5 ms·

> It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage Almost no one is suggesting that.

> It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage Almost no one is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that AAVE shouldn't be derided as talking "like hoodlums" (to quote the parent comment). Employment discrimination based upon someone retaining elements of AAVE is considered acceptable to some, but I've never seen them argue that discriminating against someone who speaks New England English is acceptable (or seen them address how showing the influence of one dialect is much more harmful to your employment chances than showing the influence of the other). It makes sense that people should learn General American and try to use it to facilitate communication, but the negative stigma attached to particular dialects and not others is problematic and encourages bigotry.

pluma 10y ago
The negative stigma is not about the language, it's about the ethno-social group as a whole. I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Both AAVE and Southern American English have negative connotations. The only difference is that AAVE also marks the speaker with an ethnicity that also has negative connotations (going by studies into biases, even black Americans have negative associations with black people). Fix the negative connotations of that ethnicity and people think of AAVE speakers no less than of uneducated white people. The reason that AAVE even in isolation "sounds uneducated" is that it is not only related to Southern American English (which already "sounds uneducated" on its own) but also that it simplifies some grammar and phonemes from English. No matter what complexity it brings to the table by itself, those changes make it look simpler in comparison and speaking simplified language makes a speaker appear less sophisticated. AAVE by itself sounds unsophisticated to GA or RP speakers. That simply cannot be helped. It's inherent to the language itself. The only thing you can hope for (short of replacing GA with something that makes AAVE sound less jarring -- or having AAVE somehow become the language of the sociopolitical elite) is that the association moves from "hoodlums" to "inbred rednecks". Note: I'm not saying AAVE "is" objectively less sophisticated. I'm saying it objectively sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of GA or RP. Even if you had never met a black person before and never heard AAVE before, as a GA speaker you would think AAVE sounds less sophisticated than GA because of the objective reasons I laid out. If you can think of a scenario where AAVE becomes a language everybody wants to speak in order to show off how sophisticated they are (like French in medieval England) or where GA is replaced by a language that is different enough to simply make AAVE sound completely foreign (like if the official language of the US was Chinese or Spanish), I don't see any plausible way to fight its negative connotations (unlike those of blackness in general).
- Chathamization 10y ago
  > I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Not sure how you can see this as a red herring. It's a pretty good example of how variations that aren't General American aren't held to the same standard. Some are considered a sign of poor education, while others are merely considered regionalisms. This reflects an underlying bias. The fact that rural Southern dialects carry a stigma that New England dialects don't only provides more evidence of this. You can say that it seems less sophisticated to you, but I doubt that this is merely an objective statement entirely disconnected from the culture that treats these dialects as less sophisticated. Linguists don't seem to consider them less sophisticated (kind of the point of the article, which was written by a linguist).
  - pluma 10y ago
    > Linguists don't seem to consider them less sophisticated I never said AAVE is less sophisticated. I even went out of my way to make it clear that I'm not saying AAVE is less sophisticated. AAVE contains grammar that is based on simplified English grammar. Simplified grammar sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of the original grammar. This makes AAVE sound less sophisticated to English speakers. Quod erat demonstrandum. I'm not even a native speaker of English and this is obvious to me. Heck, this is immediately obvious if you try to learn English (or any language) as a second language: if you don't speak the language well people will treat you as less intelligent because you are not able to communicate at the same level of sophistication (simply because you lack the words and the grammatical details). This isn't awesome. This certainly isn't how you'd want it to be if you could just define how things are. But this is how things are and it's certainly not unique to English. The same is true for German, Chinese, Japanese and I'm fairly certain I've heard similar anecdotes from people studying indigenous languages. Please don't simply ignore my entire argument because you think I'm trying to go full Hegel and claim black people are less intelligent. You couldn't be further from reading me.
    - Chathamization 10y ago

pluma 10y ago

The negative stigma is not about the language, it's about the ethno-social group as a whole. I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Both AAVE and Southern American English have negative connotations. The only difference is that AAVE also marks the speaker with an ethnicity that also has negative connotations (going by studies into biases, even black Americans have negative associations with black people). Fix the negative connotations of that ethnicity and people think of AAVE speakers no less than of uneducated white people. The reason that AAVE even in isolation "sounds uneducated" is that it is not only related to Southern American English (which already "sounds uneducated" on its own) but also that it simplifies some grammar and phonemes from English. No matter what complexity it brings to the table by itself, those changes make it look simpler in comparison and speaking simplified language makes a speaker appear less sophisticated. AAVE by itself sounds unsophisticated to GA or RP speakers. That simply cannot be helped. It's inherent to the language itself. The only thing you can hope for (short of replacing GA with something that makes AAVE sound less jarring -- or having AAVE somehow become the language of the sociopolitical elite) is that the association moves from "hoodlums" to "inbred rednecks". Note: I'm not saying AAVE "is" objectively less sophisticated. I'm saying it objectively sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of GA or RP. Even if you had never met a black person before and never heard AAVE before, as a GA speaker you would think AAVE sounds less sophisticated than GA because of the objective reasons I laid out. If you can think of a scenario where AAVE becomes a language everybody wants to speak in order to show off how sophisticated they are (like French in medieval England) or where GA is replaced by a language that is different enough to simply make AAVE sound completely foreign (like if the official language of the US was Chinese or Spanish), I don't see any plausible way to fight its negative connotations (unlike those of blackness in general).

Chathamization 10y ago
> I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Not sure how you can see this as a red herring. It's a pretty good example of how variations that aren't General American aren't held to the same standard. Some are considered a sign of poor education, while others are merely considered regionalisms. This reflects an underlying bias. The fact that rural Southern dialects carry a stigma that New England dialects don't only provides more evidence of this. You can say that it seems less sophisticated to you, but I doubt that this is merely an objective statement entirely disconnected from the culture that treats these dialects as less sophisticated. Linguists don't seem to consider them less sophisticated (kind of the point of the article, which was written by a linguist).
- pluma 10y ago
  > Linguists don't seem to consider them less sophisticated I never said AAVE is less sophisticated. I even went out of my way to make it clear that I'm not saying AAVE is less sophisticated. AAVE contains grammar that is based on simplified English grammar. Simplified grammar sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of the original grammar. This makes AAVE sound less sophisticated to English speakers. Quod erat demonstrandum. I'm not even a native speaker of English and this is obvious to me. Heck, this is immediately obvious if you try to learn English (or any language) as a second language: if you don't speak the language well people will treat you as less intelligent because you are not able to communicate at the same level of sophistication (simply because you lack the words and the grammatical details). This isn't awesome. This certainly isn't how you'd want it to be if you could just define how things are. But this is how things are and it's certainly not unique to English. The same is true for German, Chinese, Japanese and I'm fairly certain I've heard similar anecdotes from people studying indigenous languages. Please don't simply ignore my entire argument because you think I'm trying to go full Hegel and claim black people are less intelligent. You couldn't be further from reading me.
  - Chathamization 10y ago