Pynchon and Dialect (was Re: SLSL language)

[davemarc]

From: Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com>
>
> Hurston,
> Ellison, Pynchon, Joyce, Faulkner, whomever -- the
> prose that appears in their work is artifice, the
> singular creation of singular artists.  Do you think
> Ralph Ellison or Richard Wright or James Baldwin or
> Langston Hughes or Gwendolyn Brooks were not taught a
> prescriptive grammar?

I'm sure they were, but their literary voices were enriched and informed by
their interest in dialect--the vocabulary, grammar, expressions, etc.  Same
goes for Pynchon, who captures the varieties in print.
>
> In any case it has nothing to do with whether Black
> children are served by being schooled that mangled
> grammar and aberrant spellings are okay for them, less
> they feel disrespected.
>
It's pretty widely accepted among people who study language that African
American English is an authentic, fully functional language form, with rules
of grammar.  (The same goes for Appalachian English.)  Those who want
recognition of AAE in education simply want its users to be respected as
articulate in AAE while they are being schooled in the standardized or
mainstream or scholastic form--grammar and spelling included, of course.

d.