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African American Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes (1999) [pdf]
- mabbo 9y agoLanguages change, evolve, and split into new languages. This has gone on forever- why would it stop now?
- jbob2000 9y agoIt causes segregation based on race; Black people speak this language, white people speak this one. We're trying to bring these groups together, diving their language won't help at all.
- tempYeez 9y agoThat seems like a very inflammatory statement. I doubt what most african americans want out of desegregation is their culture wiped out and replace with american white culture. The more apt solution would be to stop being prejudice towards other american subcultures.
- monochromatic 9y agoIt’s not just a racial things. Rural whites have their own way of speaking that’s stigmatized in professional settings too.
- tempYeez 9y agoAgreed it's a cultural one. African Americans aren't a race they are an ethnic group with their own culture including dialect. This dialect isn't shared among african americans and lets say Nigerians.
- psyc 9y agoIt would take a lot of confidence and charisma even for me to pull off my local white, urban dialect in the workplace. I really don't think it's asking too much to adopt a standard depending on context and audience.
- rhizome 9y agoIt causes segregation based on race Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Why isn't it a result of segregation?
- mirimir 9y agoYes, this is more likely. I suspect that there was also a desire for private communication using code words, especially before slavery was abolished.
- monochromatic 9y agoThe causation probably goes both directions here.
- Karunamon 9y agoIndeed. It's a bit ridiculous to assume that how someone speaks doesn't influence the perceptions of others.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoI'm from rural Arkansas, and from my perspective, the dialect that is spoken there shares more in common with AAVE than standard English. The difference that I see is that I was expected to learn and speak standard English in a professional environment while the perception among my peers seems to be that those who natively speak AAVE expect their dialect to be accepted in all settings. Note that I was careful to say that this is my perception of the expectations of others. My experience shows that native AAVE speakers adapt their language in professional circumstances in exactly the same way I adapt my own.
- Pharylon 9y agoYeah, this. It's called "code switching" and we all do it. The way you talk to your boss is not the way you talk to your friends is not the way you talk to your Grandpa is not the way you talk on Facebook etc.
- rhizome 9y agoI don't understand the "expect" part, but are you trying to describe code-switching? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
- guelo 9y agoI don't know about the perception among your peers, but most AAVE speakers I know make an effort not to use it in professional settings.
- mikeash 9y agoIt's also caused by segregation based on race. Fully integrated communities don't develop racially-linked dialects. In any case, talking about whether or not it helps seems to be pointless. The dialect exists whether it's helpful or not. If it's an obstacle to bringing people together, then we need to figure out ways to overcome that obstacle, not wish it away.
- jbob2000 9y agoAs it relates to the article, the school board basically sanctioned speaking this dialect. My thought was that, this action is increasing the obstacles to overcome: textbooks are written in "white" english and the teachers speak that way, but they're promoting that it's ok to not read, write, or understand the dialect, furthering the divide between the communities.
- ak_yo 9y agoI'd be interested in reading evidence that supports a causal link between AAVE usage and segregation. To the best of my knowledge, no research has shown this to be the case, but I might be missing something. Did you have a particular study in mind?
- rhizome 9y agojbob2000 rarely participates in the inflammatory threads he sparks, so the smart money here is probably in avoiding anything with a question mark.
- gugagore 9y agoRecognizing a difference where there is one does not cause segregation based on race. If we have to choose a causal direction, I'm pretty sure it goes the other way. Otherwise we'd say things like "The government are trying to take my job away." (what British English speakers would say) to suggest someone is stupid, but no one does. That sentence, from my American-English perspective, sounds just as "different" as "The government be trying to take my job away.", which is grammatical in Black English.
- mirimir 9y agoRight. I mean, is American English just British English with mistakes? Or is British English just Anglo-Frisian with mistakes? Also, this is rather old news. Perhaps it was insightful, in its day.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- scoot 9y agoAm I understanding correctly that this paper is making the argument that because AAVE follows an identifiable set of grammatical rules, it is a dialect rather than an aberration? I don't have any opinion on that, I just wanted to make sure I understood the basic premise.
- sp332 9y agoRight. The point is that the differences are following rules, they're not "mistakes".
- weberc2 9y agoSeems like arguing semantics--what is a "mistake" if not a departure from the established convention? What is the difference between a "rule" and a "mistake"? That the "mistake" is repeated a certain amount of times and/or by some critical mass of people? How often / how many people must repeat the mistake before it becomes a rule? If it becomes a new rule, does it cease to become a mistake? The classification quickly begins to feel arbitrary.
