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African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

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Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#31

Post by kjhgftgyui »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #25
jeromec wrote: post #16

Regardless of the school board debating the potential validity of AAVE, I think it's misguided to experiment with asserting such "correctness" to teach kids that will grow up in a world that doesn't regard it as such. Save such philosophy for later academics, where the author/speaker can make a conscious choice of use - similar to the stylistic, but "incorrect", use of 'But' or 'And' to begin a sentence.

This is not philosophy at all. This is purely technical. The differences between AAVE and standard English (or should I say American?) are consistent . They are spoken by a lot of people. They follow precise rules (a grammar, actually). They're not erratic. So you can't call them "errors". The only other choice is to conclude that AAVE is a language —or a dialect. Telling that to kids can only have good effects. Firs…

If they are consistent and understandable -

Rastafarian use of 'Me' for 'I' makes sense and is consistent.

Using 'bad' to mean 'good' probably isn't a good idea if you are an aircraft mechanic.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#32

Post by wrs »

jeromec wrote: post #28
loup-vaillant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not philosophy at all. This is purely technical. The differences between AAVE and standard English (or should I say American?) are consistent . They are spoken by a lot of people. They follow precise rules (a grammar, actually). They're not erratic. So you can't call them "errors". The only other choice is to conclude that AAVE is a language —or a dialect. Telling that to kids can only have good effects. Firs…

> Telling that to kids can only have good effects. I disagree. I think the mistake you are making is the focus around what is or is not "error". It's not about that. My friend from Argentina constantly strives to improve his American English , rather than his AAVE, regardless of your insistence of the validity of AAVE. He now works in an office on the 17th floor where he hires people, and I knew him when he knew no E…

I'm guessing your friend learned American English in an environment that recognized that his native language was something else (presumably a dialect of Spanish) and took that into account. Should native AAVE speakers not receive the same treatment?

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#33

Post by jeromec »

kjhgftgyui wrote: post #29
jeromec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telling that to kids can only have good effects. I disagree. I think the mistake you are making is the focus around what is or is not "error". It's not about that. My friend from Argentina constantly strives to improve his American English , rather than his AAVE, regardless of your insistence of the validity of AAVE. He now works in an office on the 17th floor where he hires people, and I knew him when he knew no E…

Yes - if he had chosen to improve his British English he would be on the 20th floor. Or doomed to always play the villain in Holywood movies

> Yes - if he had chosen to improve his British English he would be on the 20th floor

Quite possibly, especially if he had the accent to match, considering the success of James Bond movies in America.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#34

Post by aristus »

pg wrote: post #11

The argument here is in effect that no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake. Which is true for some definitions of mistake, and false for others. The problem with the definitions that make it true is that there's a slippery slope from dialects to idiolects. How many people have to speak a dialect for it to count as a dialect? You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in…

A standard joke about that: a dialect is an ideolect with a history and body of literature. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Language is an instrument of politics like any other.

Where my father grew up, the dominant language was not Spanish but Caló, which is generally (incorrectly, in my opinion) considered a degenerate form of Spanish. Later on he had to catch up a lot in order to be taken seriously in international business.

He also learned Brasilian Portuguese, which started out as a regathering of various dialects of Lisbon Portuguese. It is a defacto language, and may become be widely recognized as such, given the political weight behind it.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#35

Post by jeromec »

wrs wrote: post #32
jeromec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telling that to kids can only have good effects. I disagree. I think the mistake you are making is the focus around what is or is not "error". It's not about that. My friend from Argentina constantly strives to improve his American English , rather than his AAVE, regardless of your insistence of the validity of AAVE. He now works in an office on the 17th floor where he hires people, and I knew him when he knew no E…

I'm guessing your friend learned American English in an environment that recognized that his native language was something else (presumably a dialect of Spanish) and took that into account. Should native AAVE speakers not receive the same treatment?

I don't know what you mean by same treatment, as I'm sure any English course instructors told him it was incorrect to pronounce the "i" with an "e" sound.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#36

Post by jfarmer »

jeromec wrote: post #23
jfarmer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should dictionaries and grammar books be any more authoritative than the way people actually speak? AAVE isn't correct or incorrect any more than gravity is correct or incorrect. They both exist; it's our job to study them. Putting AAVE into a box labeled "incorrect English" is just a way to avoid the hard work of understanding our world. And yes, the "academic" understanding of AAVE includes the sociolinguistic…

> Why should dictionaries and grammar books be any more authoritative than the way people actually speak? Simple, because of perception. Whether you like it or not perception matters. If I perceive your car as worth your selling price, a deal happens - doesn't mean my perception over yours is any more "correct". Same happens with stock prices, or hiring decisions. In other words, the things that matter in the day-to-…

Of course perception matters.

But it's the difference between recognizing AAVE as its own thing, sociolinguistic warts and all, and labeling it as "broken English."

Linguistics isn't just about grammar (in fact, in linguistics "grammatical" is basically synonymous with "understood by a native speaker"), it's also about the signals we send when we speak a certain way (semantics and sociolinguistics).

Labeling AAVE as "broken English" is just a way of dismissing it and giving ourselves an excuse for not understanding it.

For example, I know plenty of successful people who have poor grammar. But nobody goes around saying they speak "broken English," and if I pointed that out everyone would think I'm an asshole.

Why don't people react the same way when we say someone speaking AAVE has "broken English?" Why is it ok to point out how "poorly" they speak?

Anyhow, all I mean to say is that the proper study of AAVE includes the idea that speaking it signals certain things about the speaker, not just its syntax, morphology, etc.

I recommend reading the research of William Labov, who has ton of work in studying the various dialects of American English.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#37

Post by jfarmer »

pg wrote: post #11

The argument here is in effect that no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake. Which is true for some definitions of mistake, and false for others. The problem with the definitions that make it true is that there's a slippery slope from dialects to idiolects. How many people have to speak a dialect for it to count as a dialect? You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in…

No linguist would ever call the way someone speaks a "mistake," in the same way that a purple swan isn't a mistake. It's something rare and worth studying!

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#38

Post by wrs »

jeromec wrote: post #35
wrs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing your friend learned American English in an environment that recognized that his native language was something else (presumably a dialect of Spanish) and took that into account. Should native AAVE speakers not receive the same treatment?

I don't know what you mean by same treatment, as I'm sure any English course instructors told him it was incorrect to pronounce the "i" with an "e" sound.

Now I'm guessing you haven't RTFA. The point of the exercise is to teach Standard English more effectively to people whose native language is AAVE, not to teach people AAVE.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#39

Post by kjhgftgyui »

jeromec wrote: post #33
kjhgftgyui wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - if he had chosen to improve his British English he would be on the 20th floor. Or doomed to always play the villain in Holywood movies

> Yes - if he had chosen to improve his British English he would be on the 20th floor Quite possibly, especially if he had the accent to match, considering the success of James Bond movies in America.

It is a real effect. UK companies analyse which regional British accents are most trusted/most calming/etc before deciding where to put their customer call centres.

Re: African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes

#40

Post by kjhgftgyui »

mkelly wrote: post #6
wheels wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gramatical differences between "high" forms of British and American English are comparatively small. Certainly the dialectal variations within each country are further departures than standard American English is from standard British English. In each the differences are more of preference and still usually considered correct in the other. A more apt example would be Swiss and high German, which are (aside from t…

Linguistically, there's no agreed-upon rule for what makes a "dialect"[1]. What I heard from Linguistics people is that they're all just separate languages, some with and some without a written form. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#.22Dialect.22_or_.22lan...

A language is just a dialect with an army

Luxembourgish is identical to the local German accent - but one is an official language while just over the border it's a dialect

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