6 ms·

Court stenographers often misunderstand Black English

32 points by benryon 8y ago

code_duck 8y ago
“Black people, including kids, use Black English alongside standard English rather than exclusively.” Okay, so it’s solved. Since according to the author all black people can communicate in the standard English dialect, I would suggest to use that when speaking with court employees. This is what I do. I do not address police officers as “dog”, for example, and expect 100% positive results. I would say “sir”, which is also in contrast to how I speak to my peers in daily life, despite the fact that I am white.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  I didn’t know we had these kinds of unapologetic racists in our midst. From their profile: >I have chronic medical problems and might not always be 100% coherent, sorry Maybe you should go seek some better help my friend.
  - subpixel 8y ago
    Without assigning labels, what about their advice falls short in your opinion? The article uses the term “black English” (I might otherwise use the term “slang”) and I think the advice “don’t speak slang to people who, so that you might more likely achieve your own objectives, you ought to be showing utmost respect” is pretty solid.
    - JshWright 8y ago
      The article very specifically addresses the distinction between Black English and "slang". I also strongly disagree with the notion that someone's _rights_ should be tied to whether or not a cop feels they were sufficiently respectful.
      - code_duck 8y ago
        The reality is that as a white person, if I am sufficiently disrespectful to a police officer, I am liable to get beat severely or arrested. In a confrontation with the police, there is a chance that I might be unfairly killed. The issue with the race is that this happens at twice the rate to black people. The issue is NOT that it never happens to white people – is that the rate is disproportionate. My opinion is that police should never kill citizens by choice, and that the issue is really more of a citizen power versus police than white versus black.
      - subpixel 8y ago
        The article mentions that what it calls "Black English" has been compared humorously to slang. I believe there is a lot of room for debate and discussion between mocking a way of speaking on the one hand and designating it a separate language on the other. As for respect. Respect matters because laws are enforced by people. When you're in an exchange with a cop or a judge how things go for you are tied to both the letter of the law _and_ the laws of human nature. We live in meatspace.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      The article delineates the difference between this dialect and slang. That’s kind of a key point. Really, it acts as if people are speaking completely separate languages. So, imagine if I was arrested in Mexico and I could speak English and Spanish, but insisted on speaking English and then complained that the court personnel misunderstood me.
      - gizmo686 8y ago
        Yes. You should absolutely insist on speaking English in that circumstance. Get or let the Mexican court furnish a translator for you.
        code_duck 8y ago
        Why would that be? I didn’t specify any difference in my skills at speaking English or Spanish. Are you saying there’s an advantage in addressing the court in a foreign language?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- sokoloff 8y ago
  > “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” That this was not interpreted as a request for a lawyer and (worse) that that interpretation was upheld on appeal is a grave miscarriage of justice, IMO.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    Sure, it’s a clear intentional misinterpretation. Probably not the worst miscarriage of justice that occurred in that person’s case. Probably they were arrested for something that shouldn’t have even been a crime in the first place. But the person who said it is also an idiot.
    - unclenoriega 8y ago
      > Probably they were arrested for something that shouldn’t have even been a crime in the first place. I wouldn't say that. > [T]wo juvenile victims told investigators that Warren Demesme, 22, sexually assaulted them. Baddoo said one victim reported that Demesme “would portray the rape as a game, and the child articulated the sexual contact caused her pain.” https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1ecdd375-9c45-5aeb-8316-295c864c8a2d.html https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1ecdd37...
      - code_duck 8y ago
        “Probably” indicates a likelihood, not a statement about one particular instance. You’re discussing one particular instance. Statistically, very many people arrested for things that I do not believe should be a crime, such as marijuana possession, and that is to what I am referring.
        sokoloff 8y ago
        Your prior sentence literally ended in "in that person's case". IMO, it takes a significantly tortured reading of your words to interpret them as you suggest above.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  So it's okay to take away people's rights because they talk funny?
  - code_duck 8y ago