- conistonwater 9y ago> What is the difference between a "rule" and a "mistake"? Your question is answered directly in Pullum's article, at length. He even gives a separate explicit example of the who-whom distinction and explains how it works and how to think about it. There is a clear reason for why this is not arbitrary.
- sp332 9y agoA mistake is made from ignorance or carelessness. It is individual and won't be shared, at least not widely. A rule is applied intentionally and consistently, and it can get wide support. Importantly, making up new rules does not indicate a mental or moral deficiency like making lots of mistakes might.
- tempYeez 9y agoYeh which makes sense because grammatical rules are by the nature of how a people would develop a language intuitive to humans. We put names to those grammatical rules, but they are typically more so a function of how human beings as a species communicate.
- Overtonwindow 9y ago[deleted]
- jasonmp85 9y ago"grammatically incorrect" is an arbitrary value judgment, no matter how much you might assert or concern-troll otherwise.
- throwanem 9y agoNo, it's not. It's just erroneous here; AAVE has an internally consistent grammar just as any other language does. I know quite a few people who code-shift between AAVE and standard American English, just as I do between that and the (admittedly somewhat less different) dialect of my youth. The remainder of Overtonwindow's comment flows from that error and one other, which is to assume that AAVE is a "degraded" form of standard American English. It is not; it has old and many-branched roots of its own, only some of which lie within American English. But who knows? Perhaps Overtonwindow is a more accomplished historical linguist than those on whose statements I here rely.
- jasonmp85 9y agoYes, clearly. I just meant "… in a vacuum" or "… with the implicit understanding there is some _true_ grammar". In one sense, yes, utterances/productions can be grammatically incorrect with regard to a particular grammar under discussion, but if those utterances/productions can be said to be a part of that grammar, eventually the grammar needs to change to accurately describe the state of the world. (Ultimately I have to think some of this comes down to "misperformance" where the speaker _knows_ their production is invalid. If enough speakers "misperform" but begin to hold the idea that these speech acts are not actually invalid, is that what tips the scales in favor of changing a grammar?)
- Karunamon 9y agoIt is a result of the educational oppression and lack of English language and grammar education for African Americans. Assuming for a moment that this is a true or even defensible statement, trying to "fix" it would be an even greater injustice. You can't rightly rip someone's culture away, regardless of how it got there in the first place. Expect any such attempts to go over poorly. Also, keep in mind that the point of language is to communicate. So long as that goal is being achieved, what's the problem? I find this sort of linguistic prescriptivism (thou shalt use these words these ways) to be counterproductive and rather silly.
- jchw 9y agoIt's pretty hard to initially digest, but when you think about it, right and wrong with language is almost entirely just convention. The difference between what we consider 'bad' English and dialects of English is dubious at best.
- GavinMcG 9y agoCan you make a further argument for that? You're basically dismissing the article, but you're not offering anything to justify that.
- alanbernstein 9y agoBy what logic could any convention of spoken language be objectively correct?
- stephenhuey 9y agoI did not major in linguistics but I had some very engaging linguistics professors at Rice. Linguists consider themselves to be descriptive and typical language teachers in grade school to be prescriptive. In other words, linguists take pride in describing what native speakers actually do in practice rather than what they are instructed to do. So if they catch a native speaker doing something the "wrong" way they'll classify it as an error only if native speakers will agree that the example in question was a mistake because it doesn't make sense in the dialect. If native speakers agree that whatever the speaker did actually does make sense to them, e.g. they're fine with the usage of "ain't" or split infinitives or whatever in everyday speech, then linguists will consider that to be a genuine example of the dialect. But linguists are quick to point out that what is correct changes all the time because words and phrases used by native speakers naturally erode and morph and new ones are adopted, and trying to nail down what is correct is futile.
- jchw 9y agoBasically I look at it this way: in reality, the coordination of 'correct' language is a practical consideration, and it is an error to consider it a matter of prestige, as if it's decidedly unintelligent to deviate from the established norms.
- wokeland 9y agoHad to fact-check that opening remark about Oakland being half African American. Sounded a little high but the 1990 census does show 44% Black. By current census estimates it's only 26%. That aside, while it is cute that people make academic studies of this language, as a resident of Oakland I agree with the reactionaries that it should be exterminated instead. Recently when I was riding the bus, a woman on the bus loudly announced that "all dem bitch-ass niggas be hella gay". It does not matter to me that she meant "those people are habitual homosexuals" instead of "those people are currently homosexual". All I know is the language and the culture associated with that language have no place in public life or public school.
