5 ms·

"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and y

by bedobi 5y ago

"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary, it's kind of expected that people who work with Australians make an effort to get used to and understand the Australian variety of English. But for some reason, stigmatizing and not making an effort to understand African American Vernacular English is to this day kind of widely and subtly accepted, even in the US. It shouldn't be! And most of us could probably use making an effort to understand it better. Langfocus is one of the most popular language channels on YouTube, they made a really good video on AAVE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZpCdI6ZKU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZpCdI6ZKU4 There's also this awesome lecture by linguist Daniel S Ferguson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btSxzfB_98M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btSxzfB_98M Obviously, I myself am not African American. But I couldn't help but share these and encourage everyone to take a moment to learn a bit about it!

ru7d7eyr 5y ago
These sorts of objections always seemed superficial to me. To the former point, I gurantee you that parts of Australian English are in fact discouraged whether rightly so or not. Australians casually use expletives that are heavily frowned on in the USA for example and I gurantee you 'hoodlum' English does as well. To the ladder and imo more significant point, the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language. It's an outcome of societal factors. It's frowned upon by institutions, albeit for pettier/racist reasons by individuals, because it implies a racially biased failing by the systems of education which are otherwise viewed as having successfully (to a degree) normalized the prestige grammar with other enrolled pupils. Whether or not the prestige grammar should be held in such high esteem is red herring, imo anyway, when compared to asking why the systems of education are so obviously able to yield the desired outcome for students so long as they have the right skin color. We'll never be able to achieve antiracist goals with tools and systems that have racist effectiveness.
- bedobi 5y ago
  > the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language What? Of course there is no "inherently african/black language". Africa itself is a giant continent home to the most linguistic (and ethnic, and genetic) diversity on the planet, so that would be a tough claim to back up. And no, out of the laundry list of reasons AAVE is stigmatized, that "there is no inherently african/black language" is not one of them. The rest of your reply, despite best efforts, I literally don't even understand what any of it means. I don't mean to be uncharitable but it's kind of ironic given the topic being English Language... To the degree you're trying to say something about AAVE being bad grammar, or being perceived to be bad grammar, that's not even half of it. Even those who speak perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but with an African American accent only, are still stigmatized. So it's not enough for speakers to speak grammatical Standard American English, they have to completely change they way they speak in order not to be stigmatized, which is sad and wrong.
i_am_proteus 5y ago
DFW wrote about this decades ago: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... English has various dialects. Anyone not educated in the "standard" dialect is at a disadvantage, but it's better to teach the standard dialect as a dialect, because that's what it is. Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. This practice applies broadly across vernacular dialects and is not just limited to AAVE.
- bedobi 5y ago
  That's why I deliberately used Australian English as an example. It's not clear why most people would intuitively not stigmatize a speaker of Australian English, but (consciously or otherwise) simultaneously stigmatize a speaker of AAVE, or even someone who speaks perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but merely with an African American accent. In the latter case, they're both just grammatical standard english with different pronounciation. (if anything, an African American speaking grammatical Standard English, with an African American accent only, is less foreign, since the speaker is speaking, well, standard American English, whereas the Australian would be speaking not only with different pronounciation but with slightly different grammar and vocab etc as well) Is it because Australian English is an official prestige standard, albeit not in North America? > Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. I agree, but sadly while this seems to be the consensus advice from linguists, in practice, telling people their manner of speech is wrong (explicitly or through just stigmatizing them in other ways) is still widespread both in schools, at work and in other contexts.
  - curryst 5y ago
    It doesn't seem shocking to me that AAVE is stigmatized (not that it's right to do so). AAVE re-uses Standard American English words and grammar in different ways. I think it was you up above that brought up the habitual be. If you're not familiar with AAVE, you're probably going to misinterpret it. That stands in contrast to many of the other English dialects, where things are generally either clear from context, or so foreign you have no idea what to make of it and have to ask. That ability to misinterpret creates confusion, which people don't like. "She be working" could either mean that she's been working a lot recently in AAVE, or a strange way of saying that she is currently at work. Appalachian English, for example, doesn't have pitfalls like that. "They was a-going way over yonder" has grammatical differences, but they don't particularly change the meaning. I would expect most people to be able to infer the meaning of that (presuming they know what "yonder" means). The second, and probably more important, factor is people's exposure. The portrayal of AAVE in media is not good. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw a character in a show or movie that spoke AAVE, was well educated or prestigious, and wasn't some kind of a shaman, voodoo priest or similar. I don't think I've ever seen a doctor or lawyer on TV that spoke AAVE. The characters that speak AAVE are almost universally poor, usually not very smart, and often involved in either crime or some kind of mysticism. It builds a stereotype around people who speak AAVE, especially since I think most of us have very little exposure to it. Fwiw, there are other English dialects that are similarly stigmatized. Appalachian English is heavily stigmatized, as is the more general southern dialect, though to less of a degree. The Cockney accent/dialect is similarly stigmatized, and it seems like for similar reasons.
