More Linguistics Thoughts
Dean
When I opined recently on the matter of Black Vernacular English, sometimes known as "Ebonics," I was immediately deluged with criticism. This I expected; it's what always happens. Although I did learn a couple of things this time around--including the happy news that classroom instruction using compare and contrast between Ebonics and Standard English has become increasingly common in the last few years.
It's happy news so far as I'm concerned since such programs have been shown to raise test scores in reading, writing, and speaking Standard English. (See Using The Vernacular To Teach the Standard.)
Besides disscussions here, some of the more interesting cross-blog responses:
* XRLQ, who says I'm wrong about what the Oakland schools really intended to do. All I can say is, I take the school board's word for it when they say they mis-spoke. Especially when their clarifying remarks on their intent were and are consistent with all the other compare-and-contrast learning programs--and the original resolution looks consistent with that to my eye and always has.
* Triticale, who lives in a community where a strong strain of Ebonics is heard every day, and who sympathizes.
* Amritas, who has his doctorate in linguistics, has some thoughts here and here. These I think merit a deeper a response.
First, Amritas should not be surprised at all that some Black Americans are reactionary toward the very concept of Ebonics. Such reactions are quite common; such notables as Bill Cosby, Jesse Jackson, and Maya Angelou at one time denounced the very idea that there was such a thing as Ebonics, although most of them have relaxed about it in recent years from what I understand. This angry denunciation and defensiveness seems to happen any time, in any culture, whenever the idea of using non-standard dialect to enhance mainstram dialect performance in chldren is introduced.
For a good exploration of this, read Spoken Soul by father/son team John Russell and Russell John Rickford. John R. Rickford is professor of linguistics at Stanford, and notes that this reaction is common across cultures. The basic pattern is this: 1) Those who do not speak the non-standard dialect view the non-standard dialect as stupid and illiterate and view any attempt to recognize it in the classroom as a threat, and 2) Those who are members of the community which speaks the non-standard dialect tend to feel they are being condescended to, and sometimes even angrily deny that there is such a thing as said dialect.
To answer one of Amritas' questions: Yes, recognizing a non-mainstream dialect in the classroom, and teaching kids who speak that non-mainstream dialect via a compare-and-contrast method, is most definitely not an American phenomenon, nor is it exclusively used for Black Vernacular English/Ebonics. To the best of my knowledge the first such programs were implemented in Norway in the 1960s, to help kids who spoke thick non-standard dialects of Norwegian improve their reading, writing, and verbal skills in Standard Norwegian. Other Scandinavian countries then adopted similar programs. The programs then spread to Carribbean nations where some creole dialects diverged significantly from the mainstream. The city of Toronto in Canada uses such programs to help some of their creole-speaking kids. In America, programs to help Black Vernacular speaking kids learn mainstream English better are now in place in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Palo Alto, and one of my readers informs me that these programs are spreading in departments of Education in other parts of the country. I also read recently that pilot programs are being tried now in some parts of the U.S. help kids who grow up in heavily Spanglish-speaking areas improve their Standard English skills.
I think there may be kids in parts of Pennsylvania and Louisiana who grow up hearing Dutch and French Creoles in the household who might benefit from such programs, but I don't know if anyone's seriously looked into implementing them yet.
Some references people might want to read (beyond the Rickford & Rickford book above):
Center for Applied Linguistics: Vernacular Dialects in U.S. Schools.
Center for Applied Linguistics: Resources On Dialects.
Educational Cyberplayground: What Is Pidgin, What Is Creole: Pidgins, Creoles, and Other Stygmatized Varieties.
Linguistic Society Of America: What is Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)?
Center for Applied Linguistics: Statement on the Oakland School Board controversy.