- beat 9y agoIt is "wrong" because it is not the vernacular of the dominant culture. Just like baggy pants are 'wrong" just because they're not the clothing style of the dominant culture. Differences arise as a result of segregation, and are then used to justify continuing that segregation. Perhaps "deliberate" is the wrong word here, but certainly expected.
- boxy310 9y agoJust finished the Audible version of The Great Courses' audiobook on linguistics, and they spent a chapter on this subject. A lot of the same elements in this paper are pointed out in the lecture, which may indicate the arguments in this paper were part of the foundational elements of that particular lecture. One of the things I found fascinating was that several of these grammatical elements are similar to peripheral English accents of Ireland, Cornwall, or York. The lecture noted that many of the indentured servants from Britain would be quartered alongside slaves, and that the strongest language reinforcement comes from people you live and work alongside.
- travmatt 9y agoIf you found that interesting, you’d probably also like “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” by Thomas Sowell. A major theme is how major elements of ‘ghetto’ culture actually derive from the North-Britons and Scot’s these people lived near.
- pdkl95 9y agoXidnaf has a good video introducing AAVE from a linguistics perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkzVOXKXfQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkzVOXKXfQk
- LordKano 9y agoThere is a very big aspect that people overlook in this conversation. There is what is known as the "dialect of power" and in the US that is Standard American English. It's not necessarily "wrong" to speak AAVE but in doing so, you will disqualify yourself from opportunities that could otherwise be open to you based on your education and/or experience. If someone calls you to schedule a job interview and you don't sound the way you're expected to sound when you speak, they'll mentally cross you off of the short list before you ever cross the threshold of their place of business. As an African American man, I'll admit that when I'm exclusively in the presence of other black people, I'll code switch and speak in a way that I never would at work or in mixed company. I have a very Anglicized name and I speak Standard American English. As a result of that, people who haven't previously met me in person are sometimes surprised to learn that I'm not a white guy. Being inclusive is a worthy goal but I think that education should stress the importance of speaking Standard American English because it's necessary to do so if one wants to be successful in this society.
- wokeland 9y agoDavid Foster Wallace wrote about the relationship between Standard Written English and social power structures in America. See "Authority and American Usage" or its reprint in Harper's, "Tense Present".
- Pharylon 9y agoSure, but lots of people code switch. As a southern white guy, I also don't speak on interviews the same way I do to my friends. Even around other southerns, you want to "turn it down" in a professional setting. I don't think there's any danger of English teachers not pushing standard American English. Mastering it does open doors. But I think we should also learn about other dialects, because in learning about them we learn more about language. I also think reducing the stigma of certain dialects is a good thing.
- bluthru 9y ago>I don't think there's any danger of English teachers not pushing standard American English. I wouldn't be surprised if things get out of hand in California and English is seen as optional in some school districts in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_58_(2016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_58_(201...
- sampo 9y agoNorwegians spend the late 1800s and early 1900s quarreling amongst themselves what should be the standard for written Norwegian. Should they take the heavily Danish-influenced written language common in cities, or should they use something closer to the dialects spoken in the rural areas? Eventually, their parliament ruled that Norway shall have two official written languages and all government documents will be published in both. For example here are their parliament websites in both Nynorsk ("New Norwegian") and Bokmål ("Book tongue") https://www.stortinget.no/nn/ https://www.stortinget.no/nn/ https://www.stortinget.no/no/ https://www.stortinget.no/no/ Estimates vary, but maybe about 12% of Norwegians use Nynorsk as their primary language, and 88% are Bokmål users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 9y agoThese are writing systems, not languages. As I understand it all Norwegian speakers _speak_ the same language, they just represent that language differently when writing it down. Interesting but not that similar.
- sampo 9y ago> As I understand it all Norwegian speakers _speak_ the same language I am not Norwegian so I might not get this entirely correct. The British have "BBC English" or "Oxford English" and the Americans have "Hollywood English", but Norway doesn't have such a unifying standard for the spoken language. People speak their own dialects, and the different dialects can vary quite a lot. There is no standard dialect for the Norwegian language as a whole, and all dialects are by now mutually intelligible. Hence, widely different dialects are used frequently and alongside each other, in almost every aspect of society. Criticism of a dialect may be considered criticism of someone's personal identity and place of upbringing, and is considered impolite. Not using one's proper dialect would be bordering on awkward in many situations, as it may signal a wish to take on an identity or a background which one does not have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_dialects
- sctb 9y agoDiscussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030097
- dukoid 9y agoThe primary purpose of language is understanding. Forking a language to convey some sort of cultural distinction has the unfortunate side effect of making this more difficult.
