languages (Ebonics)

Quite true, but ultimately irrevalent. Were, examples aside, your linguistics courses taught in BEV or Standard English? Standard is generally a more effective means of data interchange. Linguists can be compared to the people who check the plumbing, writers are the ones that flush. We're looking at things from a number of different perspectives here. The linguist has a purely mechanical interpretation, others a sociological bias, or an artistic one. We have to be careful we don't miss each others' points, because we all have very differing backgrounds. I don't have a problem with dialect, it is as surely interesting as it is non-standar - and standardisation is what makes things run. I use dialect in some of my writing, but there are certainly purposes and occasions where it is inappropriate. In those, I would use standard English. Here in New England we speak differently, although the dialect is not as extreme as BEV, an is mostly pronunciational. Notice how media insists on a standard pronunciation, that's why all our local tv new readers sound like foreigners. It's really amusing to hear them try to say Quonnochontaug for the first time.