POL: BEV/Ebonics--Language, Dialect, or Poor English?
 

A friend of mine's LJ post prompted me to re-visit this question. She's a linguistics major and ranted about people who regard Black English Vernacular as inferior and a simple case of poor English. Her argument was that BEV is a very complex, organized and well-structured and authentic separate language.

I know this was a really hot topic some years ago and from what I can recall, there was even a course or two offered out in California in learning BEV.

The question I have for FOFC is the following: In your view, is BEV/ebonics a legitimate separate language, a dialectical form of English that while different from standard American English isn't really an entirely separate language, or is it just poor English and laziness in learning how to speak proper English?

For myself, I tend to regard it as a dialect that while certainly derivative of standard American English, is not divorced enough from the standard form to be regarded as an entirely distinct language worthy of study.

I'm comparing this to Spanish language dialects, where the degree of difference, at least from what limited knowledge I have of the subject from a Catalonian and Mexican friends of mine, as well as in-class discussions during my 19th C Latin America course this semester, seems to be vast enough that each individual dialect could be argued as worthy of separate study.

I'll admit that my background as a Lit emphasis major tends to point me in the direction of dialect, for my greatest exposure to BEV has been through African American authored novels, which could, I'll concede, not be entirely accurate, as one would assume a certain watering-down of the vernacular to make it more understandable to a presumably white majority audience.

Note: I've chosen to label this a POL thread, because it's essentially a political question to my mind as opposed to a purely linguistic one. Also, I suspect that tempers may get heated in here and so those who like to avoid that sort of conflict will have the option of doing so.

Most southerners say ain't and ya'll but that don't make it right.

I think what Kwhit said sums it up but to answer the question I think it is poor english.

dola- I fully expect this thread to be locked or deleted at some point.

Can someone tell me how ebonics is different from what KWhit has said... or in written form, different from l337-speak as well? They're different, but not a separate language.

Ebonics is a legitimate dialect, in my opinion.

I am curious why you think that?

For the same reason I think the southern dialect or the New England dialect are legitimate: they're regional and/or cultural based methods of speaking. Ebonics is no different just because it's not locked to a region -- it's still a way that people sharing cultural simularities choose to communicate.

fair enough. I disagree but would never start an argument on the subject

I had a big post all typed up about how I wasn't sure, but then after I'd typed up my experiences and such, I realized that I'd have to go with dialect.

So I'm going with dialect.

I agree with Batman.

When my siblings and I get together, I'd venture a guess that most white people couldn't understand a decent bit of what we're talking about, and all five of us are college (or better) educated, and the four males all have respectable careers. However, when talking to my brothers about football, it would be normal course of action to hear something like this: "Y'all seen dat boy Vick run dat ball last week? I ain't never seen NO quarterback run dat ball like Mike. He be USIN' niggas left and right. He better than Randall EVER was!" If you were a fly on the wall, you'd probably be mildly surprised to learn that all five of us even graduated high school, and SHOCKED to know that the average SAT verbal score among the four of us would be in the low 600's. ;) In our business and social interactions with the general population, we're all considered very articulate, and even erudite by some. Yet when we're together (or in the barbershop), you might think we were street corner thugs.

When Ebonics/BEV is spoken as a dialect, it's quite appropriate. And yeah, I can see the argument that there are even rules and structures. What's unfortunate is when kids speak it who, for whatever reason, do not learn standard English. That's where they get in trouble.

Y'all is the case of a shortcoming of the language (no unique second person plural pronoun) being corrected, it is perfectly all right if you ask me. But then again, I use it all the time, so I am a bit biased.

I think Skydogs post accents alot of the reasons why I don't think it is a dialect.

I think the fact that SD points out that it's unfortunate kids learn this language and not proper english is very telling.

'All y'all' is also what fixes the plural version. Y'all is used to address a subset of a group, and 'all y'all' is used to address the group in it's entirety.

So the fact that you all possess great verbal skills means that when you choose not to use them, you are in fact using a different dialect?

This won't end well.

I think that's OK in conversing with fellow southerners who have the same dialect, but in a public, professional or political environment they should be using correct grammar.

I think that's the point that SkyDog was trying to make.

Actually, doing a dictionary lookup makes me think that "dialect" may be the right term after all.

