NP Ebonics (was It ain't only Rock & Roll, it's Jazz too)

[davemarc]

From: David Morris <fqmorris at yahoo.com>
>
> Amen!  Talk about enslavement.  Too many poor inner city black children
already
> face a tough uphill battle to be educated out of their "cultural"
legacies:
> illiterate parents and peers who place little value on education.  They
don't
> need to be taught ghetto-talk.  They already know it by heart.  And to
suggest
> that it be embraced as a standard is absurd.
>
There might be a big straw man here.  As far as I know, the main point about
recognizing "Ebonics" has to do with getting teachers (and others) to
respect the dialect or home language of their students as a legitimate form
of communication, and not as ungrammatical, "ghetto talk," an inferior
dialect, a sign of ignorance, the legacy of "illiterate parents," etc.
Success would increase linguistic awareness and combat generations of
inaccurate judgments that have stigmatized and marginalized many
practitioners of "non-standard" English, young students as well as adults.

Linguistic Society of America
http://www.lsadc.org/ebonics.html

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
http://www.umass.edu/aae/position_statement_.htm

Policy Statement of the TESOL Board
http://www.cal.org/ebonics/tesolebo.html

Other Statements from the Center for Applied Linguistics
http://www.lsadc.org/ebonics.html
http://www.cal.org/ericcll/News/9703Dialect.html
http://www.cal.org/ebonics/fillmore.html
http://www.cal.org/ebonics/ebfillmo.html

d.