet peeves when it comes to certain people’s speaking quirks or habits, but they’ll acknowledge it’s a personal hangup, not some fundamental incorrectness)
To linguists language is a data set, nothing else. Saying AAVE is wrong would be like an evolutionary biologist saying that the fact that an elephant exists is “wrong”. No, it’s not wrong as evidenced by the fact that it exists, it’s their job to document and explain it.
I’m not sure what’s being discussed here. The concept of Ebonics as a sub-dialect of English has been controversial since I first heard of it, I believe because it was proposed as part of the educational process. But aside from that part of the issue, it does not seem any different than any other dialects in English, Mercan, and I’m sure all other languages. It takes a lot of isolation for a dialect to surpass the most common form of a language, and as others allude to, it doesn’t seem to be the sole means of communication for very many, if any people. I’ve heard Englishmen communicate in private conversation using something to my American ears that is indistinquishable from a cadence of grunts. The same people could easily turn to me and speak in as clear a form of English that I’ve ever heard. In the same respect I work with an Englishmen who’s grammar is precise, but pronunciation so downplayed that we had to have a German translate his words for a client from Japan. I think if the political issues were seperated from Ebonics, street talk, and the like, there would be any controversy involved.
The dialect/language distinction is a very hairy issue that one can have lengthy technical debates about, but the linguists I know personally consider Cantonese and Chinese separate languages (while Dutch and German are different dialects of the same language). The metric used for this is mutual intelligibility – two languages are different if the speakers can’t understand each other, they’re dialects if they can. Though this has problems that they acknowledge (but they maintain it’s better than the traditional “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” definition), it is considered “good enough” for most cases.
Linguistic terms are descriptive, not a matter of opinion. There is basically a series of checkboxes that a form of speaking must have to be classified as something, and if those boxes get checked off, it gets put in that category. AACE has the attributes of a dialect, so it is a dialect. This isn’t a judgement or measure of value, it’s just a useful way for linguists to describe something.
AAVE is not “lazy” or “dumb.” It has rules and grammar that as complex and consistent as any other dialect, and it’s not any easier to speak than anything else. It conveys meaning as accurately as any dialect is able to.
AAVE has never been “taught” to students. What has happened is teachers have been trained on working with AAVE speaking student so that they can better help them transition to Standard English. It’s helpful for teachers to know the grammatical differences so that they can understand where their students are likely to make mistakes and help them understand how to avoid them.
Code switching is not that difficult. Most people on earth speak multiple languages on a daily basis. We are certainly capable of keeping two fairly similar dialects straight.
Yes, but aren’t what exactly those checkboxes are argued over? I’ve talked to plenty of linguistics professors who would talk at length about their department’s definition of “language” and why it was better than some other university or organization’s definition of language.
For instance, that “mutually intelligible” thing I said has a standard objection that there’s sort of a “treadmill” of intelligibility. Where A might understand B and B might understand A and C, but A and C can’t understand each other at all. Are A and C speaking the same language or not? After all, A and B, and B and C are mutually intelligible, so it should all be different dialects of the same language as B, but A and C aren’t mutually intelligible so they shouldn’t be the same language. Now what? I hear IRL this happens with Glasgow English and American English, and I’ve known real professors who either say we need a definition that makes them separate languages, or a sub-class between dialect and language to separate them. I’ve met other who have given up and say any tiny dialectal shift is a separate language and “dialect” is just a word for languages that are really similar just to get away from the whole thing.
Maybe I just talk to some kooky professors (which isn’t impossible, but a lot of them I met were from universities high up the linguistics food chain), but it seems to me that the definition itself is a matter of (informed, educated) opinion which makes this sort of classification hard.
orthohedron would you mind sharing with the gallery (1) where you’re from and (2) how much money you make?
I’m not a linguist so I do the wise thing and defer to them, but if I had to contribute something, it’s that they have done a really damn good job describing code switching. We used to give hell to one of my friends for it because he answered his phone in the car and made a switch about as dramatic as the bug-in-mouth reporter upthread. I do it between Arkansans and Tulsans (which is obviously much less dramatic).
orthohedron, I highly recommend you read the code-switching article. If you seriously honestly never hear people use AAVE around you it’s because they have you tagged as a more SAE kind of person. We all communicate for the purpose of making meaning clear to the recipient, so, it’s not very upsetting to me that we switch between slang and localism depending on context. What is language if it’s not one big contextual run-on?
I think you mean “there BE nothing wack about that.”
“Fluid thing”. 
Yes, the whole Ebonics flap was based on a misunderstanding of what was being proposed. No one was proposing teaching AAVE, just making teachers aware of it as a dialect and not just the result of “lazy speech” by certain students.
And all of us code-switch. I write much differently than I speak in casual conversation, and I suspect most of us do the same. It’s no different than speaking AAVE at home or among friends and code-switching to more standard English during a job interview or whatever (different in degree, but not in kind). As monstro said, though, some people can obviously code-switch better than others.
