I didn’t realize it was a black thing, but I worked with a black guy who couldn’t say “Buick”. It came out “Boorick”, even after I asked him to clarify what he said. Another “word” was IR, as in Ingersoll Rand. It always came out “Eye Aruh”.
I never thought any less of him (he died recently) for the way he pronounced these words, I just thought it was a speech anomaly.
That’s all I’ve been saying, dude. Thus, a de facto, standard for certain situations. Just as a population can change it’s language, so too can a population resist change – or do descriptivists not consider a society’s reaction to the addition of a pronunciation? If I went around pronouncing nuclear “nuh cluh air,” no one would know what the fuck I was talking about and my ability to effectively communicate my ideas would be greatly hindered for that reason. If I instead said “nyu kyu lar,” most folks would know what I meant, but some might think me a bit slow and my ability to communicate EFFECTIVELY MY IDEAS would still be hindered, though not as much as in the first example, because my pronunciation would prove a distraction – a distraction I might overcome, but a distraction nonetheless; therefore, I, like your hypothetical kid, will use the widely accepted pronunciation. The difference is that your other two examples involve word choices (ain’t) and grammar (done nothing wrong), which are easy to slide in and out of – for instance I don’t cuss at work (word choice) but I could make a sailor blush with some of the things I say in casual conversation. However, it’s been my experience that you pronounce a word consistently one way (unless you’re poseing a la Bush) so you’re probably not going to say “nu klee ar” at work and “nyu kyu lar” at home.
I was just thinking, there’s a quote from some (in)famous southerner, I forget who, that gets trot out by us geographically challenged folk from time to time. Goes something like, “By the time they figure just 'cause I talk slow don’t mean I’m stupid, I fucked 'em.”
I find this all incredibly interesting as well, and I hope I am not coming off as an ass, but I just have to say, you “linguists” can avert your eyes from the de facto standard pronunciation all you want but it’s still there.
Another example of the durin/doing change. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think less of any one for the way he pronounces a word (but I do think the way someone speaks helps to create for me an impression of who that person is-- it does everyone and if you say it doesn’t you’re lying) , but I am realistic to recognize that many people do register negative impressions from certain pronunciations – listen this is coming from someone with a distinct regional accent.
I think whole bean has a pretty good point. If you go around saying “nukular,” you’re going to mark yourself as someone who will never hold a position more important than president of the freakin’ country!
Sorry, but the fact that we’ve had at least two presidents, from both sides of the political isle, use this pronunciation seems a pretty clear indication that the number of people who are going to pre-judge you based on how you say this word small enough as to be safely ignored.
It sorta reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon’s punchline. There are people who know how to operate the technology that runs our life at a level far above the rest of us. They’re called secretaries.
You can be aware of the elite pronunciation of words all you want, but when the elite aren’t actually using those pronunciations, your knowledge is about as useful as an in-depth knowledge of the horoscope.
Daniel
They are both from the South. I think there are some people who look upon a Southern accent as an indication that the speaker is of lesser intelligence. I watch the old NASA and USAF documentaries and notice how many of the engineers in those programs have a distinct drawl. Hey, whadda you know, ol’ Billy Bob not only can change a flat on a tractor, but he’s also a rocket scientist.
I live in the north (but AAVE tends to share features with southern American English, and many black folks around here have roots in the south) and I really haven’t heard that phenomenon at all, or at least I never noticed it. What you spelled as “ficcin’” I here all the time, and I understand it’s derived from “fixin’”; I’ve usually heard it as “fittin’” or /fI ?In/, though (the question mark represents the glottal stop, which shows up to replace the tapped T in, for instance, Cockney English: /ba ?l/ for bottle, and so forth.)
Anyway, you bring up a lot of good points in this post, and I have been putting off replying because I figured it would take me awhile.
It’s a difficult question. On one hand, descriptivism is tied into an urge to remind people that nonstandard dialects aren’t somehow inherently less expressive or less capable than standard dialects. It’s wrong to suggest that AAVE (for instance) is some inferior form of Standard English; I think many people are under the impression that AAVE deviates from the prestige dialect because people never had the opportunity to acquire “proper English” when actually they acquired English just fine, and it just happens to be that their native community uses a nonstandard dialect of English. I don’t like hearing value judgments applied to nonstandard dialects - it’s simply not justifiable in any logical or empirical context to say that AAVE is “bad English” or “incorrect” - it’s different, but there’s no logical context in which you can call it inferior.
