• Search for:

• Categories

  • Education
  • General
  • iPhone
  • Jwill
  • Link
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Public Transportation
  • Social Networking
  • Sports
  • Tech

• Recent Posts

  • Treating Public Figures Like They’re Inhuman
  • Patients’ Own Stem Cells Work Wonders
  • Assessing Teacher Performance
  • More on the Monthly Gun Limit
  • On Enacting a Monthly Limit on Gun Purchases

• Archives

  Select Month June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Source: The New Republic (tnr.com)
Read Article

Reid’s comment suggests that he associates Black English with lack of polish and low intelligence, okay. But before we burn him in effigy for it or ask “What’s that all about?” as if we don’t know, let’s admit that most Americans feel like Reid does. He wasn’t being a benighted “racist” holdout; he was speaking as an ordinary American person. We have caught him in nothing we don’t most of us feel ourselves.

John McWhorter delves into Harry Reid’s “no Negro dialect” comment. I love this analysis. While it is true that he should not have said this, we shouldn’t act like we don’t think this way ourselves. I had an argument over whether the African American Variant of English (as it’s officially called) should be discouraged. I really don’t think it should be. The problem isn’t that people speak this way; it’s how we react to it. AAVE has some very interesting, systematic constructions. For example, stated later in the article:

…Black English is as systematic as standard English, and what we hear as “mistakes” are just variations, not denigrations. Try telling a French person that double negatives are “illogical.” The “unconjugated” be in a sentence like Folks be tryin’ it out is used in a very particular way to indicate habits rather than current events, making explicit something that standard English leaves to context.

Constructions like this are quite interesting from a linguistic perspective (and having taken a linguistics class before, I definitely find it interesting myself). The proper English we speak today, of course, is the form accepted in regular society and formal interactions, and there’s no problem with that. But when people who speak AAVE are amongst themselves in informal settings, should we really look down upon their method of speech? Should we really judge them for it? Or should we try to understand their speech and see where they’re coming from? It’s controversial for sure.

Comments