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> 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 A

> 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 Again, this is showing inherent biases. An AAVE or Southern dialect speaker speaking GA as well as a speaker of a New England dialect will be treated quite differently. The former is much more likely to be thrown in the "not speaking the language well" category; the latter is much more likely to be dismissed as merely a regional variation. > AAVE contains grammar that is based on simplified English grammar. But that's not true, as the paper mentions. Again, shouldn't we be deferring to the linguistics here? > 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. I honestly have no idea how you got this from my comments.

pluma 10y ago
> An AAVE or Southern dialect speaker speaking GA as well as a speaker of a New England dialect [..] I'm assuming you mean speaking perfectly fluent GA but throwing in a few loanwords. Indeed then the speaker isn't using simplified grammar, but they're still signalling that they're a speaker of the language they're importing loanwords from and this leaks into how people assess them -- just like using French loan words is often used (often unsuccessfully) to signal being "cultured". I initially already said that people who speak AAVE also happen to fall into a socioethnic group who have negative connotations outside of their language. This is perfect evidence for that: speaking AAVE signals you are part of that group, so all biases against that group are applied to you. In that case AAVE itself isn't even relevant and might as well be Mandarin or French (as long as it uniquely signals association with the group). Heck, you even see white kids try to emulate some form of AAVE to associate themselves with what they perceive as "black culture" (often based on their exact stereotypes). > But that's not true, as the paper mentions. It's actually not what the paper argues. Pullum argues against the misconception that AAVE is "English with mistakes" and gives examples how these idiosyncracies GA/RP speakers perceive as "mistakes" actually follow consistent rules. Note how I said it is "based on" simplified English grammar. Dropping consonants and auxiliaries is superficially a simplification even if it follows rules. The production rules may be actually more complex because these rules come on top of whatever rules there were to begin with, but the produced result is simplified. The outcome is, to a GA but non-AAVE speaker's ears simplified (if only because they don't understand the additional production rules). > I honestly have no idea how you got this from my comments. You picked a single sentence from my comment and presented it out of context -- a context in which I clarified the exact meaning of that sentence and rejected what you were arguing I was saying. I thought it was safe to assume you did this in bad faith. I may have thought wrong, in which case I apologize. -- To reiterate: the reasons AAVE has negative connotations are twofold: 1. America really has problems with black people. As an outsider the entire situation seems absurd but there are a lot of historical nuances that have ultimately resulted in a standstill where white people pretend they're not racist and black people pretend everybody hates them. This is probably not easy to solve but is the real problem that needs solving (preferably by reducing the racism, not simply using less blatantly insulting language to discriminate black people). 2. AAVE to a GA/RP non-AAVE speaker sounds like a dumbed down version of GA/RP (because they parse it as GA/RP and it's close enough to work in "error compatibility mode"). There is no way to fix this but it's less of a problem if non-AAVE speakers don't already think the "kind of people" who happen to speak AAVE are stupid/criminal/undesirable (see #1). Trying to fix #1 by fixing #2 or trying to fix #2 in isolation is futile and is simply not going to happen.
- tptacek 10y ago
  You keep suggesting that AAVE is a simplification of Standard English. But your evidence is superficial: you "drop" a consonant, and so have subtracted from the language, ergo, simplification. But double-negatives don't subtract from the language or its complexity: they add to it. Some of AAVE's rules might seem "simpler" than SE's, and others more "complicated", but trying to plot both dialects along a spectrum of complexity seems like an unrewarding project. There's no doubt AAVE sounds, to users of SWE, like a "dumbed down" version of the language. But as the essay points out repeatedly, the irony is that it's the SWE-users who are demonstrating ignorance. AAVE is just close enough to SWE to trigger the cognitive biases that trick people into making judgements they aren't qualified to make.
  - pluma 10y ago
    > There's no doubt AAVE sounds, to users of SWE, like a "dumbed down" version of the language. So we are in agreement. > But as the essay points out repeatedly, the irony is that it's the SWE-users who are demonstrating ignorance. Because they don't speak AAVE and thus parse it as GA/RP/whatever. Yes. > AAVE is just close enough to SWE to trigger the cognitive biases that trick people into making judgements they aren't qualified to make. In other words: non-AAVE speakers look at AAVE and see broken GA/RP/whatever. So we are in agreement. EDIT: I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but: I'm not saying AAVE is dumbed down GA/RP; I'm not saying AAVE is unsophisticated; I'm just saying that how non-AAVE GA/RP speakers perceive AAVE is a result of their inability to speak AAVE (mixed in with the racial problems in the US because AAVE usage signals race) and that the gut reaction "semi-intelligible = stupid" is not unique to English or a race thing. EDIT2: Also, for the umpteenth time: I'm not disagreeing with the article. I didn't comment on the article. I commented on someone (flagged) who disagreed with the article and actually argued that treating AAVE as a "real language" would result in bad consequences. Apparently my comment was deemed interesting enough to be detached, which is why you think I'm responding to the article itself.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      I'm re-reading your comment and feel like I must have mis-read it. Either way: we don't appear to have anything to disagree about. Sorry about that!

