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Double negation is also a feature of modern English; the point is no one can claim speakers of Middle English, French, Afrikaans et cetera are ignorant or unint
by Cushman 13y ago
Double negation is also a feature of modern English; the point is no one can claim speakers of Middle English, French, Afrikaans et cetera are ignorant or unintelligent.
- icebraining 13y agoNo, but it's disingenuous to claim people who consider the speaker to be ignorant are only taking into account the double-negation, when the phrase contains a combination of multiple factors, such as language and content.
- Cushman 13y agoThat is very much the point, I think. You can't judge the speech negatively on its merits, since emphatic negation is a regular feature of many languages. You can judge the speech negatively on the basis of who you think the person is, in this case "black". There are some obvious issues with confusing these things.
- icebraining 13y agoYou can't judge the speech negatively on its merits, since emphatic negation is a regular feature of many languages. But the speech isn't in "many languages", it's in a particular language where the double-negation is considered incorrect, therefore there's no need to make assumptions about race or background to consider the speaker ignorant.
- Cushman 13y agoEmphatic double negation is not considered incorrect in African American English or other English dialects where it appears. It is used regularly and correctly, which is no surprise since it is a feature of many languages. The reason it is called incorrect is because these are historically the dialects of impoverished and oppressed groups. This is, again, the point and the problem. The speech is correct.
- icebraining 13y agoHow do you know the speaker is talking in AAVE and not just broken English?
- Cushman 13y agoAcademically speaking, that is a matter of some debate. Pragmatically speaking, it's easy-- are they speaking the language they grew up speaking? Then it's correct. What you call "broken English", assuming native speakers, are just poor (i.e. impoverished) dialects. To be clear on what I'm saying, an AAVE speaker can attempt to speak some other dialect and fail, producing broken constructions similar to non-native speech. But almost none of the speech labeled as such falls into that category.
- MattDL 13y agoI'd like to point out that as far as I'm aware modern French speakers rarely use ne pas and favour simply using pas to indicate a negative. Not to mean that says anything about double negatives, but French probably shouldn't be used as an example of them.
- Cushman 13y agoThanks for the note! Although I don't think it makes it a bad example, there's no requirement that a double construction always be used in order to count. It being perceived as correct when used is enough.
- cafard 13y agoRight--although the only speakers of Middle English that I've actually met were reading Chaucer out loud in a college class. So we've got it out of the way about them being ignorant or unintelligent. I don't judge any particular speaker of French or Afrikaans to be ignorant or unintelligent. I do however judge that while they are speaking French or Afrikaans they are not speaking English.
- Cushman 13y agoI have a sore memory of a recent lengthy debate on the concept of dialects, so suffice it here to say: It is utterly uncontroversial among linguists that AAVE, among other dialects which use double negation for emphasis, is a real English that young black kids grow up and learn to speak properly. It is not Standard in the sense that it is not used in news or government, and its use in formal speech will leave one branded ignorant, but it is in all other respects the relative equal of the English you speak. If you have criticisms, that's fine, but again, this is the scientific consensus and not my area of expertise-- I'll have to direct you to Wikipedia.
- leephillips 13y agoI'm pretty ignorant about linguists, so, honest question: if AAVE is considered "equal" to Standard English, why is it called a vernacular?
- Cushman 13y agoIt's a fuzzy line-- the old adage "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is more or less accurate. If you're the official language of a country or religion, or are used extensively in business or politics, you get to be "Standard". If you're only spoken by a sub-national cultural group, or appear only in "informal" media and popular culture, you're just a dialect. The distinction itself actually is controversial, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics) Not that there's anything wrong with having a standard language for business or politics, as long as you don't think that says something about people who grew up in the wrong place or class.