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Thread: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    It is not a political ploy. It is a linguistic reality.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    [B]First, I really don't care for the invented term "ebonics," so I will use AAVE in its place.
    Nicolina, sorry but I think I was a bit unclear with my post. When I said "ebonics was a political ploy" I was using the term ebonics to refer to what was discussed earlier in this thread, I was not trying to debate the linguistic reality of AAVE:
    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Hyde View Post
    A little historical perspective here...

    "Ebonics" was the creation of a school district in California, seeking federal funding that could be provided to schools/districts which had a large ESL population (or something like that). It was basically a political ploy which backfired because of the accompanying PR disaster.

    This thread is very interesting.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    Or let's just call it what it is and say that it is a WRONG-HEADED, UNIFORMED, IGNORANT opinion.
    Yes, the opinion is ill-informed and wrong-headed and flies in the face of all linguistic evidence to the contrary. But you know who else has been guilty of this very practice? Albert Einstein.

    To the end of his life, Einstein could never embrace the rising tide of evidence that quantum mechanics -- which obey the laws of probability and dictate that the measurement of a quantum event itself determines the outcome -- could possibly be true. This is where the phrase, "God does not play with dice," came from. But every single experiment in every single lab in every single instance and every single set-up has demonstrated that Niels Bohr was absolutely right and Einstein was dead wrong. And Einstein was a pretty bright guy.

    It's hard to let go of long-held beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The fact that AAVE is a legitimate, complex, sophisticated dialect with its own grammar, morphology and syntax just drives some people absolutely batshit, because its similarity to SAE in vocabulary is just enough to sound "wrong" or "ignorant" or "lazy" to somebody who only understands SAE. I tried to show previously that the prejudice against minority dialects is a worldwide phenomenon, and not at all limited to the U.S.

    It's also worth remembering that people are also fighting against endless years of damage caused by grammar Nazis telling them that there was one "correct" way of speaking or writing, and everything else was wrong. What they should have been taught is that there is one "standardized" form that is generally agreed to (by a bunch of lexicographers who are infinitely distant from infallibility, and trust me, are drunk a great deal of the time), but it is in change and flux constantly, because language itself is a bottom-to-top phenomenon. In other words, language springs spontaneously from the human mind and by definition, any form of communication between humans that succeeds is language (be it a pigin, creole, dialect or language). Any effort to codify or standardize it is secondary, of lesser importance, of lower rank. In fact, the only reason to codify it at all is to homogenize spelling and grammar usage so that the language that the people are already speaking, the real language, the language that has the universal authority, improves mutual intelligibility. That's it. The dictionaries, the grammars, the rulebooks and everything you've ever been taught are forever behind, are of secondary rank, and bringing up the rear, and are simply compiled to try to catch up with the real language. The real language is whatever language you are already speaking and writing.

    The first time I realized that this prescriptivist nonsense (rules define language rather than the other way around) was horseshit was when I picked up a grammar written in the 1950s. As I flipped through it, I realized that about half of it hadn't the slightest similarity to current standardized usage. Yet the grammar Nazis of the day were busy pounding away at the permanency and inviolability of the grammar rules of that era. You can still find (non-linguists) today who wax nostalgic about "proper" English spoken 40 or 50 years ago, and who will insist at great volume that everything today is a sad bastardization of the "true" language. You will never win an argument with these people, so don't even try. But they will tell you that your usage of English is wrong.

    I teach a course at my company on the history, evolution and nature of language. It is designed to crush, upend and destroy every sacred belief any attendee had about language when that person first walked in the door. And these are really bright people -- all college-educated, minimally bi- or tri-lingual, who have spent significant time in higher education abroad.

    The senior project managers who have already been through the course love to sneak in and sit in the back and watch as the established towers of sacred belief are torn apart brick by brick. The protests and confusion and insistence that none of this can be true, slowly, over time, among the new staff, die down, and they begin to realize that language evolves from the bottom up, by definition, and they slowly start to think about language as a living and breathing entity, one that belongs to them, to the users, the creators, the speakers and the writers who have given it life.
    Last edited by All Good Things; 08-20-2007 at 11:25 PM.

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    Featured Member Starfire's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    This thread is so interesting and it is really highlighting an interesting issue: it seems like some of us are complaining about "hip hop slang" rather than actual AAVE, which it seems from this thread is not really the same thing.
    For the record and completely off topic a lot of slang drives me crazy- am I the only person who hates the phrase "my bad"? That phrase was in popular usage when I was in high school and I just couldn't stand it.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Starfire View Post
    This thread is so interesting and it is really highlighting an interesting issue: it seems like some of us are complaining about "hip hop slang" rather than actual AAVE, which it seems from this thread is not really the same thing.
    For the record and completely off topic a lot of slang drives me crazy- am I the only person who hates the phrase "my bad"? That phrase was in popular usage when I was in high school and I just couldn't stand it.
    I use my bad every once in a while.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    For the record and completely off topic a lot of slang drives me crazy- am I the only person who hates the phrase "my bad"? That phrase was in popular usage when I was in high school and I just couldn't stand it.
    I wonder if "my bad" is a regional phrase? I hear people use it all the time, people of all ages, educated and uneducated. I have a proofreader in California who proofs my work and he always marks it as an error. Maybe they don't ever say that in CA?