saithound 5y ago
Bad example. Here in Australia, I call my mate a cunt all the time. But if my mate and I worked as store cashiers in the US, we'd be expected to refrain from doing that. Or we would have to look for new jobs in short order. And that's fine.
- bedobi 5y ago
  Yeah nah mate, the example is good. Assume you're not dropping the c bomb all the time. The point is, no one would say it's OK to pressure speakers to not speak Australian English. And not only are they not stigmatized the way AAVE speakers are, in addition to that, it's kind of expected that people who work with Australians make an effort to get used to and understand the Australian variety of English. That certainly isn't the expectation for AAVE - with AAVE, it's them who should make the effort to speak like everyone else, not anyone else making an effort to get used to and understand them. Even those who speak perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but with an African American accent only, are still stigmatized. So it's not enough for speakers to speak grammatical Standard American English, they have to completely change they way they speak in order not to be stigmatized. This is very revealing, because Standard American English, just with an African American pronunciation, is less foreign than Australian English, which has not only different pronunciation but different vocab etc as well.
  - pelagicAustral 5y ago
    Maybe because AAVE is just bad English and is intrinsically understood by people that going to a place and learning localisms is not the same as impersonating another individual. Furthermore, in the current social spectrum it would take no time for someone even trying to be accused of cultural appropriation... no thanks.
    - bedobi 5y ago
      But that's the thing, AAVE is not "just bad English", or a localism. (unlike Australian English, which really is just bad English, and a localism) You really ought to get off your high horse, watch the video. You might learn something.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
This is called relativism and it’s a natural position to take if you think there are no useful prescriptive standards, only descriptions of how people act. I guess that might be appealing for some people, but for others the ideas of quality and correctness are important. Unfortunately this has been mixed up with discussions about race which makes it basically impossible to publicly support any sort of language standards.
- bedobi 5y ago
  > ideas of quality and correctness are important Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't) And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is Standard American English (which is overwhelmingly native to white people, and usually the ones with the most privileged positions in society at that) more quality and correct than any other variety? Is there something magical about their speech that makes it quality and correct? Keep in mind English itself is a hodgepodge of butchered other languages. Is Australian English not quality and correct? How come grammatically standard English, just spoken with an African American accent, is still not quality and correct?
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America, just as American spellings are incorrect in Britain. Language is culture-specific. Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with. Even if none of that is appealing to you, the simple fact that is the overwhelming majority of the US agrees that a certain dialect is “proper” English. It’s unclear to me why a small percentage of the population would be justified in having their dialect be on equal terms with the society-wide one. This really has nothing to do with race inherently and the same situation applies to say, Appalachian dialects.
igorlev 5y ago
I wonder if there’s any information on how the Australian dialect (if there was any) was accepted when it was still a penal colony? Cockney would also be a great comparison as both it and AAVE can be seen as class signifiers while the Australian dialect currently isn’t.
throw0101a 5y ago
> Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) At least Australians spell colour properly, with an 'u'…
grasshopperpurp 5y ago
Some text to complement the videos. >It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of plusses and minusses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and in mesolectal creoles, but not in White Englishes outside of the American South (where it can be argued that Whites adopted the speech patterns of Blacks) strongly suggests that at lest some of the predecessors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring process similar to that which produced the English-based creoles.The fact that the constraint hierarchy for following grammatical environment is so similar across the vareties shown in table 16 further reinforces this conclusion.43 The fact that AAVE varieties which might be considered closer to their creole origins on historical grounds (18th century varieties, Samaná) also behave more like creole varieties in some respects (for instance in permitting some deletion of first person am and/or in permitting some degree of past tense copula absence) is also a plus for the creole origins hypothesis. https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.html https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAV...