    Maybe you could sketch out how you drew that conclusion from what I said?
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      I assume we can agree that, based on the article, a person was mistreated because they spoke in slang. In your comment, you put the blame for that entirely on the speaker. I don't think it's a stretch, therefore, to assume that the police officer is 100% blameless in your mind, and it was okay for them to treat the defendant as they did. If you meant to communicate something else, you didn't do it very clearly.
      - code_duck 8y ago
        Actually, the article delineates the difference between slang and what they (linguists) consider a separate dialect or language related to English. You are maligning the speakers by saying that they “talk funny” or by summing up what I have said as “they talk funny”. According to the article, they speak 2 separate languages. I would suggest addressing police and the courts in the court’s native language. According to the article, again, this is possible for all black people. I feel fairly neutral about police in general. Are they blameless? I really doubt it. Do I know anything else about this case, or does it really matter? No. Not at all.
- skh 8y ago
  I think it’s clear from the article that the author is does not intend to mean that everyone who speaks Black English also has a command of standard English. It seems to me he was saying that standard English should be taught in schools despite Black English being prominent in some districts. It’s widely recognized that people sometimes prefer to speak in their native tongue for purposes of being accurate. Hence sometimes bilingual Spanish speakers will testify in Spanish despite knowing English. The overarching point of the article is that a person’s native tongue ought not influence whether or not they are deemed guilty. Do you disagree with this point?
  - code_duck 8y ago
    That might be the point of the article, but that wasn’t the point that I was discussing. Perhaps you missed my point. I don’t communicate with the legal system using the same language used to communicate with my peers. Why should anyone else expect to?
    - skh 8y ago
      I think it is you who has missed the point. I deal with the legal system in my native language. It happenes to be standard English but I’m not so ethnocentric in my thinking to believe that non native speakers of standard English should be not able to interact with the legal system in their native language.
      - code_duck 8y ago
        Yeah… Then there is this issue of how the author said that all speakers that that dialect can also speak standard English. Maybe you should go back a couple of comments or read the article and check that out.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  If you are ever in a court that is being conducted in a language which is not your native language, request a translator, regardless of how well you think you know the language. There is simply too much risk of mis-communication. The problem that speakers of Black English (or any other non-standard dialect) is that they can't just get a translator because their native language is "English". As an aside, the fact that AAVE and "standard" English are considered the same language is a political decision, not a linguistic one.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    I’m discussing how the author of the article said that every black person who speaks another dialect can also speak standard English. This has been my experience. I don’t speak to court personnel using the same language that I used to speak to people on the street. I speak clearly and precisely because I am aware of the consequences of being misinterpreted.
0db532a0 8y ago
I really wish I could just come here and discover something fascinating about computers, maths physics or nature without being subjected to so much politics.
- carbocation 8y ago
  This is a technical article, as far as The Atlantic goes, and its focus is not political. It's an interesting introduction to black vernacular English for the uninitiated.
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    If you say so, so it must be.
    - skh 8y ago
      How can the article be described as political? What was political about it? It’s safe to say the article is not political because it doesn’t discuss politics or advocate for a political position. That you think it is political says much about you.
      - 0db532a0 8y ago
        It’s quite simple: The article discusses a group’s relation to the government, which holds power over that group. You can read up on the concept of politics on Wikipedia if you are having trouble.
        skh 8y ago
        From Wikipedia: Politics (from Greek: πολιτικά, translit. Politiká, meaning "affairs of the cities") is the process of making decisions that apply to members of a group.[1] The article discusses a dialect of English and how its speakers can be disadvantaged in certain situations. It’s an article bringing awareness of a situation. It’s not political. Being exposed to facts is not political.
burfog 8y ago