It’s relevant, though, to consider the sociolinguistic context in which different dialects and registers are used. Obviously encouraging black children not to learn Standard English does them no service in their future lives, so it poses a delicate conundrum. It’s not good for formal education to be tangled up with value judgments - it’s both incorrect and unfair to tell a kid that he speaks “badly”, when in essence that means denigrating his family and community. Most black people become adept at code switching between Standard English and AAVE depending on their audience - this demonstrates a common phenomenon across languages.
I brought up racial issues in my post because I think some of the judgments that are applied to AAVE are tied in with broader racial sentiments; this is not a problem that I can even begin to describe let alone solve - but look at the importance of maintaining community ties through maintaining a particular dialect: a young black kid may be derided by his peers for “acting white” if he abandons AAVE, while on the other hand white society judges him if he doesn’t use perfect Standard English. There’s a lot of issues of class and race tied in with language, and sometimes I think disgust with particular dialects is a proxy for uncomfortable and socially unacceptable sentiments about groups of people (not just blacks, but southerners, “hillbillies”, “white trash” and so on.)
How would I teach my kid to talk? Well, I don’t remember my parents ever specifically teaching me the pronunciation /nu kli @r/, but there’s no doubt that I acquired it. Chances are that if I were to spawn, my kids would probably pick up my pronunciation. Ironic that I go to bat defending the non-standard pronunciation even though I use the standard one myself.
Descriptivism and prescriptivism are not really in opposition anyway; they’re often set as opposing ideas when in reality they are phenomena that apply in completely different contexts. Linguistics is inherently descriptive; it would be nonsense to talk about “prescriptive linguistics”, because linguistics is based upon study of the phenomenon of language, and it would be ridiculous to imagine studying it while at the same time prescribing certain forms. Imagine if a zoologist studying a community of bonobo chimpanzees was disgusted by their promiscuity, and tried to teach them “moral” behavior. Ridiculous, of course. Studying chimpanzees and applying moral judgments to sexuality are both reasonable things to do, but they’re completely incompatible.
So linguists grow used to the idea that describing, rather than prescribing, usage is what’s appropriate - and that’s certainly true, within the field of linguistics. In fact, to a certain extent prescription is an irritation when a linguist is recording native speakers, since they may end up modifying their speech so as to use “proper grammar” when a stranger is observing them, even though the linguist is particularly hoping to record a stigmatized grammatical form.
I think the reason why most linguists tend to be critical of prescriptivism in general is complex. For one, once you’ve neutrally studied language and seen the range of variation that exists in any language, you recognize how arbitrary it is to uphold one variety as “Proper X-ish” and take it for granted that this is proper. Furthermore, when you study the way language is used, it becomes obvious that many particular prescriptive norms are arbitrary rules that have never described the speech of any speech community, including educated speakers of the prestige variety. For instance, many people (bless their souls!) maintain that “It is I” is the proper form, and “It is me” is “bad grammar”, even though “It is I” is the result of the misapplication of a Latin grammatical rule to English, and it has never been the form used even amongst educated speakers of English except when they’re being extremely careful (and even then they tend to slip in “It is me”-type constructions sometimes.) In that instance, a form that is truly ungrammatical in English - that is, it’s not the way English is spoken; it can’t be generated by English grammar - is prescribed, and even the prescribers don’t manage to use it consistently. And often times, the people teaching certain usages don’t really understand them themselves: for instance, “hopefully” as an expression of the speaker’s attitude when attached to the beginning of a sentence is sometimes decried by usage mavens. They think that “hopefully” should be limited to uses like, “The boy walked hopefully to school” - meaning “filled with hope” or some such. But the people who decry “hopefully” never seem to notice that there’s a slew of other such adverbs that are used to describe an overall impression of the subject of conversation. None of them ever blink an eyelash at “unfortunately”. Then they start recommending we say things like “it is hoped that” - but what’s the advantage of arbitrarily deciding that a word with two meanings is to be limited to one of them, and then replacing the other with awkward, clumsy paraphrases when no one would have been confused by the original sentence?
When you start seeing how arbitrary and silly and sometimes straight-up wrong prescriptive rules often are, you begin to wonder at the very idea of prescribing certain usages. In my opinion, teaching the forms of Standard English, and particularly the norms of academic writing, is a very useful thing, because it’s folly to expect that the community at large is going to wake up one day and realize that (whether or not the dictionary says it) “nucular” is a perfectly ordinary pronunciation. We shouldn’t denigrate a student’s native speech patterns, though. I know a French woman - a linguistics professor - who grew up in the rural south of the country. In the south, under influence from other Romance languages, the phonemic contrast between vowels like /E/ and /e/ (English: less versus lace) has disappeared, whereas it still exists in Parisian French. She’s still sort of bitter at the way teachers in her childhood would tell all the students that they were speaking wrong (linguistic prescriptivism being far stronger and more strident in France than in the United States). If you study language and love it, you celebrate these regional variations rather than trying to encourage everyone to speak the exact same way.
