Comments on: Clean Up Your Desktop!

By: Lauren

Lauren — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:55:35 +0000

Shad, I think part of the answer is in that high school students repeatedly feel they are being unchallenged. Introduction to Linguistics is a fun curriculum because it involves problem-solving, fun cultural facts, and a lot of sitting around trying to locate a glottal stop. Sing the old Batman theme song, etc.

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:08:11 +0000

As someone who loved reading about linguistics when I was in high school (and invented private languages together with my sister), I would have loved a supplemental curriculum on ebonics – or any other dialect.

By: Shad Small

Shad Small — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 09:01:57 +0000

Oh, and on the language issue: it’s not as if (1) Ebonics and “standard” English are mutally exclusive, that one who is fluent in one cannot ever understand the other, and (2) that anyone ever speaks the “dominant language.” We all share in the “mutilation” as heliologue says. The sad thing is, we will all sound like dinosaurs or curios in a couple decades. Why all the fuss? If simplification is the problem, then is complexity necessarily always the answer? I’m seriously asking.

By: Shad Small

Shad Small — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 08:24:53 +0000

Thanks for posting the “tips for trainers” stuff. As a math tutor who’s trying to find their footing, some of it seems very helpful.

By: Heliologue

Heliologue — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:19:47 +0000

This is true: the analogy is not entirely sound. I knew this as I was typing it, hoping to assuage the shortcoming with the inefficacious “vaguely reminiscent,” but certainly the fault here is mine.

I must also admit that my original post was needlessly polemical, but I hope you will afford me some sympathy, as the various mutilations of English I’ve had to put up with (by everyone, mind you: I’m not referring to a specific racial group) both in real life and in my inestimable time spent on the Internet. I’ve seen xanga.com and I will never be the same.

My problem with most vernaculars is this: they tend towards contractions or simplifications of the language. Certainly, they each bring a new phraseology and a new set of idioms to the table, some of which find their way into the mainstream language, but they also seem to be a hindrance when their users are incapable of speaking the parent language; that is, the larger language to which the vernacular is a subset. Zora Neale Hurston or Langston Hughes using vernacular in illustrating the history and plight of American (and other) Blacks is, in my opinion, not quite equatable to a modern black teenager who can’t write a term paper. At what point is a vernacular harmful in the sense of preventing its speakers to interact with the dominant culture?

By: piny

piny — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:29:35 +0000

any other vernacular, including Southern drawls, acronym heavy internet speech, and simply poor grammar: it’s a nasty excision of language, vaguely reminiscent of Newspeak.

Newspeak was indeed an excision of language, designed to obliterate concepts in people’s minds by removing any reference to them in the lexicon.

English dialects as spoken by black people–or people from the American south, or the Ozarks, or any of the other diverse geographical and cultural spaces in this country–are nothing of the kind. They contain a full contingent of different words that together make up a full language.

Not the same thing.

It’s also a little weird to hear someone equate the language spoken by an oppressed, isolated minority with a language imposed by facist leaders in order to oppress and homogenize people.

By: jam

jam — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 11:36:56 +0000

Heliologue wrote: I’m no more likely to respect ebonics as a “dialect” than I am to do the same to Internet slang.

y’all know the difference between a dialect & a language, don’t ya? a language is a dialect with an army.

any other vernacular, including Southern drawls, acronym heavy internet speech, and simply poor grammar: it’s a nasty excision of language, vaguely reminiscent of Newspeak.

profuse apologies Lord Heliologue! despite efforts to edumacate the unwashed masses they still speak with their own tongues! shall we cut them off, sir?!

By: Shannon W.

Shannon W. — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 07:41:29 +0000

Not to mention, Shakesphere wrote in the vernacular too. Does that make his plays unworthy of respect?

By: Shannon W.

Shannon W. — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 07:40:11 +0000

T Heliologue So Zora Neale Hurston wrote in street slang? Have you even read any black works of literature written in dialect? This is why we need multiculturalism in schools. The idea that if something is black, it is automatically stupid or wrong is in fact a racist idea. We should be proud that people have the creativity to think of eloquent ways to express themselves, even under oppressive conditions instead of saying that the white way is the only correct way.

When ee cummings or Ezra Pound innovated the language, they were geniuses, but somehow Gwendolyn Brooks or Nikki Giovanni are just using street slang and ‘poor grammar’? I simply do not think so.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:34:01 +0000

Heliologue, the point with the supplemental AAVE is to expose high school students to cultural linguistics, definitely college material, in a way that is socially relevant to the students. Instead of viewing it as a way to further reinforce Standard English, this supplemental AAVE is being characterized as another liberal bad idea that tells black kids they’re too stupid to learn English (Paul makes that very clear in his post, as do his commenters).

Because English (especially Lit) teachers have a difficult time defending their relevance to their students, I don’t see this as a bad idea at all. The evolution of language is interesting, and considering the population of urban black kids in the school, this kind of supplemental work both honors the cultural history from which the dialect evolves and smashes the idea that AAVE is dumbed down English.

I think it’s a cool idea and I’d love to see the curriculum.