>The only argument for simplicity you make here, vocabulary size, isn't supported by the essay.
That's not surprising, since I don't agree with the essay in the first place, including the very premise (common to modern linguistics) that all languages are created equal as long as they serve the communication needs of their groups.
I also disagree to dispensing with "moral judgements about language" (or the way modern social sciences rush to dispense with moral judgements about almost everything -- and I mean this in a Christopher Lasch way).
>Most of us probably have no trouble dismissing the notion that Persian is intrinsically inferior to English. But because AAVE is so close to our own dialects, we're convinced we understand it well enough to judge it.
Persian is an ancient language, of a historically great empire with an important literary canon, written rules and more than a couple of millennia of refinement by speakers, scholars, poets, etc. If anything, it could be superior to English.
An ad-hoc minority dialect of a couple of centuries vintage that slaves and ex-slaves had to adapt and develop to establish group identity and as a secret code against the racist white population, is not the same thing at all.
I think you're playing fast and loose with adjectives like "simpler" or "inferior".
When you say Persian is likely superior to English, you're using the word in an abstract, philosophical sense, as if you're comparing two pieces of ancient art, not concerned with their practical uses. You say Persian could be "superior", but if anyone asks which language one should learn, you will have no problem suggesting English, as that's the practical choice with much more utility.
Similarly, if anyone suggests English speakers should change their linguistic habit to match the superior grammar of Persian, I'm sure you will (like me) just roll your eyes.
Yet when you compare Standard English and AAVE, I have a feeling that you will encourage people to speak Standard English because it is "superior", and you will likely tell AAVE speakers to adopt the rules of Standard English because it is more sophisticated.
Sounds to me like you're mixing two different meanings to win one argument and then the other.
>When you say Persian is likely superior to English, you're using the word in an abstract, philosophical sense, as if you're comparing two pieces of ancient art, not concerned with their practical uses. You say Persian could be "superior", but if anyone asks which language one should learn, you will have no problem suggesting English, as that's the practical choice with much more utility.
That's correct.
AAVE, on the other hand is both (for me) poorer in the philosophical sense (which I tie to overall cultural significance), and to utility. It's a very special purpose group language, that even its speakers abandon in different contexts.
So I don't see the conflict you mention. If practicality wasn't an issue, I would suggest people study Persian (or Chinese, or several others beautiful and rich ancient languages), not English. But as it is, I would suggest English (besides, in terms of cultural significance for the modern world, it holds quite well, ever since the 20th century -- before I might have suggested French).
Similarly, for English vs AAVE, I would suggest English both for their overall cultural significance over AAVE and their practicality.
Whether or not you like the dialect's origin story, it's here. Hundreds of thousands of African American children are raised with it as their first language.
You haven't so much "disagreed" with the essay as you've opted to pursue an orthogonal concern to which it doesn't expend any attention at all: whether AAVE is "good" or "bad". Pullum, in this piece, doesn't care. All he's saying is that when considering AAVE, we should at least understand what it is.
>Whether or not you like the dialect's origin story, it's here. Hundreds of thousands of African American children are raised with it as their first language.
Yeah, but what we're pushing under the carpet is that they were forced, by racism, to be raised with it as their first language.
>Pullum, in this piece, doesn't care. All he's saying is that when considering AAVE, we should at least understand what it is.
In the essay he basically collects its syntactic and lexicographical differences, to prove that it's "a whole other language".
That it may be, what's of interest to me is its standing as a language in general (and its historical roots and development), not whether it has coherent rules and thus it cannot be said to be just "mistaken english". That I can give him, but it's far from the real essence of the matter.
And to give an example for this "what we're pushing under the carpet is that they were forced, by racism, to be raised with it as their first language", I mean things like segregation, separate (under-funded) school districts and communities, etc.
Separating from the society at large is how you create and enforce such dialects to particular subgroups.
And segregation didn't end in the 60s: "Despite recent trends, blacks remain the most segregated racial group. The dissimilarity-index indices in 1980, 1990 and 2000 are 72.7, 67.8, and 64.0, respectively.[8] Blacks are hypersegregated in most of the largest metropolitan areas across the U.S., including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.[4] For Hispanics, the second most segregated racial group, the indices from 1980, 1990 and 2000 are 50.2, 50.0, and 50.9, respectively".
If our concern is about ending racial discrimination, it might make more sense to target the irrational behaviors of those discriminating against blacks, rather than finding more ways for black people to blend in better with the people discriminating against them.
That's not surprising, since I don't agree with the essay in the first place, including the very premise (common to modern linguistics) that all languages are created equal as long as they serve the communication needs of their groups.
I also disagree to dispensing with "moral judgements about language" (or the way modern social sciences rush to dispense with moral judgements about almost everything -- and I mean this in a Christopher Lasch way).
>Most of us probably have no trouble dismissing the notion that Persian is intrinsically inferior to English. But because AAVE is so close to our own dialects, we're convinced we understand it well enough to judge it.
Persian is an ancient language, of a historically great empire with an important literary canon, written rules and more than a couple of millennia of refinement by speakers, scholars, poets, etc. If anything, it could be superior to English.
An ad-hoc minority dialect of a couple of centuries vintage that slaves and ex-slaves had to adapt and develop to establish group identity and as a secret code against the racist white population, is not the same thing at all.