No one asks if poor kids from rural areas who never learn to speak well are speaking a different language. The paternalism of all of this seems silly to me and the fact that the folks who drive this discussion are so-called educators, makes it even worse in my estimation.

The only reason it's a glaring issue, are issues of test scores and the failings of modern public education in this country. It's not some sort of cultural defect that we have to whitewash out of them, the roots are far deeper than any of that.

Putting a different accent or pronunciation ala New England, or transforming/creating a word is different than poorly structuring a sentence.

Everyone still needs to learn standard english then that freely allows them to speak however they wish - with whatever dialect, slang or nonsense they wish while still conveying their meaning.

To actually teach ebonics would be moronic for the simple fact that standard english allows creative freedom that ebonics does not.

I feel like such an uppity assblack. :(

That would be what I would argue. Heck, I'll give you an example from just a half an hour ago. I called my sister's house to check in with her about Christmas, and my niece (her daughter) answered the phone. Important note: I very rarely talk with my niece when "others" (white people ;)) are present. At any rate, when she answered the phone, I literally thought that I had the wrong number, because I thought it was a white person on the other end of the line. I actually had to ask my niece, "Is this the Bryant residence?" She went on to explain that she was working from home today, and that was her "white voice" just in case someone called. ;)

This thread really won't end well now.

Partially, yeah, but with one caveat: that's assuming that the interaction is going to involve the general population (read: white people). (If you happen to live in one of the upscale black communities of Atlanta, it's a whole different ball game, but that's a different discussion entirely.)

The other point is that it is perfectly acceptable to speak that way, and that just because someone speaks that way in certain contexts doesn't mean that they're less capable/intelligent than the next guy.

Completely agree. It's much like saying Southern people are unintelligent because of the way they speak. Intelligence and dialect have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

I was prepared to argue the point with you, but I can see how this would fall into the definition of a dialect. I also agree with a previous post that is isn't a dialect that should be formerly taught (no dialect should), but I can see where elements of this and other dialects will eventually work their way into "proper english" and become "proper english".

I am interested in the whole "white voice/black voice" thing, but I haven't really thought about it enough to start a conversation about it.

Most of us hicks out in the country can't talk no normal English neither.

You can't tell me I'm going to sit around at the tavern with my friends talking like I would in the academic world, for instance.

I'm not sure if I would call it a dialect, but I once tried using some of my thickest rural-Wisconsin dialect on a girl from South Africa and needless to say, she couldn't understand a word I said. Granted, I never really did understand a word she said either.

Is there a separate dialect spoken within your car?

Oh, stewardess! I speak jive!

Are you sure she wasn't speaking Afrikaans? :)

With the company I used to work for, my boss was interviewed on CNBC Italia. We asked our PR firm to dub the video so we could use it in the US. They sent us the first copy, and it was an Italian mother tongue person doing the translation, and their English translation was good, but the pronunciation was horrible. So we asked them to have an English mother tongue to read the translation, since people in the US would be most comfortable listening to that. Well, they sent us back the second copy, and it was an EMT speaker, but not American. Not British. Not even Austrailian. It was South African. Finally I went down to their studio and was the voice over. :)

Depends where I park it. The majority of the time it's Trailer Park dialect.

It doesn't mean people are less capable or less intelligent, but I would question why they would make that particular choice. If you have to argue the point that it doesn't make you less capable or less intelligent, you know that people will sometimes perceive you that way. That may make them (those with the wrong perception) ignorant, but why not just avoid that whole situation?

She was in fact speaking English, but I had to listen very, very closely.

Because it is fun to communicate in a more demonstrative and relaxed manner at times. Further, when I'm among family and close friends, no one is going to perceive me that way. It's not like some stodgy ol' white dude is hiding in the closet waiting to see if he can catch us using ebonics. ;)

Whatever works I guess. For me, I've tried very hard to not use so many Wisconsin-isms and to avoid the stereotypical accent to train myself to use a more general/average conversational style. Seems like a good way to make it more natural and normal so I don't have to worry about slipping into another style in the wrong situation.

I'll let the "stodgy ol' white dude" characterization pass.

Because, like pretty much any dialect, there is a strong cultural component involved. That dialect is part of their culture.