One of the biggest ways to lift marginalized groups out of poverty would be to provide speech therapy. This needs to be as universal as teaching history, math, and science. We're choosing to leave people with a huge disadvantage when we pretend that dialects aren't a problem that can and should be fixed.
- JshWright 8y ago
  I think the author of this article says it well... "In fact, Black English is not deficient but alternate. There is no scientific basis for judging Black English grammatical structures as faulty or unclear"
  - burfog 8y ago
    Riiight... You could say that of French too. The trouble is, French is very deficient when judged as English. French grammatical structures are faulty and unclear in an English-speaking environment. Likewise for Japanese being judged as Korean. It is deficient, faulty, and unclear. The fact that it is an alternate is unimportant. Japanese is very bad Korean. The point of a language is to communicate. If you can't communicate, you need to fix that.
    - unclenoriega 8y ago
      The problem (IMO) isn't your suggestion that marginalized people be taught to use and understand General American, it's that you characterize speaking Black English as a pathology. It can be important to speak the prestige language if one wants to advance in society, but it's not a medical problem to speak a local dialect. Would you advise an aspiring London barrister from Yorkshire to see a therapist or watch some YouTube videos on RP?
      - krapp 8y ago
        It is odd that English is accepted as having many local dialects... except among black people, who are just too ignorant to speak it properly.
JshWright 8y ago
>“Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” Warren Demesme asked the police when accused of sexual assault in 2017. The statements one makes to law enforcement after requesting a lawyer are inadmissible—but Demesme’s rights were ignored because, it was argued, he’d requested a “lawyer dog,” not an actual attorney. No one _actually_ thinks that was a misunderstanding, right?
- krapp 8y ago
  No. A white suspect who said the same thing would probably have gotten a lawyer. The idiom "dog" is widely understood and used outside the black community, like "bro," "dude", "man", and there is no possible way “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” was honestly interpreted as a request for a canid that passed the bar exam.
  - burfog 8y ago
    I certainly wouldn't understand it. I have my doubts that it is even universally understood inside the black community. The most reasonable interpretation is that it is an insult, along the lines of "Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, asshole?" (or motherfucker, or asswipe, or shithead...) Note that it happens to be a question. That isn't really the proper way to ask for something. The answer to the question may well be "Because you haven't demanded one yet, parakeet".
    - krapp 8y ago
      It's still comprehensible. You understand it to be a request for a lawyer. You may find it insulting, or grammatically incorrect, but you're obviously aware that a lawyer, and not a "lawyer dog" is being asked for.
    - throwaway_3E 8y ago
      What makes insult the "most reasonable interpretation?" Couldn't this be explained as the suspect was in fact showing respect to the officer? As counterposed with: "Why don't you just give me a lawyer, bitch?"
treis 8y ago
> In 2007, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dissent claimed that when a black woman said, in terror, “He finna shoot me,” she may have been referring to something in the past, when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future. This one is ridiculous as well. Here's the quote: >“I need police. . . . Me and my mama’s boyfriend got into it, he went in the house and got a pistol, and pulled it out on me. I guess he’s fixing to shoot me, so I got in my car and [inaudible] left. I’m right around the corner from the house.” Here's the judge's argument: > I hear the words: “I guess he finna shoot me.” >the statement contains no auxiliary verb (e.g., “is” or “was”) connected to “finna,” which I understand to be a slang contraction for “fixing to,” much as “gonna” serves as a contraction for “going to.” See, e.g., http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finna http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finna (last visited Apr. 19, 2007) (defining “finna” as, “Abbreviation of ‘fixing to.’ Normally means ‘going to.’”).8 The lack of an auxiliary verb renders determination of whether Gordon intended to imply the past or present tense an exercise in sheer guesswork. http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0181p-06.pdf http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0181p-06.pdf The majority said that "he's fixing to shoot me"/"he finna shoot me" means that there is an ongoing attempt by the defendant. The dissenting judge said that's not something you can definitively conclude absent an "is" or "was" given that the rest of the statement was in past tense. So when the author of the article writes: >when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future It's obvious he hasn't actually bothered to go and read the opinion. Or I suppose it's possible that a professional writer doesn't understand that you can use future tense when recounting stories in the past.