In closing--as I really can't think of much else to say--whether you call it Ebonics, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), Black Vernacular English (BVE), soul talking, street talk, ghetto talk, or whatever floats your boat, this dialect exists. It is not stupid, and it is not "illiterate English." Nor is it slang, nor is it a pidgin, nor is it "just an accent." Furthermore, it has existed and evolved for over four centuries, despite the best efforts of well-meaning teachers and intellectuals to stamp it out. No, it is not "genetic" in the sense of being part of people's DNA, but it certainly is a feature of American culture that has existed for centuries. And no one--absolutely no one--has been able to abolish it.
Just deal with it people: those are the facts.
The entirety of this controversy is most ironic because everyone on all sides of it wants kids to learn better Standard English skills. So here's my tip to you: if you cannot enter the discussion without acknowledging that everyone on all sides wants kids to learn better Standard English Skills, all you're doing is confusing things.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More On Language
- A Christmas Tale
- More Linguistics Thoughts
- Understanding Language
We had phonics, and special schools. Those were things a parent had to stuggle to pay for and therefore children suffered.
You've laid out the facts now I think people ought not judge and get it in their heads if it helps ten, 50 and 100 kids, that is saying something so stick to what you have researched and leave it be for those wanting to turn a deaf ear.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Since so far as I know there are no such kids, and no one I know of proposes that there should be such kids, the rest of your assertion strikes me as a non-sequitur, Arnold.
Your credulous assertion that OUSD "misspoke" and that their subsequent, frantic damage control statements to the media were a "clarification" doesn't pass the smirk test. It's reminiscent of the old joke about the married man who came into the doctor's office with a black eye. Asked what happened, he said "Doctor, I've had a terrible Freudian slip! My wife and I were sitting at the dinner table, and enjoying a nice peaceful dinner. I tried to say 'will you please pass the salt?' but it came out as 'f*** you bitch you've ruined my life!'"
I have told you many times that I am not a racist, but that I am in fact an absolute culturalist. And there is nothing that even remotely interests me about black culture, black identity, black language, or any other the rest of that baggage.
All the many successful afro-americans I have known -- and I have known quite a few in my 70 years -- have talked, schooled themselves or been schooled, and comported themselves with the demeanor of the overwhelming majority of Americans who are not afro-american.
The afro-americans who interest me are the ones who get and hold good jobs after completing a university education for which then neither receive nor ask for "affirmative action". These are men and women who know and use standard american variant of the English language. So that if you talk with one of them on the telephone you can discern nothing about their race, ethnic background or any other distractive and irrelevant characteristic that would otherwise get in the way of all of us dealing with one another as if there were no racial differences. These are my American brothers and sisters.
As for the other kind, I know they are there in large numbers. But they mean nothing to me. These are the residents of the vile ghettos in every city in the United States. Their's is the population that lives off whatever welfare crumbs are made available to them. Their's are the teen-age girls who get pregnant, bearing children even before they learn how to read and write, and whose aging and typically full-time employed mother's must raise their own grandchildren. Their's are the sons who make up perhaps some one-half of the prison populations. They are the ones last hired to do the crummiest kinds of work, when they choose to seek work, and they are the ones first dropped from such employment. The new America has little use for such people now, and the american economy that will dominate the lives of the people of this country -- and most of the population of this planet -- for the foreseeable future has no role for them either.
I am not interested in any great mass of losers. The only people who ever have interested me are those who make a conscious effort to break their bonds with such a mass
and remold and take control of their own lives in a productive and societally useful fashion. A single Dr Condoleeza Rice is worth more in my estimation than the totality of the ghetto population of Chicago.
Because the elite is wherever you find them. They come in all skin colors and racial variations. They come in both sexes. They come both as heterosexuals and homosexuals. They come in all ages. They come from all countries. They come from all kinds of parents who lived in all kinds of circumstances. This elite, in the world of the near future that shall reward person merit above all other considerations, these are the men and women who shall have power, wealth and influence. And they shall have it rightfully.
So I am not interested in slaves, slave culture, or slave culture linguistic patois.
Down with racism. Long live culturalism. And may the meritorious rule forever. Regardless of the color of their skin. Regardless of who their parents and grandparents were. Regardless of the system of self-sustained servitude from which they consciously escaped.
