9 Mar
2000
9 Mar
'00
11:43 p.m.
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.
On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
::It's still dialectical, however, like Gullah,
and inappropriate as a
::basis for standard English. Further, use of the dialect effectively
::condemns the user to a lower socio-economic status, which seems very unfair.
::Upward mobility is usually preceded by change in language to that of the
::upper group. It almost seemed like the Ebonics movement was determined
::to keep the poor in their place.
Since my degree actually happens to be linguistics ...
BEV/Ebonics is considered a valid dialect, and the rules of it are
documented. Where linguistics makes no comment is the appropriateness
or social applicability, or even correctness. If people say it and
other people understand it, then it's grammatical. Anyone who says
otherwise is William F. Buckley, Jr. :-)
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Cameron Kaiser * Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)ptloma.edu
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