Hey dude, over here.
Weird – this is the second time today someone on this board has sarcastically criticized me in the third person. I am not offended. I recognize the comedic device. I just think it’s odd. Anyhoo, to your point: 1. GWB affects his pronunciation to create the illusion of like-ness with part of his base. I doubt he’s said it that way all along and even if he has, he’s hardly a boot-strapper who’s had to make an effort to blend in with cultural and political elites – the wealthy get away with a lot more in this regard, for them it’s an eccentricity, for the poor, though, more proof of bad breeding; 2. Carter had a speech impediment and, as a result, said it more like “newkeeuh,” as Geoffrey Nunberg points out in the article cited by LHOD.
It’s limited to black populations but it’s been present in every region I listed earlier and it’s distinct.
I can’t say that I disagree with anything you wrote and I can understand your frustrations with the Nancy Grammars of the country (I was almost stoned by a partner for ending a sentence with a preposition in a brief. When I came back with the old Churchill quotation he said, “Churchill an expert on grammar?” sarcastically – whatever dude.)
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond. It’s been interesting.
I think that there a far more than you think who don’t ever grasp code switching for the very reason that they never learned the other code (prestige, I guess you call it), particularily here in the South, for fear that even learning to talk “white” might get them rolled in the 'hood. Instead, it hinders career opportunity. Fair? No. Reality? Yes. The same goes for poor whites too. It’s not a race issue, it’s a class issue.
I’ve been pit upon. 
I’m coming into this a little late, but I grew up saying “nuke-you-ler.” No one in my nuclear engineering course* corrected my pronunciation (or chemistry), nor did I realize I said it differently or that people would think I was less educated because I pronounced it differently.
True, I went to A&M, and that’s excuse enough for some people, but the first person I recall coming across that pronounced it differently and made an issue of it was my husband and his college buddies (who attended a liberal arts school in Dallas). At the time I didn’t care, because if the people in the field didn’t care why should I be concerned with what a liberal arts major said (I have to give some credit to my husband since he was a physics major, but at the time he was also arguing about how useless nuclear was - so how much weight could I give to his proper pronunciation speech if I thought the rest of his nuclear rant was flawed?).
Actually, I still don’t really care but then again I see the difference as being between focusing on what someone is saying compared to how someone is saying it. What do I care how someone says coffee, either, Boston, etc as long as I know what they’re saying?
Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize others are more interested in language than I am, and I try say it properly but it is hard. It is easier for me to say “nuke-you-ler” rather than “new-clee-'r” because to say “new-clee-'r” I have to stop and think about how I should say it then make sure I’m not resorting to rationalizing that “nuke-you-ler” is the right way to say it and having said “nuke-you-ler” my whole life its hard to retrain myself to say it the other way. Personally, if you’re in the middle of a conversation and you have to stop and think about which one you should use, its kind of disconcerting particularly if you can’t remember which is the correct version (which may seem odd, but if you do something one way your whole life it becomes habit and changing old habits is isn’t as easy as someone saying “you’re doing it wrong”). So from my perspective, if you’re going to make fun of how I talk (even if I’m trying) then I’d rather not talk to you.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I will pass on my poor pronunciation skills to my kids - they’re definitely going to learn pronunciation from their father and not me.
Probably should get used to it. It’s a pretty common rhetorical device.
So… it’s okay when “well-bred” people talk like this, but when commoners talk like the well-bred, it’s evidence that they have bad breeding? Huh? And since when has Jimmy Carter been an “elite”? Or Bill Clinton, who also drifted back and forth between the two pronunciations?
Where did that article say he had a speech impediment?
Oh, I don’t doubt that there are many black people who don’t learn Standard English, or not very well at least. And I have no doubt either that it limits their opportunities. None of these things are simple matters.
No big deal, bro, just an observation. I am plenty used to it.