by bedobi 5y ago

ru7d7eyr 5y ago

These sorts of objections always seemed superficial to me. To the former point, I gurantee you that parts of Australian English are in fact discouraged whether rightly so or not. Australians casually use expletives that are heavily frowned on in the USA for example and I gurantee you 'hoodlum' English does as well. To the ladder and imo more significant point, the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language. It's an outcome of societal factors. It's frowned upon by institutions, albeit for pettier/racist reasons by individuals, because it implies a racially biased failing by the systems of education which are otherwise viewed as having successfully (to a degree) normalized the prestige grammar with other enrolled pupils. Whether or not the prestige grammar should be held in such high esteem is red herring, imo anyway, when compared to asking why the systems of education are so obviously able to yield the desired outcome for students so long as they have the right skin color. We'll never be able to achieve antiracist goals with tools and systems that have racist effectiveness.

bedobi 5y ago
> the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language What? Of course there is no "inherently african/black language". Africa itself is a giant continent home to the most linguistic (and ethnic, and genetic) diversity on the planet, so that would be a tough claim to back up. And no, out of the laundry list of reasons AAVE is stigmatized, that "there is no inherently african/black language" is not one of them. The rest of your reply, despite best efforts, I literally don't even understand what any of it means. I don't mean to be uncharitable but it's kind of ironic given the topic being English Language... To the degree you're trying to say something about AAVE being bad grammar, or being perceived to be bad grammar, that's not even half of it. Even those who speak perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but with an African American accent only, are still stigmatized. So it's not enough for speakers to speak grammatical Standard American English, they have to completely change they way they speak in order not to be stigmatized, which is sad and wrong.

i_am_proteus 5y ago

DFW wrote about this decades ago: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... English has various dialects. Anyone not educated in the "standard" dialect is at a disadvantage, but it's better to teach the standard dialect as a dialect, because that's what it is. Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. This practice applies broadly across vernacular dialects and is not just limited to AAVE.

bedobi 5y ago
That's why I deliberately used Australian English as an example. It's not clear why most people would intuitively not stigmatize a speaker of Australian English, but (consciously or otherwise) simultaneously stigmatize a speaker of AAVE, or even someone who speaks perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but merely with an African American accent. In the latter case, they're both just grammatical standard english with different pronounciation. (if anything, an African American speaking grammatical Standard English, with an African American accent only, is less foreign, since the speaker is speaking, well, standard American English, whereas the Australian would be speaking not only with different pronounciation but with slightly different grammar and vocab etc as well) Is it because Australian English is an official prestige standard, albeit not in North America? > Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. I agree, but sadly while this seems to be the consensus advice from linguists, in practice, telling people their manner of speech is wrong (explicitly or through just stigmatizing them in other ways) is still widespread both in schools, at work and in other contexts.
- curryst 5y ago
  It doesn't seem shocking to me that AAVE is stigmatized (not that it's right to do so). AAVE re-uses Standard American English words and grammar in different ways. I think it was you up above that brought up the habitual be. If you're not familiar with AAVE, you're probably going to misinterpret it. That stands in contrast to many of the other English dialects, where things are generally either clear from context, or so foreign you have no idea what to make of it and have to ask. That ability to misinterpret creates confusion, which people don't like. "She be working" could either mean that she's been working a lot recently in AAVE, or a strange way of saying that she is currently at work. Appalachian English, for example, doesn't have pitfalls like that. "They was a-going way over yonder" has grammatical differences, but they don't particularly change the meaning. I would expect most people to be able to infer the meaning of that (presuming they know what "yonder" means). The second, and probably more important, factor is people's exposure. The portrayal of AAVE in media is not good. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw a character in a show or movie that spoke AAVE, was well educated or prestigious, and wasn't some kind of a shaman, voodoo priest or similar. I don't think I've ever seen a doctor or lawyer on TV that spoke AAVE. The characters that speak AAVE are almost universally poor, usually not very smart, and often involved in either crime or some kind of mysticism. It builds a stereotype around people who speak AAVE, especially since I think most of us have very little exposure to it. Fwiw, there are other English dialects that are similarly stigmatized. Appalachian English is heavily stigmatized, as is the more general southern dialect, though to less of a degree. The Cockney accent/dialect is similarly stigmatized, and it seems like for similar reasons.