Because equality and democracy are nothing. Liberty and opportunity are everything.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Terrific! Your _style_! Friedrich Nietzsche himself couldn't have said it better. I, too, am absolutely a culturalist and an elitist. And, while we're at it, there ought to a program of some kind to wean Negro (and white) youth from the (c)rap they're now calling "music", and let them hear what real music sounds like. I would love to hear a black Bach, a black Brahms, a black Bruckner, a black Beethoven, a melaninized Mozart. Why should Dead White European Males, nay, Germans at that!, have all the fun?
Arnold: AAVE exists whether you like it or not, and it has made an indelible mark upon American culture whether you like it or not. So, for that matter, have the various Southern dialects to which it is closely related (and yet, according to most lingusists, distinct).
If you follow some of the research I have linked, you would discover that a number of black Americans are in fact quite fluent in both mainstream vernacular AND black street vernacular/ebonics/AAVE/ghetto talk/whatever the hell else you want to call it. Including more than one black multimillionaire. And no, not just black musical artists, but also corporate chiefs and self-made capitalist entrepreneurs in a wide variety of professions.
While I would certainly agree with you that black inner city culture has been dysfunctional, I also believe your description of it is somewhat outdated; the welfare reforms of the 1990s changed a lot of that, since our welfare system no longer pays young women to stay home and make babies without a father, and you can no longer get much of a check from "Uncle Sugar" unless you prove that you're either in school or damn well working your ass off to find a job.
I also think that what you describe as the pathology of welfare culture is hardly race-based, as a majority of the people who suffer from the sequalae you describe are white--after all, a majority of those living below the poverty line, living in crappy school districts, having out-of-wedlock births, and dependent on welfare are white, not black.
The fact is, I regard all these special arrangements for african american children, including this notion that they need some sort of special language in which to communicate with them, as nothing more than an extension of the slave system that our forefathers destroyed some 140 years ago. Because when anyone provides special treatment of any kind for any other racially ethnically or culturally defined group slavery is precisely what results from it.
For reasons that I have unequivocably stated above I reject the entire notion of minority treatment, handling and programs in the United States. My model is the United States Army in which I served during 1953-1955. Everybody was treated exactly alike, with differences for recognition of the leadership roles of commissioned and non-commissioned officers. We all had the same rights.
Primarily were the right to receive clearcut orders, the right to be judged on the efficiency with which we -- as individuals or as units -- carried out those orders, and the right to know that we would all be treated impartially in accordance with our willingness to serve our units and, if necessary, to defend the United States of America.
That experience, as a 19-year-old, taught me that anyone who was willing could be trained and physically conditioned to be a good soldier. And if that was so, then anyone could be trained and conditioned to be a good American.
After those realizations, I have never accepted bullshit in place of reality, excuses in place of performance, whimpering in place of effort- making.
Nor shall I apologize to anyone for all or part of what I have stated here. Because to do so would imply that I would be willing to re-enslave tens of millions of afro-american citizens, each of whom has or may develop the potential not only to be my equal or my superior, but possibly the man or woman best suited to lead this great country in peace or war, progress or victory.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
There are those that would argue we've already been blessed with all of the above. You can love classical music, man, but you won't bring it back as the prevailing popular music. I suspect that Robert Johnson, B.B. King, the Marsalis's, the list goes on, produce a music that 400 years from now could very well have be added to the list of composers you gave us.
I share the experience Arnold had, but 40 years later. In American society there is no more color blind culture than that of our military. We're all one color in a fox hole...olive drab.
Dean, of course those successful blacks are able to converse in both worlds. Who wants to leave behind their roots. We are tied by language to our peer group more closely by language than we are by geography. To ask me to abandon my "alabama coonass" would be to ask me to abandon my roots. Why should we ask "ghetto" dwellers to do so? We do in our schools all the time.
Although I agree wholeheartedly with Arnold on his feelings on culturalism and racism, I don't think that it's helpful to simply ignore that there are differences and say they should go away. Let the culture exist, just don't judge it, and don't let its existence stop anybody from gaining the tools for success in mainstream society.
