re Re: re Re: re Re: re Re: re Re: SLSL language

[S.R. Prozak]

> Keith:
> >MalignD's position about the teaching of the
> >fundamentals 
> >of
> >grammar doesn't have squat to do with imperialism and
> >oppression. 
> 
> I disagree.  Whose fundamentals? Whose grammar?
> When dominant culture uses the teaching of grammar to
> suppress another culture and demean its members (as
> reflected in Malign's charaterization of Black English
> -- whose grammar has in fact informed some very
> beautiful literature, as "mangled" and "aberrant", for
> example) it's fair to talk about "oppression", and
> when an empire does it, it's part of imperialism. 

Or you could both be using the wrong model.

Cultures need to stay isolated or they assimilate each other.

I think MalignD makes a good point, and you also; my suggestion is that because of our imperialistic politics, we're thinking of this in a dualistic manner and thus not seeing the simple truth of it.

> Black English serves eloquence and clarity of
> communication as well as any other kind of English, if
> you know the lingo. 
> 
> -Doug 

I'm a cultural relativist; who cares what black English sounds like to me? I'm not black.

> "By the time he left, they had learned each other's
> names and a few words in the respective
> languages--afraid, happy, sleep, love . . . the
> beginnings of a new tongue, a pidgin which they were
> perhaps the only two speakers of in the world."
> (GR, 351)

And from a cybernetic model? ;)


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