saithound 5y ago

Bad example. Here in Australia, I call my mate a cunt all the time. But if my mate and I worked as store cashiers in the US, we'd be expected to refrain from doing that. Or we would have to look for new jobs in short order. And that's fine.

bedobi 5y ago
Yeah nah mate, the example is good. Assume you're not dropping the c bomb all the time. The point is, no one would say it's OK to pressure speakers to not speak Australian English. And not only are they not stigmatized the way AAVE speakers are, in addition to that, it's kind of expected that people who work with Australians make an effort to get used to and understand the Australian variety of English. That certainly isn't the expectation for AAVE - with AAVE, it's them who should make the effort to speak like everyone else, not anyone else making an effort to get used to and understand them. Even those who speak perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but with an African American accent only, are still stigmatized. So it's not enough for speakers to speak grammatical Standard American English, they have to completely change they way they speak in order not to be stigmatized. This is very revealing, because Standard American English, just with an African American pronunciation, is less foreign than Australian English, which has not only different pronunciation but different vocab etc as well.
- pelagicAustral 5y ago
  Maybe because AAVE is just bad English and is intrinsically understood by people that going to a place and learning localisms is not the same as impersonating another individual. Furthermore, in the current social spectrum it would take no time for someone even trying to be accused of cultural appropriation... no thanks.
  - bedobi 5y ago
    But that's the thing, AAVE is not "just bad English", or a localism. (unlike Australian English, which really is just bad English, and a localism) You really ought to get off your high horse, watch the video. You might learn something.

ceilingcorner 5y ago

This is called relativism and it’s a natural position to take if you think there are no useful prescriptive standards, only descriptions of how people act. I guess that might be appealing for some people, but for others the ideas of quality and correctness are important. Unfortunately this has been mixed up with discussions about race which makes it basically impossible to publicly support any sort of language standards.

bedobi 5y ago
> ideas of quality and correctness are important Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't) And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is Standard American English (which is overwhelmingly native to white people, and usually the ones with the most privileged positions in society at that) more quality and correct than any other variety? Is there something magical about their speech that makes it quality and correct? Keep in mind English itself is a hodgepodge of butchered other languages. Is Australian English not quality and correct? How come grammatically standard English, just spoken with an African American accent, is still not quality and correct?
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America, just as American spellings are incorrect in Britain. Language is culture-specific. Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with. Even if none of that is appealing to you, the simple fact that is the overwhelming majority of the US agrees that a certain dialect is “proper” English. It’s unclear to me why a small percentage of the population would be justified in having their dialect be on equal terms with the society-wide one. This really has nothing to do with race inherently and the same situation applies to say, Appalachian dialects.

igorlev 5y ago

I wonder if there’s any information on how the Australian dialect (if there was any) was accepted when it was still a penal colony? Cockney would also be a great comparison as both it and AAVE can be seen as class signifiers while the Australian dialect currently isn’t.

throw0101a 5y ago

> Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) At least Australians spell colour properly, with an 'u'…

grasshopperpurp 5y ago

Some text to complement the videos. >It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of plusses and minusses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and in mesolectal creoles, but not in White Englishes outside of the American South (where it can be argued that Whites adopted the speech patterns of Blacks) strongly suggests that at lest some of the predecessors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring process similar to that which produced the English-based creoles.The fact that the constraint hierarchy for following grammatical environment is so similar across the vareties shown in table 16 further reinforces this conclusion.43 The fact that AAVE varieties which might be considered closer to their creole origins on historical grounds (18th century varieties, Samaná) also behave more like creole varieties in some respects (for instance in permitting some deletion of first person am and/or in permitting some degree of past tense copula absence) is also a plus for the creole origins hypothesis. https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.html https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAV...