A linguist weighs in on Ebonics

[deedle at loop.com]

Thought you p-list folks might find this interesting.

-- deedle


>[This is from linguist Suzette Haden Elgin's Linguistics and Science
>Fiction online newsletter for January 1997.]
>
>4. Now, to Ebonics. I've been doing this newsletter since 1980, and I have
>never before had so many letters from so many people asking for my input;
>apparently Ebonics really has "legs." In the March/April print issue I'll
>do my best to respond in detail; for this bulletin I am just going to hit
>the high (or low, as you like) spots.
>
>a.        The first thing I have to say is that the inner-city kids have
>excellent excuses for *their* ignorance about language and grammar and
>linguistics; the bevy of adults pontificating in the media about the
>Ebonics flap have none. I'm more than willing to admit that the whole thing
>is the fault, in great measure, of the linguists; by and large, they have
>thrown up their hands in despair and fled the field, leaving the messes to
>fester. That's true. And I don't expect academics and pundits in other
>fields and disciplines to be able to explain binding theory or regressive
>implosive bifurcated velar fricatives or anything of that kind. But the
>degree of ignorance that has been demonstrated about the simplest and most
>basic facts -- and the arrogance with which it has been set forth -- is
>simply unacceptable. I am disgusted.
>
>b.      Black English, under any of its names, is in fact a
>well-established and much-studied dialect of English. We used textbooks on
>Black English when I was professoring in the early 70s; it's not news.
>There are systematic differences between BE and the mythical Standard
>English, and some of the differences do occur in African languages (and
>other non-African ones). It has been well known for decades that the
>variety of BE that is used in our inner cities, especially in economically
>blighted areas, is steadily moving farther and farther away from the
>mythical Standard. In 1972 or thereabouts I routinely provided my
>BE-speaking students with a set of rewrite rules that allowed them to
>convert BE to SE for their written work; their grades went up immediately.
>None of this is new, in any way.
>
>c.      What is called "Standard English" (meaning Standard American
>Mainstream English) does not exist in speech at all -- nobody speaks
>Standard English. Standard English is a written variety of English, about
>which there is *rough* -- and only rough -- agreement. It is also used for
>reading aloud and for performance, but becomes less "standard" in those
>circumstances because the readers'/performers' own dialects interfere with
>its standardness while in use. Sometime in the 70s I submitted to College
>English (English prof academic journal) an actual attempt at a systematic
>description of the characteristics of SE, in the same format a linguist
>would use to describe the grammar of any other language or dialect; the
>editors themselves could not come to any consensus on my description, and
>it was therefore rejected.
>
>d.      Everybody speaks some dialect, and all of those dialects are
>nonstandard. Which nonstandard dialects are looked down upon and which are
>admired is a matter not of logic but of fashion. Presidents Truman,
>Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter all spoke nonstandard English (four different
>varieties); President Clinton's dialect is nonstandard, even when he is
>"performing" with roughly standard syntax. Ozark English, Navajo English,
>Black English -- all are nonstandard. The problem is that people who ought
>to know better equate "nonstandard" with "substandard," for starters.
>(There are no "substandard" dialects, by definition; if something were
>substandard it could not be called a dialect.) Then they go on and compound
>their error by using the words "wrong, error, mistake" to refer to the
>dialect differences; since those words in English are also used to refer to
>morality, a huge semantic mess is created. When you tell kids that the way
>they talk is "wrong," you put them in a bind; they have to go home and obey
>and respect all the adults around them, who also talk "wrong." There is a
>huge lexical gap in English, where the word that means "grammatical or
>factual error" ought to go; linguists try to substitute "inappropriate" or
>"unacceptable," but those words immediately become semantically
>contaminated and are understood once again as having something to do with
>immorality.
>
>e.      Finally.... There is an enormous testing and publishing and
>"remedial" industry, the existence of which depends on maintaining all the
>myths about Standard English,  the myths about differences from the
>mythical Standard being "wrong," and so on. Getting rid of it would be a
>task roughly equivalent to getting rid of the defense industry.
>
>        There you are. I have tried to be fair and accurate, and am willing
>to discuss this further if you like. It would be fair and accurate to say
>that Standard American Mainstream English is, itself, science fiction.
>------------------------ end of excerpt ----------------------------------
>