NP Dawg, Dog, Dialect, Language

[davemarc]

From: Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com>
>
> Imagine what you will.  "Dawg" for "dog" is an
> aberrant spelling.  It's a statement about the
> spelling, not about the person who spelled it.  If
> such spellings are consistent in African American
> English, then African American English employs
> aberrant spelling.

Language isn't as cut-and-dry as it may seem.  Let's look at the pedigree of
"dawg" for "dog."

My Oxford Dictionary of Slang dates it back to 1898, defines it as
"Representing a colloquial or dialectical pronunciation [of dog]," and
offers this 1939 citation from Osbert Lancaster:  "Beaten copper reminders
that a man's best friend is his dawg (beloved of the golf-playing classes)."
I believe that Lancaster was a British writer and cartoonist who satirized
the upper-class.  (Or should I have written "satirised"?)  So "dawg" seems
to be a pet expression in English English.

Regarding the other side of Atlantic (and another side of English), the
librarian and researcher George Thompson has cited the following example
from the 1933 book "A Cop Remembers" by author Cornelius W. Willemse:  "Did
you ever drink watermelon buck [a drink made from fermented watermelon
juice]?  Well, take mah tip, Son, and don't.  That's the stuff that makes a
rabbit look for a dawg."  Thompson writes that the author was "attempting to
represent AAVE speech."  And the cartoon character Deputy Dawg dates back to
1962, at least.

If "dawg" accomplishes what it needs to accomplish through its spelling in
England and in the United States,
"mangled" and "aberrant" wouldn't be the most appropriate terms for
describing it.  "Accurate" and "effective" would be better.  How would "dog"
capture the real English pronunciations that "dawg" captures?

More recently, "dawg" seems to have taken on another definition.  In 1999 a
journalist writing a slang column for the San Jose Mercury wrote that "dog"
or "dawg" could mean "a close acquaintance or friend."  (She also wrote that
"dog" could mean "A guy who takes advantage or cheats on his girlfriend or
wife.")  I've also noticed that "dawg" can mean something like "soul-mate."
In 2001, singer-songwriter Alicia Keys spoke with a Rolling Stone reporter
about studying classical music for 12 years:  "There's classical music
that's for the queen.  Very light and airy.  Never liked that stuff.  All
classical music is good for fingering and speed and building your skills,
but for my heart, hated that shit.  I gravitated toward Chopin.  His
preludes?  He has these songs that are so deep and have so much passion you
say, 'What was he possibly thinking?  What was he feeling?'  Chopin is my
dawg."

It seems to me that Rolling Stone got that spelling right.  A new species of
"dawg" has arrived!

And Keys, who's extraordinarily successful, seems to be bi-dialectic.
>
> And if the "standard" is imaginary, what is it, then,
> so remarkably keeping newspapers, scholarly works,
> non-fictional prose, etc., etc., spelling words and
> conjugating verbs so similarly?  And makes it possible
> for us so readily to note the examples that fall
> outside this imaginary standard?  That allows us to
> note that African-American English (to cite only the
> example we're debating) is non-standard, however much
> you dislike the term?
>
Standards for mainstream American English are surely being taught in every
school in the nation--not just to give students the advantages of linguistic
conformity, but because the schools
are judged according to standardized tests.  But linguists have
found that that the assorted varieties of African-American English have
their own standards as well.  In a way, simply saying that African-American
English is non-standard is like saying that Australian English is
non-standard.  That may seem to make some sense if you're from the USA and
not thinking about the different varieties of English around the world (and
also within your national boundaries), but
it makes no sense at all if you're from Australia and have any sense of the
differences.  It's better to recognize that such terms as African-American
English, American English, Australian English, and even something like
"standardized written American English" all can be useful and accurate in
dealing with languages.

d.