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Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

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Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#51

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #50
ceilingcorner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

> Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English? clearly not - Australian English is far more different to Standard American English compared to... Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent.

Are you talking about AAVE or the standard English African American accent?

These are not the same thing and you seem to be deliberately misleading about it.

Whatever you’re trying to argue for, state it clearly.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#52

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #45
bedobi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with. Sorry, but you're just wrong. Everyone agrees grammar and correctness is important. AAVE has and enforces both. This has nothing to do with postmodern relativism. I bet you can't translate or understand th…

First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE. It is like other dialects in America, such as Appalachian English or Louisianan English. It’s also not spoken by a large percentage of African Americans. Secondly, I really don’t know what you are trying to argue for. AAVE is an interesting dialect and something that makes America a richer place, just as all the other dialects do.…

> First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE

Apologies, but it's now clear that you simply have no idea what you're talking about, I literally posted above textbook examples about what is the standard of what is correct and incorrect in AAVE, but you don't care to understand, so I'm gonna end this particular reply chain here.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#53

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #52
ceilingcorner wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE. It is like other dialects in America, such as Appalachian English or Louisianan English. It’s also not spoken by a large percentage of African Americans. Secondly, I really don’t know what you are trying to argue for. AAVE is an interesting dialect and something that makes America a richer place, just as all the other dialects do.…

> First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE Apologies, but it's now clear that you simply have no idea what you're talking about, I literally posted above textbook examples about what is the standard of what is correct and incorrect in AAVE, but you don't care to understand, so I'm gonna end this particular reply chain here.

If you actually read the Wikipedia article, you’ll see the words “continuum” and “frequently used” often. It’s similar to a creole.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_...

And again, I really have absolutely no idea what you are trying to argue for.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#54

Post by fenomas »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #41
fenomas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very strange position to take. For one, I think what you're attacking here is usually called "descriptivism", as opposed to prescriptivism. Relativism is already a term of art in linguistics for something unrelated. For two, it's hard to follow what point you're trying to make. If you think Australian English is correct in Australia, why not similarly say that AAVE is correct in a place where people…

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere. It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impo…

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. ... It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing

Arguments like these can't support their own weight. For example, how do the two quoted statements resolve when applied to a region where the majority of people mainly speak AAVE? Are we to conclude that standard English is "incorrect" in that region, because the cultural subgroup that prefers it doesn't warrant equal standing? Or is the AAVE-speaking majority of that region a "subgroup" for some arbitrary reason? Or are we instead saying that AAVE and standard English are both correct in that one particular region - but once an AAVE speaker travels to the next town over their usage turns incorrect again?

The whole topic makes a lot more sense if one just embraces descriptivism. There's no such animal as "correct usage", only "usage that people consider correct" - which varies with both the person and with the context. What's correct in an essay isn't necessarily correct on the playground, and vice-versa. Sure it's more complicated, but it has the benefit of accurately modeling how people actually use language, and prescriptivism doesn't.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#55

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #51
bedobi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English? clearly not - Australian English is far more different to Standard American English compared to... Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent.

Are you talking about AAVE or the standard English African American accent? These are not the same thing and you seem to be deliberately misleading about it. Whatever you’re trying to argue for, state it clearly.

Both.

The argument is AAVE is incorrect, or at least different from, Standard American English, that's why it stigmatized.

That doesn't explain why Australian English, which is also different, is not stigmatized in the US. In fact, there's an expectation that even in the US, people make an effort to understand Australian English.

It also doesn't explain why even Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent, is also stigmatized. It's literally just Standard American English with different pronunciation! Australian English is far more different to Standard American English than Standard American English is to itself just spoken with an African American Accent.

Anyone who thinks about this with a shred of honesty will see that there's something very revealing about that.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#56

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #55
ceilingcorner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about AAVE or the standard English African American accent? These are not the same thing and you seem to be deliberately misleading about it. Whatever you’re trying to argue for, state it clearly.

Both. The argument is AAVE is incorrect, or at least different from, Standard American English, that's why it stigmatized. That doesn't explain why Australian English, which is also different, is not stigmatized in the US. In fact, there's an expectation that even in the US, people make an effort to understand Australian English. It also doesn't explain why even Standard American English, just spoken with an African…

No, I don’t think so, and I also don’t think that everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest. That’s why ideological viewpoints like yours are so misleading.

1. Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English.

2. Having different pronunciations by default makes it not standard American English. Not sure why this is controversial. If 90% of the country uses a certain pronunciation, why is the 10% one just as valid? Is the avoidance of it discrimination? I don’t think so. More like basic practicality.

