languages (Ebonics)

From: Merle K. Peirce <at258_at_osfn.org>
Date: Thu Mar 9 20:05:30 2000

It's still dialectical, however, like Gullah, and inappropriate as a
basis for standard English. Further, use of the dialect effectively
condemns the user to a lower socio-economic status, which seems very unfair.
Upward mobility is usually preceded by change in language to that of the
upper group. It almost seemed like the Ebonics movement was determined
to keep the poor in their place.

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, sjm wrote:

>
> > I think that trend to continue as long as social activists try to promote
> > gibberish as language, as the ebonics debacle.
>
> I hate to be pedantic, but "Ebonics" really is called Black English
> Vernacular (BEV) by linguists, and has been a recognized form of
> spoken english by linguists for at least 30 years. It was made most
> famous in Linguistics circles by William Lebov's paper "Language
> in the inner city: studies in the Black English Vernacular" in 1972.
>
> BEV follows strict rules of grammar and word use, and has syntactic
> roots in several major west African languages like Ewe, Iwo,
> and Yoruba. It really is not gibberish at all, no matter how
> "wrong" it sounds to a native Standard American English speaker
> (me included). In some ways, it actually allows much finer grained
> shades of meaning than SAE does. In some ways, less. That's how
> different languages work. But the fact that it follows a definable
> complex grammar can't be debated, it's been studied to death by
> linguists everywhere.
>
> How the Oakland School Board was using BEV for its own purposes is
> an entirely different matter which I won't even begin to touch on.
> That's politics, not language.
>
> For a real thrill, try finding information on the dialect of English
> spoken on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina. Although it's dying out
> now, there still remain a few native inhabitants of the island who
> can speak it. They were mainly descended from Scottish immigrants
> who were more or less entirely cut off from the mainland when
> shipping lanes changed in the 18th century, and left to develop
> their own dialect and speech rules over the course of the next two
> hundred years.
>
> (Yes, I was a linguistics major. No, I haven't done anything useful
> with it. That's why I'm a programmer now.)
>
> -Seth
>
>

M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
215 Shady Lea Road,
North Kingstown, RI 02852

"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
              
              - Ovid
Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 20:05:30 GMT