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Starfire View Post
    Nicolina, sorry but I think I was a bit unclear with my post. When I said "ebonics was a political ploy" I was using the term ebonics to refer to what was discussed earlier in this thread, I was not trying to debate the linguistic reality of AAVE:
    IIRC, the school district in question wanted funding to teach standard English to their student clientele, with the hope that they would be able to get jobs, apply to college, etc. It was not an effort to get Ebonics recognition as a separate language.

    I used to tell my students stuff like this: "I don't care whether you say, 'Me and him went to the mall," when you're talking with your friends, but you'd better know how to write and say, "He and I went to the mall," when you're writing formally or having a job interview."

    I find Ebonics (AAVE to you academicians) to be a lot easier to understand than whatever version of English they speak in India. More and more, customer service via telephone seems to be routed to India, and less and less is communication enhanced.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    I totally didn't mean to open up can of worms.

    But I really am appreciating the discussion. This is just one of those intelligent conversations that just don't happen with people I know.



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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    Or let's just call it what it is and say that it is a WRONG-HEADED, UNIFORMED, IGNORANT opinion.

    How 'bout that?

    Okay, this thread is making me too mad now.
    the question was: what do you think of ebonics? i stated my opinion, sorry you think it is "ignorant"
    ebonics to me is gangster.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    ^ Everybody is entitled to an opinion. What we are trying to do is encourage you to think beyond the opinions you may have held before reading this thread.

    "Ebonics" is a bit of a silly neologism popularized by the Oakland, CA School Board. It was, and ever since has been, essentially equivalent to AAVE in every important respect.

    While your own experience with this dialect may be "gangster," I am sure you realize that it is used by millions of people in the U.S. inner cities, particularly in the South, and the urban midwest, where it grew out of Southern American English, in contexts having absolutely nothing at all to do with the "gangster" lifestyle.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by FrustratedBunny View Post
    I wonder if "my bad" is a regional phrase? I hear people use it all the time, people of all ages, educated and uneducated. I have a proofreader in California who proofs my work and he always marks it as an error. Maybe they don't ever say that in CA?
    I think the first time I ever noticed the phrase "my bad" was in the movie Clueless. I don't remember ever hearing it before that.
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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    I think the first time I ever noticed the phrase "my bad" was in the movie Clueless. I don't remember ever hearing it before that.


    Some folks blame basketball player Manute Bol for that phrase. If I remember correctly, that would date the phrase to the mid to late '80s.
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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Starfire View Post
    This thread is so interesting and it is really highlighting an interesting issue: it seems like some of us are complaining about "hip hop slang" rather than actual AAVE, which it seems from this thread is not really the same thing.
    For the record and completely off topic a lot of slang drives me crazy- am I the only person who hates the phrase "my bad"? That phrase was in popular usage when I was in high school and I just couldn't stand it.
    I hate "my bad" and I also hate the Friends usage of the word "so", such as, "That is so not true," "you are so not getting my fries," etc. It is annoying and dumb-sounding, and I hate that it is used like that all of the time by otherwise intelligent people.
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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    By observation I perceive that many contributors making comments on this thread have considered these lines of reasoning not only many times over and but also long before now. I'm in way over my head. All the same I believe I have important but not necessarily valid points to make.

    I am, I believe, a prescriptivist. I make this claim in spite of the fact that I have a limited understanding of the parts of speech. To this day I remain confused over just what is an intransitive verb, and why are these relationships called direct objects and why those relationships are called indirect objects, and dangling this's and relative that's; my patience falters. I want to use a semicolon for one time and know that its use and placement are correct. Ahh, punctuation. Speech is punctuated in such a way that the mere timing and rhythm of the spoken thread can change a meaning, I'm so easily distracted.

    Language is not always the work of an orderly mind. Written language has a chance for correction. The opportunity for correction in spoken language is stunningly brief.

    These representative ebonic lyrics that are posted are contrived forms. Surely the word forms were chosen and tried, are recast and then spliced together and respliced until a final form was reached to make a point. The form of speech is being defined, recommended, precribed. I call the methods and devices used in making the points effective but the style is not one that I call elegant.

    You are reading this post and my meanings are traveling a distance between us in words and taking form as an understanding in your conscienceness. The success of this communication depends on your familiarity with the word mechanics that I use but may also depend on your patience in unraveling the clues to my meanings. This is what I mean by being a precriptionist, or is it presciptivenist ... well what ever the concept is called. You see? I want to be understood so I stuggle to use the correct term. I seek to use the words and word devices common to us.

    For me, the common elements present in every thread in these forums is the breathing language of our time and place. And, I believe that commonality can be described then recommended, prescribed.

    For me, ebonics is not a separate language and I can't bring myself to call it a dialect. I'd rather classify it as coded speech.

    Don't get near me or I will stab you with my word knife.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Stab away with your wordknife. I am protected by the shield of truth. The fact is, AAVE is a language. The choice is whether you are willing to sieze the opportunity for expanding your knowledge or remaining in stasis.

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    Default Re: Ebonics: Your Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by FrustratedBunny View Post
    I wonder if "my bad" is a regional phrase? I hear people use it all the time, people of all ages, educated and uneducated. I have a proofreader in California who proofs my work and he always marks it as an error. Maybe they don't ever say that in CA?
    Oh, yes. Yes they do.


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