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AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. That isn’t the same thin

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere. It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impossible. Political fracturing would probably happen.

bedobi 5y ago
> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. But they're not. AAVE and many other dialects are stigmatized even in their own geographic areas and social contexts. The speakers "know" they're not speaking "right" even when they're just speaking akngst themselves in their own communities. (despite them actually speaking AAVE perfectly correctly - the only way you can speak AAVE wrong is if you make grammatical mistakes like thinking "we be working" means the same thing as "we are working", which it doesn't, that's grammatically incorrect...) And no, I didn't say it's the "correct" version of English.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  I have already said that it is incorrect from the perspective of the society-wide accepted version of English. Not from within the dialect itself.
fenomas 5y ago
> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. ... It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing Arguments like these can't support their own weight. For example, how do the two quoted statements resolve when applied to a region where the majority of people mainly speak AAVE? Are we to conclude that standard English is "incorrect" in that region, because the cultural subgroup that prefers it doesn't warrant equal standing? Or is the AAVE-speaking majority of that region a "subgroup" for some arbitrary reason? Or are we instead saying that AAVE and standard English are both correct in that one particular region - but once an AAVE speaker travels to the next town over their usage turns incorrect again? The whole topic makes a lot more sense if one just embraces descriptivism. There's no such animal as "correct usage", only "usage that people consider correct" - which varies with both the person and with the context. What's correct in an essay isn't necessarily correct on the playground, and vice-versa. Sure it's more complicated, but it has the benefit of accurately modeling how people actually use language, and prescriptivism doesn't.

bedobi 5y ago

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. But they're not. AAVE and many other dialects are stigmatized even in their own geographic areas and social contexts. The speakers "know" they're not speaking "right" even when they're just speaking akngst themselves in their own communities. (despite them actually speaking AAVE perfectly correctly - the only way you can speak AAVE wrong is if you make grammatical mistakes like thinking "we be working" means the same thing as "we are working", which it doesn't, that's grammatically incorrect...) And no, I didn't say it's the "correct" version of English.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
I have already said that it is incorrect from the perspective of the society-wide accepted version of English. Not from within the dialect itself.

fenomas 5y ago

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. ... It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing Arguments like these can't support their own weight. For example, how do the two quoted statements resolve when applied to a region where the majority of people mainly speak AAVE? Are we to conclude that standard English is "incorrect" in that region, because the cultural subgroup that prefers it doesn't warrant equal standing? Or is the AAVE-speaking majority of that region a "subgroup" for some arbitrary reason? Or are we instead saying that AAVE and standard English are both correct in that one particular region - but once an AAVE speaker travels to the next town over their usage turns incorrect again? The whole topic makes a lot more sense if one just embraces descriptivism. There's no such animal as "correct usage", only "usage that people consider correct" - which varies with both the person and with the context. What's correct in an essay isn't necessarily correct on the playground, and vice-versa. Sure it's more complicated, but it has the benefit of accurately modeling how people actually use language, and prescriptivism doesn't.