32 points by benryon 8y ago

“Black people, including kids, use Black English alongside standard English rather than exclusively.” Okay, so it’s solved. Since according to the author all black people can communicate in the standard English dialect, I would suggest to use that when speaking with court employees. This is what I do. I do not address police officers as “dog”, for example, and expect 100% positive results. I would say “sir”, which is also in contrast to how I speak to my peers in daily life, despite the fact that I am white.

BoorishBears 8y ago
I didn’t know we had these kinds of unapologetic racists in our midst. From their profile: >I have chronic medical problems and might not always be 100% coherent, sorry Maybe you should go seek some better help my friend.
- subpixel 8y ago
  Without assigning labels, what about their advice falls short in your opinion? The article uses the term “black English” (I might otherwise use the term “slang”) and I think the advice “don’t speak slang to people who, so that you might more likely achieve your own objectives, you ought to be showing utmost respect” is pretty solid.
  - JshWright 8y ago
    The article very specifically addresses the distinction between Black English and "slang". I also strongly disagree with the notion that someone's _rights_ should be tied to whether or not a cop feels they were sufficiently respectful.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      The reality is that as a white person, if I am sufficiently disrespectful to a police officer, I am liable to get beat severely or arrested. In a confrontation with the police, there is a chance that I might be unfairly killed. The issue with the race is that this happens at twice the rate to black people. The issue is NOT that it never happens to white people – is that the rate is disproportionate. My opinion is that police should never kill citizens by choice, and that the issue is really more of a citizen power versus police than white versus black.
    - subpixel 8y ago
      The article mentions that what it calls "Black English" has been compared humorously to slang. I believe there is a lot of room for debate and discussion between mocking a way of speaking on the one hand and designating it a separate language on the other. As for respect. Respect matters because laws are enforced by people. When you're in an exchange with a cop or a judge how things go for you are tied to both the letter of the law _and_ the laws of human nature. We live in meatspace.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    The article delineates the difference between this dialect and slang. That’s kind of a key point. Really, it acts as if people are speaking completely separate languages. So, imagine if I was arrested in Mexico and I could speak English and Spanish, but insisted on speaking English and then complained that the court personnel misunderstood me.
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      Yes. You should absolutely insist on speaking English in that circumstance. Get or let the Mexican court furnish a translator for you.
      - code_duck 8y ago
        Why would that be? I didn’t specify any difference in my skills at speaking English or Spanish. Are you saying there’s an advantage in addressing the court in a foreign language?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sokoloff 8y ago
> “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” That this was not interpreted as a request for a lawyer and (worse) that that interpretation was upheld on appeal is a grave miscarriage of justice, IMO.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Sure, it’s a clear intentional misinterpretation. Probably not the worst miscarriage of justice that occurred in that person’s case. Probably they were arrested for something that shouldn’t have even been a crime in the first place. But the person who said it is also an idiot.
  - unclenoriega 8y ago
    > Probably they were arrested for something that shouldn’t have even been a crime in the first place. I wouldn't say that. > [T]wo juvenile victims told investigators that Warren Demesme, 22, sexually assaulted them. Baddoo said one victim reported that Demesme “would portray the rape as a game, and the child articulated the sexual contact caused her pain.” https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1ecdd375-9c45-5aeb-8316-295c864c8a2d.html https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1ecdd37...
    - code_duck 8y ago
      “Probably” indicates a likelihood, not a statement about one particular instance. You’re discussing one particular instance. Statistically, very many people arrested for things that I do not believe should be a crime, such as marijuana possession, and that is to what I am referring.
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        Your prior sentence literally ended in "in that person's case". IMO, it takes a significantly tortured reading of your words to interpret them as you suggest above.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
So it's okay to take away people's rights because they talk funny?
- code_duck 8y ago
  Maybe you could sketch out how you drew that conclusion from what I said?
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    I assume we can agree that, based on the article, a person was mistreated because they spoke in slang. In your comment, you put the blame for that entirely on the speaker. I don't think it's a stretch, therefore, to assume that the police officer is 100% blameless in your mind, and it was okay for them to treat the defendant as they did. If you meant to communicate something else, you didn't do it very clearly.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      Actually, the article delineates the difference between slang and what they (linguists) consider a separate dialect or language related to English. You are maligning the speakers by saying that they “talk funny” or by summing up what I have said as “they talk funny”. According to the article, they speak 2 separate languages. I would suggest addressing police and the courts in the court’s native language. According to the article, again, this is possible for all black people. I feel fairly neutral about police in general. Are they blameless? I really doubt it. Do I know anything else about this case, or does it really matter? No. Not at all.
skh 8y ago
I think it’s clear from the article that the author is does not intend to mean that everyone who speaks Black English also has a command of standard English. It seems to me he was saying that standard English should be taught in schools despite Black English being prominent in some districts. It’s widely recognized that people sometimes prefer to speak in their native tongue for purposes of being accurate. Hence sometimes bilingual Spanish speakers will testify in Spanish despite knowing English. The overarching point of the article is that a person’s native tongue ought not influence whether or not they are deemed guilty. Do you disagree with this point?
- code_duck 8y ago
  That might be the point of the article, but that wasn’t the point that I was discussing. Perhaps you missed my point. I don’t communicate with the legal system using the same language used to communicate with my peers. Why should anyone else expect to?
  - skh 8y ago
    I think it is you who has missed the point. I deal with the legal system in my native language. It happenes to be standard English but I’m not so ethnocentric in my thinking to believe that non native speakers of standard English should be not able to interact with the legal system in their native language.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      Yeah… Then there is this issue of how the author said that all speakers that that dialect can also speak standard English. Maybe you should go back a couple of comments or read the article and check that out.
gizmo686 8y ago
If you are ever in a court that is being conducted in a language which is not your native language, request a translator, regardless of how well you think you know the language. There is simply too much risk of mis-communication. The problem that speakers of Black English (or any other non-standard dialect) is that they can't just get a translator because their native language is "English". As an aside, the fact that AAVE and "standard" English are considered the same language is a political decision, not a linguistic one.
- code_duck 8y ago
  I’m discussing how the author of the article said that every black person who speaks another dialect can also speak standard English. This has been my experience. I don’t speak to court personnel using the same language that I used to speak to people on the street. I speak clearly and precisely because I am aware of the consequences of being misinterpreted.

0db532a0 8y ago

I really wish I could just come here and discover something fascinating about computers, maths physics or nature without being subjected to so much politics.

carbocation 8y ago
This is a technical article, as far as The Atlantic goes, and its focus is not political. It's an interesting introduction to black vernacular English for the uninitiated.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  If you say so, so it must be.
  - skh 8y ago
    How can the article be described as political? What was political about it? It’s safe to say the article is not political because it doesn’t discuss politics or advocate for a political position. That you think it is political says much about you.
    - 0db532a0 8y ago
      It’s quite simple: The article discusses a group’s relation to the government, which holds power over that group. You can read up on the concept of politics on Wikipedia if you are having trouble.
      - skh 8y ago
        From Wikipedia: Politics (from Greek: πολιτικά, translit. Politiká, meaning "affairs of the cities") is the process of making decisions that apply to members of a group.[1] The article discusses a dialect of English and how its speakers can be disadvantaged in certain situations. It’s an article bringing awareness of a situation. It’s not political. Being exposed to facts is not political.

burfog 8y ago

One of the biggest ways to lift marginalized groups out of poverty would be to provide speech therapy. This needs to be as universal as teaching history, math, and science. We're choosing to leave people with a huge disadvantage when we pretend that dialects aren't a problem that can and should be fixed.

JshWright 8y ago
I think the author of this article says it well... "In fact, Black English is not deficient but alternate. There is no scientific basis for judging Black English grammatical structures as faulty or unclear"
- burfog 8y ago
  Riiight... You could say that of French too. The trouble is, French is very deficient when judged as English. French grammatical structures are faulty and unclear in an English-speaking environment. Likewise for Japanese being judged as Korean. It is deficient, faulty, and unclear. The fact that it is an alternate is unimportant. Japanese is very bad Korean. The point of a language is to communicate. If you can't communicate, you need to fix that.
  - unclenoriega 8y ago
    The problem (IMO) isn't your suggestion that marginalized people be taught to use and understand General American, it's that you characterize speaking Black English as a pathology. It can be important to speak the prestige language if one wants to advance in society, but it's not a medical problem to speak a local dialect. Would you advise an aspiring London barrister from Yorkshire to see a therapist or watch some YouTube videos on RP?
    - krapp 8y ago
      It is odd that English is accepted as having many local dialects... except among black people, who are just too ignorant to speak it properly.

JshWright 8y ago

>“Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” Warren Demesme asked the police when accused of sexual assault in 2017. The statements one makes to law enforcement after requesting a lawyer are inadmissible—but Demesme’s rights were ignored because, it was argued, he’d requested a “lawyer dog,” not an actual attorney. No one _actually_ thinks that was a misunderstanding, right?

krapp 8y ago
No. A white suspect who said the same thing would probably have gotten a lawyer. The idiom "dog" is widely understood and used outside the black community, like "bro," "dude", "man", and there is no possible way “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” was honestly interpreted as a request for a canid that passed the bar exam.
- burfog 8y ago
  I certainly wouldn't understand it. I have my doubts that it is even universally understood inside the black community. The most reasonable interpretation is that it is an insult, along the lines of "Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, asshole?" (or motherfucker, or asswipe, or shithead...) Note that it happens to be a question. That isn't really the proper way to ask for something. The answer to the question may well be "Because you haven't demanded one yet, parakeet".
  - krapp 8y ago
    It's still comprehensible. You understand it to be a request for a lawyer. You may find it insulting, or grammatically incorrect, but you're obviously aware that a lawyer, and not a "lawyer dog" is being asked for.
  - throwaway_3E 8y ago
    What makes insult the "most reasonable interpretation?" Couldn't this be explained as the suspect was in fact showing respect to the officer? As counterposed with: "Why don't you just give me a lawyer, bitch?"

treis 8y ago

> In 2007, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dissent claimed that when a black woman said, in terror, “He finna shoot me,” she may have been referring to something in the past, when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future. This one is ridiculous as well. Here's the quote: >“I need police. . . . Me and my mama’s boyfriend got into it, he went in the house and got a pistol, and pulled it out on me. I guess he’s fixing to shoot me, so I got in my car and [inaudible] left. I’m right around the corner from the house.” Here's the judge's argument: > I hear the words: “I guess he finna shoot me.” >the statement contains no auxiliary verb (e.g., “is” or “was”) connected to “finna,” which I understand to be a slang contraction for “fixing to,” much as “gonna” serves as a contraction for “going to.” See, e.g., http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finna http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finna (last visited Apr. 19, 2007) (defining “finna” as, “Abbreviation of ‘fixing to.’ Normally means ‘going to.’”).8 The lack of an auxiliary verb renders determination of whether Gordon intended to imply the past or present tense an exercise in sheer guesswork. http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0181p-06.pdf http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0181p-06.pdf The majority said that "he's fixing to shoot me"/"he finna shoot me" means that there is an ongoing attempt by the defendant. The dissenting judge said that's not something you can definitively conclude absent an "is" or "was" given that the rest of the statement was in past tense. So when the author of the article writes: >when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future It's obvious he hasn't actually bothered to go and read the opinion. Or I suppose it's possible that a professional writer doesn't understand that you can use future tense when recounting stories in the past.