I'd also like to ask what standard of success we're going to use? Arnold, Condoleeza Rice is a successful black woman but so is the lady who speaks obviously ethnic english alone, but owns a successful salon on the corner in East St. Louis.
As for conversing in both worlds, I sincerely hope our America shall mold itself into one world. And for that, we need a single common language which should unite and not divide us.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Maybe people are acquating ebonics with what is happening in spanish along Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and it is taking over a huge population in Chicago. When you go into certain neighborhoods ALL signs in stores are in Spanish.
So does ebonics come along at a time where we are getting worried or is it in fact going to help those children learn english. Arnold it is the mexican language, spanish language that is bothering me more.
Just something that bothers me more than ebonics. And no, I am not prejudice either I just do not understand this. It is happening in other countries that we see two flags flying in one country!
I learned a bit more about calling people a mexican verses spanish. The family from Mexico that lives here and others I talk to in stores have explained it is the interior and things like that that have the politically correctness. A man and woman from Mexico are proud to say they are of mexican decent. I was away in Chicago, Illinois and when I came home to Texas in just eight years I was flabbergasted at the spanish banks and retail stores. I do wonder how you feel Arnold as I feel we are the same about legal immigrants.
Having many languages was a fact of life in America in 1776, in 1876, in 1976, and will likely be so come 2076.
Perhaps you are right. I have not listened to the Negro composers you named, so I cannot judge whether they are the equals of the composers I named. I hope that they indeed are. The classical (including Romantic) style of music may never again prevail as the popular style of music (if it ever was), but 400 years from now our descendents may have seen a counter-revolution in culture such that the highest styles of music, art, and thought will prevail over whatever is popular, the eternal hierarchy restored and once again respected, and "elite" no longer a "dirty" word.
Mind you, blues is my preferred form of music. I prefer it hugely over most classical music. I have a good selection of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Shostakovich(sp?), Tchaikovsky, as well as a reasoanble selection of operations by Puccini and many others. All that said? I listen to it only occasionally, for I am no huge fan of any of it.
I've listened to a lot of it, mind you. It simply does not speak to my soul the way it does others. I'll take B.B. King--or better yet, Albert King--over all of them.
But it's not the right comparison, because it's just too different.
Marsalis, on the other hand, you might be able to make a case for.
Music is all about the communication of emotion, and while The Blues may be a rather simple medium, the emotions that are communicated are anything but simple.
Then again, there are some aspects that are not comparable. The Blues are about communicating universal emotions, but the Romantic period assumed that musical "geniuses" actually experienced emotions more intensely than the common man, and through the communication medium of music were able to allow the common man to experience the more powerful feelings. The Classical period was just pop music with violins, mainly...in reaction to the ornamented, mathematical, and intellectual approach to music of the Baroque period.
But The Blues should be placed into the continuum, along with jazz (before it descended into self-gratifying "Free Form"), gospel, big band, and maybe even country and rock.
But back to the language issue, the one thing that still makes me resist the idea of Ebonics being a language is that my impression is were I to learn it as a 2nd language and attempt to use it in conversation, it would not be well-received among the population that uses it regularly. It wouldn't gain my any credit points, and would probably increase my chance of getting beaten for being condescending. Or is that just because (as you assert) we are teaching them it isn't a real language?
I'll be mulling this over for a while.
No worries. Sooner or later you'll figure this one out, after which you'll offer an Oakland-style "clarification" to the effect that the above statement really meant"
No need to admit you were wrong; just "clarify" away. I'll believe it!
Ah, so the reason I speak German is not because I took it in college and lived in Europe for two year, it's because some of my ancestors are from Germany! O-kay.
More historical rubbish, of course. If you didn't get off the Good Ship Lollypop speaking Inland Northern (a dialect spoken nowhere in England), you probably joined an enclave of immigrants from wherever you came from. Meanwhile, American Indians managed to learn English just fine despite remaining with their individual tribes, while many slaves were deliberately placed with slaves from different African countries for the specific purpose of ensuring the communication in their native languages would be impossible.