Now, let’s try this again,
Did you even read what I wrote? Here I’ll give it to you again with some annotations. I don’t think you were making the connection between pronouns and antecedents. I wrote, “the wealthy get away with a lot more in this regard [doing anything “different” than that which is “proper”], for them it’s [doing anything “different” than that which is “proper”], an eccentricity, for the poor, though, [it – doing anything “different” than that which is “proper” – is], more proof of bad breeding.” This has nothing to do with a common person speaking “properly” and being criticized for it. In fact it is the exact opposite – in case you don’t connect the dots again – a common person speaking “improperly” and being criticized for it. As for Carter being elite, no. He certainly isn’t uneducated, but he is from rural Georgia – this still doesn’t matter because he doesn’t say “nu kyu lar” as noted below. I am not aware that Clinton drifted back and forth, but if he did my guess would be that he did for the same reasons W does.
It didn’t. It said he pronounced it “newkeeuh,” not “nu kyu lar” (i.e no rearrangement of syllables).
I put the phrase “as Geoffrey Nunberg points out . . .” at the end of the sentence because it was only modifying the part of the sentence describing how Carter pronounces the word. If I wanted it to modify the whole sentence, I would have put the phrase at the front. I don’t think it was unclear, but if it was, my apologies.
That doesn’t adress how someone who is manifestly not an elite, such as Clinton, or Carter, can become an elite despite mispronouncing the word regularly.
So, it’s only this one particular way of “mispronouncing” nuclear that is social anathema? There are two common pronunciations for this word. You keep insisting that using one of them is some sort of social stigma. Well, if that’s true, shouldn’t the stigma be even greater for Carter, who used a third, even more idiosyncratic pronunciation? I don’t see how pointing out that Carter used an even odder pronunciation remotely strengthens your claims.
You probably should have actually read that cite LHoD posted, then, since that’s where I got it from. And, again, how does this bolster your claim? Even if it is a deliberate choice to use this pronunciation, doesn’t the fact that "mis"pronouncing this word apparently work as an effective populist strategy effectively cut the legs out from under your argument that there is some sort of social stigma against it?
It’s funny that you’re so keen on criticizing how other people speak, considering how you write.
So, Carter has a speech impediment? You got a cite for that? I can’t say I’ve ever noticed it, although I certainly haven’t made a study of his speech patterns.
I don’t know that I go for the “poor white” thing; I don’t consider myself to be “poor white” but I do have a very distictive Texas twang that has been ridiculed more than once, although very seldom by the same person.
While you may be right in saying “it’s a class issue,” I refuse to place myself, my family and most of my friends in any sort of “lower” class, especially on the basis of tonal quality, pronunciation, enunciation, etc., etc. Who the hell ever told the “elitists” they were superior to anyone?
You’re new here, right?
(Miller’s thought process – argument one proved to be misreading – ignore rebuke move-on to argument two) No it doesn’t, Carter and Clinton are addressed later – you even comment about my comment about Carter and Clinton – do your posts have multiple sources – a team of writers that don’t review one another’s work?
I think Carter did suffer a stigma, from his speech impediment and accent. Furthermore, I am not insisting there is a social stigma, I am recognizing it. That you could pretend, after three pages of debate over how to pronounce the freaking word, that some folks don’t stigmatize the “nu kyu lar” pronunciation is beyond me. I don’t see how we’ll make much progress here.
I did read it, quickly. I apologize for any inconvenience my oversight of the Clinton fact might have caused you and yours.
To answer your question, it bolsters my claim, or at least doesn’t defeat it, because the pronunciation is being employed with intent and knowledge that it is not the “preferred” pronunciation, thereby inherently acknowledging the existence of a preferred pronunciation. Furthermore, it is being employed by men already in power, not those seeking to earn respect. Again, if after three pages of debate on this topic, you don’t recognize that “some sort of social stigma” surrounds the “nu kyu lar” pronunciation, then I can’t help you.
I have yet to criticize anyone but you, and that’s for failing to comprehend what you’ve read not how you speak. I have made very clear that I think that those who say “nu kyu lar” will by doing so subject themselves to criticism from others. Do I need to “cite?” this thread for proof, or will you acknowledge what it is we’ve been discussing?
I’m sorry if my writing has not been up to your standards. Your reading comprehension and honesty have not been up to mine.
Just my ears. “Newkeeuh” sounds to me a little like a speech impediment, unless Jimmy has invented his own accent.
Finally, Miller, I got no beef with you, other than you seem like you’re picking a fight and you’ve repeatedly misrepresented what I’ve said/written.
I certianly don’t think so, or at least don’t think it should be so, but it cannot be denied that those in power make the rules (or at least try to).
Well, I can’t deny that my attitude towards rules and those who make them hasn’t cost me dearly. Even so, bridging a gap that was based on a very pronounced regional accent has never seemed worth the effort. To my ear, the elitists were the ones who “tawked peaculyar.”