3. Again, you seem lost in a loop here. Either AAVE is a separate dialect with its own internal grammar, or it’s an extension of Standard English that uses incorrect grammar. Which is it?

4. Considering that pretty much every other dialect is treated exactly the same way (Appalachian, etc.) it’s pretty clear this has little to do with race, as you are ideologically trying to shoehorn into your argument.

You see some grand conspiracy when the reality is that standard American English has a longer history, more cultural works, and is agreed upon by the majority of the population. It’s really that simple.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#58

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #56
bedobi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. The argument is AAVE is incorrect, or at least different from, Standard American English, that's why it stigmatized. That doesn't explain why Australian English, which is also different, is not stigmatized in the US. In fact, there's an expectation that even in the US, people make an effort to understand Australian English. It also doesn't explain why even Standard American English, just spoken with an African…

No, I don’t think so, and I also don’t think that everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest. That’s why ideological viewpoints like yours are so misleading. 1. Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English. 2. Having different pronunciations by de…

> Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English.

This is an odd counter argument. If there's so few Australians in the US, and they're so insignificant, you'd expect them to be more pressured into not speaking Australian English. But again, they're not being pressured into not speaking Australian English, if anything, Americans are expected to accommodate and make an effort to understand them. Why is this not the case for AAVE, which is very commonly spoken by far more people and a far more important variety of English in the US?

> Either AAVE is a separate dialect with its own internal grammar, or it’s an extension of Standard English that uses incorrect grammar. Which is it?

AAVE is a variety of English. Some of its grammar is different to Standard English.

Standard American English spoken with an African American accent is not AAVE, it's just Standard American English spoken with a different pronunciation.

Both are curiously stigmatized in ways Australian English is not.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#59

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #58
ceilingcorner wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don’t think so, and I also don’t think that everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest. That’s why ideological viewpoints like yours are so misleading. 1. Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English. 2. Having different pronunciations by de…

> Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English. This is an odd counter argument. If there's so few Australians in the US, and they're so insignificant, you'd expect them to be more pressured into not speaking Australian English. But again, they're not bei…

Where are you getting this information?

Where are Australians not pressured into speaking Standard American English? On the street? Well, I don’t think anyone pressures people to not speak AAVE on the street either.

In schools? Certainly an Australian kid going through American schools will be taught to lose his Australian spellings, pronunciations, irregular vocabulary. Unclear to me how this is any different.

In the media? Well, if an Australian newscaster working in the US starting saying cunt, I assure you, he’d be forced to adopt Standard American English.

As I said, you have a highly ideological view and seem to be looking for anything to justify your conclusion.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#60

Post by curryst »

bedobi wrote: post #19
i_am_proteus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DFW wrote about this decades ago: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... English has various dialects. Anyone not educated in the "standard" dialect is at a disadvantage, but it's better to teach the standard dialect as a dialect, because that's what it is. Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. Thi…

That's why I deliberately used Australian English as an example. It's not clear why most people would intuitively not stigmatize a speaker of Australian English, but (consciously or otherwise) simultaneously stigmatize a speaker of AAVE, or even someone who speaks perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but merely with an African American accent. In the latter case, they're both just grammatical standard eng…

It doesn't seem shocking to me that AAVE is stigmatized (not that it's right to do so). AAVE re-uses Standard American English words and grammar in different ways. I think it was you up above that brought up the habitual be. If you're not familiar with AAVE, you're probably going to misinterpret it. That stands in contrast to many of the other English dialects, where things are generally either clear from context, or so foreign you have no idea what to make of it and have to ask.

That ability to misinterpret creates confusion, which people don't like. "She be working" could either mean that she's been working a lot recently in AAVE, or a strange way of saying that she is currently at work. Appalachian English, for example, doesn't have pitfalls like that. "They was a-going way over yonder" has grammatical differences, but they don't particularly change the meaning. I would expect most people to be able to infer the meaning of that (presuming they know what "yonder" means).

The second, and probably more important, factor is people's exposure. The portrayal of AAVE in media is not good. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw a character in a show or movie that spoke AAVE, was well educated or prestigious, and wasn't some kind of a shaman, voodoo priest or similar. I don't think I've ever seen a doctor or lawyer on TV that spoke AAVE. The characters that speak AAVE are almost universally poor, usually not very smart, and often involved in either crime or some kind of mysticism. It builds a stereotype around people who speak AAVE, especially since I think most of us have very little exposure to it.

Fwiw, there are other English dialects that are similarly stigmatized. Appalachian English is heavily stigmatized, as is the more general southern dialect, though to less of a degree. The Cockney accent/dialect is similarly stigmatized, and it seems like for similar reasons.

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