I agree with the notion that "proper" English is what should be taught, for the purpose of maintaining a standard, universally understood baseline from which any English-language educated person could converse with another. I also think that extreme dialects are worthy of study from a linguistics perspective, primarily because of the information those dialects reveal about the culture from which they spring. I don't think those dialects should be taught as a language though.

I'm late to the party, but this paragraph works pretty well for me, too.

That's a very, very good point. I almost edited my post to add something about the fact that I also think that there's something within us that relishes that cultural connection. It's probably stronger in my family than with most my age, due to late children in a couple of generations. There aren't many 37-year-olds running around today whose great-grandfather was born a slave.

By the way... if you're inclined to take the high road here on proper language and so forth... a couple quick pointers:

* "English" is capitalized, always
* "it's" is a contraction, not a possession, always


Pip pip, cheerio, God Save The Queen, and all that rot...

I can't really argue with any of this. I do wonder though, should different dialects be left as they are, should they be celebrated and encourged to flourish, or should they be encouraged to average toward a "standard english"? As our country gets smaller and the world gets smaller, wouldn't it be easier if the same dialect taught formally was also taught and used at home? Rather than re-teaching "proper" english, wouldn't that time be better served going deeper into science or history?

I'm sorry but I cannot disagree more with this post. This has to be one of the least intelligent comments that I have ever read. Vick does not come close to Randall. Vick couldn;t even hold Randall's jock.

Oh, on the rest of the post, sure that sounds okay.

:D

Except this gets into the question of cultural identity, which is related to the cultural roots points others have brought up.

Some would argue that by trying to push the dialects toward the standardized form of whatever the language of the majority is, you run the risk of that original culture being diminished and put it in danger of the verbal and written linguistic uniqueness of that the particular cultural tradition holds.

Taken to its fullest extent, they would say that by nudging dialects towards the standard, there's an imposition of the ruling culture on to the subordinate culture and that it's a kind of cultural imperialism.

And when an individual or group of individuals loses their cultural identity, what are they left with?

The idea of paradise for the xenophobes?

:D

What stereotypical Wisconsin accent? Wisconsin is the single-most accentless state in the country, or at least it seems to me, unless you're talking about northern Wisconsin and even then it's debatable. :)

Well, so long as what is taught in schools is proper English, I really don't care what communities choose in terms of variations and dialects - it's their choice. If they want to be able to communicate with the rest of the world, then they should know and be able to speak and write proper English. And if they don't, well, that's their choice isn't it?

SkyDog is just one of countless examples of people that are perfectly capable of communicating in proper English while also maintaining a particular dialect when the opportunity is present to do so. Assuming competence with local public schools (and that is admittedly a potentially big assumption), there's no good reason why someone can't maintain both a local dialect while also learning and becoming fully capable of communicating in proper English.

And really, isn't much of what makes various communities and cultures interesting the things they do that are different from the norm? Southern Louisiana just wouldn't be as interesting without the Cajuns, New England would be more bland without their distinctive accent, the South wouldn't have as much charm without their accents and dialects, etc. I find it fascinating watching British movies, TV, music, etc. and hearing the different phrases and terms they use.

The world would be a more boring place if we all spoke exactly the same.

Why is proper English "correct"? Does it have inherent truth to it that Ebonics or Southern or New England dialects do not? Of course not.

Proper English is the chosen dialect of those in power and hence if you want to advance in or society you better speak the same way that those with money and power speak. Language is a way to delineate groups in much the same way as skin color. How you speak instantly conveys which tribe you belong to.

That tribal aspect is important in that while it may isolate you from those outside your tribe it's essential for those in your tribe. To speak differently than your family and/or friends is to isolate yourself. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to, as my wife says about her Southern dialect, "not get above your raisin".

Dialect has almost nothing to do with either education or intelligence. It's a way to speak so that those in your tribe understand and those outside don't. This is as much true for proper English as it is for Ebonics.

Of course all this can be found in the English speaking world's best piece on language, Pygmalion.

Have you been to Washington or Oregon?

I would also argue that some parts of Wisconsin exhibit traits of the "Great Lakes" accent, i.e. the prototypical "Chicago" accent.

This is absolutely true, but it's only part of the truth - there is also the need for a baseline, standard form of communication that allows all English speakers to have a common ground. And yes, that standard is set by those in power, though I would argue that the information age is spreading that power to a broader and broader range of people.