- mark212 9y agonot sure that's the primary purpose. It can also be a very strong way to reinforce / test the boundaries of a group. Do you talk like us or not? Are you one of us? There are a multitude of ways to convey understanding; the how is sometimes more important than the content.
- icebraining 9y agoIt can also be used for the inverse purpose; if you're an oppressed minority, a dialect may be helpful in obfuscating your communications from the powers-that-be. An example that fits this and your purpose would be Polari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari
- weberc2 9y agoConveying meaning is necessarily more primary than forming group identity simply because "do you talk like us" depends on "us talking to each other" in the first place. It's hard to imagine an evolution where intra-group communication happened as a result of extra-group communication.
- icebraining 9y agoRight, but here we're talking about understanding in a broader group - specifically, between groups - since that was what dukoid's post was about.
- weberc2 9y agoDukoid said the primary purpose of language is not communication (conveying meaning), but intergroup identification. I don't see how this could be possible.
- jpttsn 9y agoSocial trends in America are never framed in terms of class. Instead, we have to reach for other dimensions, in this case race. We could say it’s plain racism that keeps AAVE down. But it’s such an easy theory to falsify: it predicts that white non-standard English would be accepted at job interviews and in press rooms. It isn’t. So it looks like race is one explainer, but not the whole story. It could be a combination of things, except Ockham sneers at those, especially when the elephant in the room—class—gets us so much further than race.
- justizin 9y agoOccam's razor can be a useful tool, but to conflate class with race ignores that in many ways, there is no economic status that can make black people as accepted and welcome as white people. Race is an important factor that can have more impact than class.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- athenot 9y agoThis is a very revealing quote: > No dialects in southern Britain (or America, which was settled from there) have a g after a velar nasal at the end of any word anymore. So it is true that in the speech of Queen Elizabeth II, the g sound that used to end sing has been lost. But no one calls the queen sloppy or mistaken in her speech. Why? Because there is a double standard here. When Standard Southern British English introduces a simplifying change in the rules of punctuation (like "do not pronounce the g sound after a velar nasal except in the middle of a word"), it is respected as the standard way to speak, but when AAVE introduces such a change (like "do not pronounce a stop at the end of a word after another consonant with the same voicing"), it is unfairly regarded as sloppiness. I found this article as a whole to expand my appreciation for this dialect; there is a lot more logic to it than I had assumed. In particular, the negative concord (which had often bothered me) turns out to be the same as what I already use in French.
- NearAP 9y agoReminds me of this - https://twitter.com/ads_mdavn/status/890101529914560516 https://twitter.com/ads_mdavn/status/890101529914560516
- microcolonel 9y agoI find it easy to pick up dialects, but most people I know (especially people who've learned English as a second language) have trouble understanding various Southern, various Northern New England, various UK, various New Zealander, various South African, and various Australian accents. As a matter of efficiency, I figure everyone in North America should master Standard American English (hard r, cot-caught split, pin-pen split) in both speaking and listening, regardless of their home dialect.
- wnoise 9y agoIME the cot-caught merge is widespread enough that "split" can't be considered a requirement for standard. (Wikipedia says 40% merge, 60% don't.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- soporific123 9y agoAlt-account for privacy. I'm one of the Ebonics kids (Titans where you at?!). I'd like to add in some context. This all happened during the dot com boom in the late 90s, and things weren't unlike they are now -- massive economic expansion, uneven distribution of benefits, rapidly rising cost of living. Teachers were getting priced out and demanded a raise. The district couldn't afford it, so they asked the fed for ESL funds. Long story short: funds were denied, teachers went on strike, many of the better ones left the district at the end of the year, and the quality of education received by myself and my peers suffered for it. Do keep in mind that this is all from the recollections and understanding of my teenage self. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/20/us/agreement-reached-in-oakland-school-strike.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/20/us/agreement-reached-in-oa...
