PseudoScientism
Dean
I recently fell over laughing at this thread over at Bill Quick's place. Richard Bennett (or as my my lovely wife calls him, "he of the tiny penis") decided to attack me, in his usual pathetically trollish fashion, as follows:
Thus spake Dean Esmay*, man of science.You've got to wonder what motivates this sad little loser, don't you?*according to whom HIV doesn't cause AIDS, Ebonics is a language, and Intelligent Design belongs in Jr. High biology class. That's the company you're in, Bill. Happy?
1) My view on creationism is that it's better to invite the kids to debate it than to forbid it by court decree--a view shared by evolutionary biologist and contribitor to the peer-reviewed journal Science Michael Balter.
2) My position on HIV and AIDS is endorsed by not one but two Nobel laureates, as well as several fully credentialed and published biologists and biochemists I've personally interviewed. It amounts to this: "the science on HIV and AIDS is poorly supported and needs extensive re-examination." I completely admit that I may be wrong about HIV and AIDS, but I've talked to more than one fully credentialed scientist on both sides of the issue. Can Richard say the same?
3) I don't want African American Vernacular English (a.k.a. "Ebonics") taught in the classroom. That's a dumb idea. But I do think it's good if teachers are taught to understand the vernacular. I also think it's a good idea to teach kids how to differentiate between the "ghetto-talk" they grow up with and Standard English.
I state here and now that no one can produce a list of ten linguists who agree that "ebonics" (more precisely known as "African American Vernacular English" or "Black Vernacular English") does not exist. Indeed, I predict that no one can produce a list of five.
I also add this: We all make mistakes and say things we wish we could take back. Can you produce such a list about yourself? I can.
Barnes, Hank
he be working
he working
one of them means "he has a job - i.e. is working as a continuing action", the other "he is working at the moment - i.e. as a discrete action" (I don't remember which is which) I.e. they are actually two different verb tenses. The closest thing I know of in other languages is the French imparfait, which is a continuing action, and the passe compose, which is a discrete action, but they are in the past.
In any case, the point is that this construct applies to any verb where it makes sense, and moreover, any Ebonics speaker knows the difference and reacts appropriately according to the distinct meanings. Given that Ebonics is essentially *nowhere* taught formally to the people who speak it, nor do parents systematically instruct and correct their children in it, what Mr. Bennett would have to explain is how on earth millions of Ebonics speakers figure out how to use thousands of verbs this way without any formal training, unless, like the case in French, it is a unique dialect with it's out syntax and semantics, albeit very close to American Standard English, since the two are largely mutually intelligible.
You can now pick up books written by linguists which attempt to codify AAVE, a.k.a. "ebonics." It's not taught many places but it has a place in the study of linguistics.
This is what poor befuddled Richard can never understand: linguistics is a science, and these scientists documented and described AAVE generations ago. Its existence is as uncontroversial among these scientists as the existence of black holes is among phycisists.
You're right, it's an uncontroversial claim in linguistics that AAVE exists. I think what started the feeding frenzy during the Ebonics episode was the claim that it was a different language rather than a dialect - a concept which got translated in the popular media as a claim that "dumb Californians think bad English is a language". I'm on the fence myself as to whether AAVE should be considered a language or a dialect of a language, but since there is no percise definition which would differentiate them, it's kind of a silly debate. I can understand the point that the Oakland folks were trying to make, which is that trying to teach a AAVE speaker Standard English is a task very much like (to borrow Geoffrey Pullum's example) teaching a Swedish-speaking child to speak standard Norwegian. Given that, it makes sense for school systems with a large AAVE-speaking population to approach it not as teaching 'good' English to kids who speak it 'wrong' but to approach it as teaching standard English to kids who speak a different language, albeit one with origins in common with Standard.
Anyone who thought it was just a politically-correct attempt to treat slang as a language doesn't get the topic.
The funny thing is, this happens in a lot of places where a non-standard dialect butts up against a dominant dialect: people get mad when you even recognize the non-standard dialect.
There is a good argument to be made that what the Oakland school board was really doing was playing games in order to get more Federal funding for "bilingual education," which is controversial all by itself. Still, some studies have shown that treating a minority dialect with some respect and teaching the standard language with a compare-and-contrast method is effective. But the politics of it tends to turn nasty fast.