I think she mean “ain’t nothin’ wack about dat.”
^^^
See the above? That’s me very informally with friends, but there’s no way in hell I would write like that here, or talk that way at work. Code switching.
I was actually just talking the other day about “idn’t” (“isn’t”) and “dudn’t” (doesn’t) with an Arkansas friend. “Ain’t” and “y’all” have made it into the national consciousness, so people just roll with it or say “oh how quaint” if you let them slip, but “dudn’t” will just get you looks. People aren’t yet ready for that.
If I had any brains, I would keep out of this discussion, but…
When I first heard of Ebonics, it was described as a separate language, not related to English, but based on African languages. This is so fatuous, it is not even risible.
Of course, it is a dialect of English, how could it not be. To say a dialect is proper or improper has no content. Standard or non-standard has a meaning but which English is standard? BBC English? CBS English? What the president says? In the last case I am being non-standard (or would have been during the Eisenhower administration had I said “nuclear”. I had a friend who lived in a racially mixed neighborhood of Cleveland (Cleveland Heights) and is kids grew up able to switch dialects.
That is indeed quite fatuous, and I’m skeptical that’s how any reputable source described Ebonics.
You are right that it’s not so cut and dried. But the idea here is that these are debates for the linguistic journals, not yahoos on the street who’ve decided, based on nothing in particular, that AAVE is lazy slang.
I’m from South Jersey about 10 mins from Philly. I work long hard days to make about 60k per year at a blue collar job. I’m relatively young as are my peers. I’m not out on the block every day but I’m far from what you would call wealthy, upper class, or detached my from my demographic. I code switch all of the time. I speak differently at home around my boys than I do in a professional setting or even while debating on the internet.
My problem with AAVE is that it is something that can be eliminated through education. Literacy stops the need for improper English. I know schools don’t teach kids to speak AAVE. However I’ve yet to see anyone who wouldn’t naturally speak AAVE speak it and not sound patronizing or condescending. Most sound like that white teacher on YouTube that took all of that heat for saying “Wassup my nigga.” I also don’t care if you say ‘ain’t’, thats on you.
Bottom line, at the end of the day, if you can’t effectively communicate verbally, out in the real world people look at you like you are an idiot regardless of race. People shouldn’t use their race or their socio-economic status as an excuse not to learn basic things like grammar.
Are people using it? Yes? Are they using it to communicate? Yes? Are they communicating ideas, making plans, bonding, romancing, and telling jokes in it? Yes? Then it’s a perfectly acceptable dialect. It’s not “lazy” just because people who, as a demographic, are poorer use it. It’s not “lazy” just because a minority uses it. It’s certainly not lazy because it’s not the language of trade, business, or academics. And, in fact, it’s actually kind of dishearteningly close to the common racist stereotype of calling blacks “lazy” to hear a predominately black sociolect (and almost never any other dialect) described as “lazy”. (Yes, I know you’re black yourself, and I don’t think it’s intentional, I’m just pointing it out).
As you and others already said in this thread, most AAVE speakers code switch. This seriously isn’t a problem for most people, at least not after they’re children (unless they have a disorder or are being willfully defiant).
And it’s not like African Americans are the only ones who have a dialect significantly different from the academically or formally accepted standard. Have you seen our (somewhat jokey, but nonetheless true) thread on Mercan? Exaggerated a bit, sure, but the jokes didn’t come from thin air.
Hell, when I’m talking to friends, my talk sounds a lot like “Dude, iunno wadja tal’knbou’”. Am I lazy and lacking in proper education? I, like AAVE speakers and speakers of every sociolect, dialect, and idiolect in the world speak clearer and with less slang when in an academic or professional context, but among people of similar classes or interests switch to references, slang, and speech styles appropriate to the situation.
It’s not “lazy” it’s a basic human ability.
Yeah, there’s something wrong, whether it be a disorder or just plain defiance, to a person who refuses to switch sociolects when the situation demands it but there doesn’t seem to be a huge epidemic of black people blowing job interviews because they simply don’t know how to talk correctly to the interviewer. Or people unable to make a bank trasaction because the white teller simply CANNOT understand what they’re saying.
It’s a natural, acceptable, mostly non-detrimental, and very interesting evolution of a major world language. There’s no reason to hate it or disparage it, and it would be an absolute tragedy if people took measures to wipe it out completely.
Damn, that sounded way harsher than I meant it to be. Apologies.
Why the teller gotta be white?
The real arbiter here isn’t what sounds proper to any body, but rather, what do speakers find useful for communication. The continued existence of AAVE should be all the testament there needs to be that it fills a needed niche for its speakers. SAE doesn’t exist in a privileged position relative to any other dialect.
Also, when you say “eliminated through education,” it reminds me of the old mentality in Louisiana schools about beating Cajun out of the students. I think what you meant was “eliminated through enforced usage of SAE in education.”
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I am going with the NAACP on this one.