pluma 10y ago

> An AAVE or Southern dialect speaker speaking GA as well as a speaker of a New England dialect [..] I'm assuming you mean speaking perfectly fluent GA but throwing in a few loanwords. Indeed then the speaker isn't using simplified grammar, but they're still signalling that they're a speaker of the language they're importing loanwords from and this leaks into how people assess them -- just like using French loan words is often used (often unsuccessfully) to signal being "cultured". I initially already said that people who speak AAVE also happen to fall into a socioethnic group who have negative connotations outside of their language. This is perfect evidence for that: speaking AAVE signals you are part of that group, so all biases against that group are applied to you. In that case AAVE itself isn't even relevant and might as well be Mandarin or French (as long as it uniquely signals association with the group). Heck, you even see white kids try to emulate some form of AAVE to associate themselves with what they perceive as "black culture" (often based on their exact stereotypes). > But that's not true, as the paper mentions. It's actually not what the paper argues. Pullum argues against the misconception that AAVE is "English with mistakes" and gives examples how these idiosyncracies GA/RP speakers perceive as "mistakes" actually follow consistent rules. Note how I said it is "based on" simplified English grammar. Dropping consonants and auxiliaries is superficially a simplification even if it follows rules. The production rules may be actually more complex because these rules come on top of whatever rules there were to begin with, but the produced result is simplified. The outcome is, to a GA but non-AAVE speaker's ears simplified (if only because they don't understand the additional production rules). > I honestly have no idea how you got this from my comments. You picked a single sentence from my comment and presented it out of context -- a context in which I clarified the exact meaning of that sentence and rejected what you were arguing I was saying. I thought it was safe to assume you did this in bad faith. I may have thought wrong, in which case I apologize. -- To reiterate: the reasons AAVE has negative connotations are twofold: 1. America really has problems with black people. As an outsider the entire situation seems absurd but there are a lot of historical nuances that have ultimately resulted in a standstill where white people pretend they're not racist and black people pretend everybody hates them. This is probably not easy to solve but is the real problem that needs solving (preferably by reducing the racism, not simply using less blatantly insulting language to discriminate black people). 2. AAVE to a GA/RP non-AAVE speaker sounds like a dumbed down version of GA/RP (because they parse it as GA/RP and it's close enough to work in "error compatibility mode"). There is no way to fix this but it's less of a problem if non-AAVE speakers don't already think the "kind of people" who happen to speak AAVE are stupid/criminal/undesirable (see #1). Trying to fix #1 by fixing #2 or trying to fix #2 in isolation is futile and is simply not going to happen.

tptacek 10y ago
You keep suggesting that AAVE is a simplification of Standard English. But your evidence is superficial: you "drop" a consonant, and so have subtracted from the language, ergo, simplification. But double-negatives don't subtract from the language or its complexity: they add to it. Some of AAVE's rules might seem "simpler" than SE's, and others more "complicated", but trying to plot both dialects along a spectrum of complexity seems like an unrewarding project. There's no doubt AAVE sounds, to users of SWE, like a "dumbed down" version of the language. But as the essay points out repeatedly, the irony is that it's the SWE-users who are demonstrating ignorance. AAVE is just close enough to SWE to trigger the cognitive biases that trick people into making judgements they aren't qualified to make.
- pluma 10y ago
  > There's no doubt AAVE sounds, to users of SWE, like a "dumbed down" version of the language. So we are in agreement. > But as the essay points out repeatedly, the irony is that it's the SWE-users who are demonstrating ignorance. Because they don't speak AAVE and thus parse it as GA/RP/whatever. Yes. > AAVE is just close enough to SWE to trigger the cognitive biases that trick people into making judgements they aren't qualified to make. In other words: non-AAVE speakers look at AAVE and see broken GA/RP/whatever. So we are in agreement. EDIT: I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but: I'm not saying AAVE is dumbed down GA/RP; I'm not saying AAVE is unsophisticated; I'm just saying that how non-AAVE GA/RP speakers perceive AAVE is a result of their inability to speak AAVE (mixed in with the racial problems in the US because AAVE usage signals race) and that the gut reaction "semi-intelligible = stupid" is not unique to English or a race thing. EDIT2: Also, for the umpteenth time: I'm not disagreeing with the article. I didn't comment on the article. I commented on someone (flagged) who disagreed with the article and actually argued that treating AAVE as a "real language" would result in bad consequences. Apparently my comment was deemed interesting enough to be detached, which is why you think I'm responding to the article itself.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I'm re-reading your comment and feel like I must have mis-read it. Either way: we don't appear to have anything to disagree about. Sorry about that!