- hprotagonist 9y agoThis is eerily reminscent of "Authority and American Usage", a 2001 essay by david foster wallace. The samizdat copy is here: http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag... Quoting from a section discussing Standard Written English vs. Standard Black English (footnotes omitted): I'm not trying to suggest here that an effective SWE pedagogy would require teachers to wear sunglasses and call students Dude. What I am suggesting is that the rhetorical situation of a US English class---a class composed wholly of young people whose Group identity is rooted in defiance of Adult Establishment values, plus also composed partly of minorities whose primary dialects are different from SWE---requires the teacher to come up with overt, honest, and compelling arguments for why SWE is a dialect worth learning. These arguments are hard to make. Hard not intellectually but emotionally, politically. Because they are baldly elitist.[^60] The real truth, of course, is that SWE is the dialect of the American elite. That it was invented, codified, and promulgated by Privileged WASP Males and is perpetuated as "Standard" by same. That it is the shibboleth of the Establishment, and that it is an instrument of political power and class division and racial discrimination and all manner of social inequity. These are shall we say rather delicate subjects to bring up in an English class, especially in the service of a pro-SWE argument, and extra-especially if you yourself are both a Privileged WASP Male and the teacher and thus pretty much a walking symbol of the Adult Establishment. This reviewer's opinion, though, is that both students and SWE are way better served if the teacher makes his premises explicit and his argument overt---plus it obviously helps his rhetorical credibility if the teacher presents himself as an advocate of SWE's utility rather than as some sort of prophet of its innate superiority. Because the argument for SWE is both most delicate and (I believe) most important with respect to students of color, here is a condensed version of the spiel I've given in private conferences[^61] with certain black students who were (a) bright and inquisitive as hell and (b) deficient in what US higher education considers written English facility: "I don't know whether anybody's told you this or not, but when you're in a college English class you're basically studying a foreign dialect. This dialect is called Standard Written English. [Brief overview of major US dialects a la page 98.] From talking with you and reading your first couple essays, I've concluded that your own primary dialect is [one of three variants of SBE common to our region]. Now, let me spell something out in my official teacher-voice: the SBE you're fluent in is different from SWE in all kinds of important ways. Some of these differences are grammatical- for example, double negatives are OK in Standard Black English but not in SWE, and SBE and SWE conjugate certain verbs in totally different ways. Other differences have more to do with style---for instance, Standard Written English tends to use a lot more subordinate clauses in the early parts of sentences, and it sets off most of these early subordinates with commas, and under SWE rules, writing that doesn't do this tends to look "choppy." There are tons of differences like that. How much of this stuff do you already know? [STANDARD RESPONSE = some variation on "I know from the grades and comments on my papers that the English profs here don't think I'm a good writer."] Well, I've got good news and bad news. There are some otherwise smart English profs who aren't very aware that there are real dialects of English other than SWE, so when they're marking up your papers they'll put, like, "Incorrect conjugation" or "Comma needed" instead of "SWE conjugates this verb differently" or "SWE calls for a comma here."That's the good news---it's not that you're a bad writer, it's that you haven't learned the special rules of the dialect they want you to write in. Maybe that's not such good news, that they've been grading you down for mistakes in a foreign language you didn't even know was a foreign language. That they won't let you write in SBE. Maybe it seems unfair. If it does, you're probably not going to like this other news: I'm not going to let you write in SBE either. In my class, you have to learn and write in SWE. If you want to study your own primary dialect and its rules and history and how it's different from SWE, fine---there are some great books by scholars of Black English, and I'll help you find some and talk about them with you if you want. But that will be outside class. In class---in my English class---you will have to master and write in Standard Written English, which we might just as well call "Standard White English" because it was developed by white people and is used by white people, especially educated, powerful white people. [RESPONSES at this point vary too widely to standardize.] I'm respecting you enough here to give you what I believe is the straight truth. In this country, SWE is perceived as the dialect of education and intelligence and power and prestige, and anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE. This is just How It Is. You can be glad about it or sad about it or deeply pissed off. You can believe it's racist and unfair and decide right here and now to spend every waking minute of your adult life arguing against it, and maybe you should, but I'll tell you something---if you ever want those arguments to get listened to and taken seriously, you're going to have to communicate them in SWE, because SWE is the dialect our nation uses to talk to itself. African-Americans who've become successful and important in US culture know this; that's why King's and X's and Jackson's speeches are in SWE, and why Morrison's and Angelou's and Baldwin's and Wideman's and Gates's and West's books are full of totally ass-kicking SWE, and why black judges and politicians and journalists and doctors and teachers communicate professionally in SWE. Some of these people grew up in homes and communities where SWE was the native dialect, and these black people had it much easier in school, but the ones who didn't grow up with SWE realized at some point that they had to learn it and become able to write fluently in it, and so they did. And [STUDENT'S NAME], you're going to learn to use it, too, because I am going to make you." I should note here that a couple of the students I've said this stuff to were offended---one lodged an Official Complaint---and that I have had more than one colleague profess to find my spiel "racially insensitive." Perhaps you do, too. This reviewer's own humble opinion is that some of the cultural and political realities of American life are themselves racially insensitive and elitist and offensive and unfair, and that pussyfooting around these realities with euphemistic doublespeak is not only hypocritical but toxic to the project of ever really changing them.