One again, Cook attempted to cover up her B.S. with more B.S.
FrenchFreedom Toast Souffle:The Perfect Breakfast
Serves 12
½ C butter or margarine
8 oz cream cheese
½ c maple syrup
Bread Cubes (1/2-3/4 inches square)
11-12 eggs, large
3 c half and half
1 and ½ tspn Vanilla
Cinnamon
baking dishes 1- 9x 12 or 2-7x 11
1. Butter baking dishes well
2. Fill dishes no more than ½ to 2/3 full with bread cubes
3. In a small bowl after softening in the microwave mix butter, cream cheese and syrup or leave a little lumpy. Spoon over bread cubes
evenly
4. In a large bowl beat eggs, half and half and vanilla.
5. Pour over the bread cubes to no more than ½ inches from top of baking dish. (sourdough bread is great)
6. Dust with cinnamon. Can make night before and refrigerate it.
7. Bake at 350 oven for 45-55 min… It is done when center is raised and firm.
To serve cut in pieces, top with strawberries and chopped walnut. Pour small amount of syrup and dust with powdered sugar. Serve immediately because this stuff crashes. Can cut receipe in half or more if desirable…..This is good stuff…
Use white bread, sourdough, English breakfast muffins or your favorite bread-----
This receipe has been ebonically approved---
Merry Christmas morning--
I will stop defending myself and saying, I am not prejudice because I remember my dear grandmother Grace telling me when I was knee high to a grasshopper how the United States was like a great stew. We use colorful spices to make it delicious!
Still, at least at the moment, most would say that blues is just too different for such a comparison. SOme classical music fans would say it's "inferior;" I wouldn't, but I would say it's different. And like I said, I'm a *huge* blues fan.
Anyway, regarding Ebonics: In truth there are white kids who speak it quite well. Still, you're right that if you as an adult middle class male started trying to speak it you would undoubtedly be viewed by many as someone who was looking down on/mocking black people, unless it was the right setting.
That said? If you study the phenomenon of suppressed language, you'll discover that's not all that uncommon a phenomenon either.
XRLQ: Toni Cook is an odd, odd woman.
No argument there. Just remember: if there is one person who can be said to speak for OUSD on either the original Ebonics resolution or its subsequent "clarification," it is Toni Cook.
Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that whatever the merits of the compare and contrast approach may be, that debate can go forward without defending OUSD in particular? Pretty please? It's Christmas (almost).
Arnold, don't we have that? The standard english spoken in boardrooms and in colleges and universities is that language. I hope that I get to keep my backwoods if I want it.
Whoa. When I brought up the blues I didn't realize that much energy would enter into it. It's all frame of reference, really. What we call classical music is a group of composers and a style that is recognizable and leaves a legacy of genius behind it.
Every era has it's music and the greats that will be remembered.
A 1000 years from now the blues, rock and jazz will probably be lumped into the same category. 20th century american, maybe.
Anybody that thinks playing a blues riff is any easier than playing a classical line, well, hasn't tried it. Has more to do with environment than complication.
I know for a fact Andres Segovia and Eddie Van Halen are equally hard to mimic. That's why I hide in my study and wish I had just a little of their talent. Just a smidge. :-(
Sez you.
Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that whatever the merits of the compare and contrast approach may be, that debate can go forward without defending OUSD in particular? Pretty please?
Only if you'll admit that the OUSD DID backtrack, and that the OUSD DID claim that they really only meant to implement compare-and-contrast instruction. And that compare-and-contrast is what they actually DID implement.
But Merry Christmas anyway. ;-)
Anyway, thank you, Catch 22, for that delicious recipe, and to Dean, to Brannon, to Arnold Harris, to Xrlq, to each and every one of you reading this: Merry Christmas!
Deal. And a very Merry Christmas to all.
And to all a good night!
Merry Christmas my friend. :-)