---snip
>
>Saying things like this can get you in trouble
>with the politically correct, since it will be
>assumed that you are "ridiculing" people who speak
>Ebonics rather than pointing out that historical
>and social circumstances have limited the dialect.
That is an excellent argument. It is impossible to discuss language while abstracting form social, economic conditions that produced it. Language is merely a reflection of material reality that produced it, albeit it has an "institutional history' that outlives the material reality that gave birth to a certain form of expression. Impoverished reality of an underclass produces impoverished consciousness and impoverished means of communications. That is a very powerful anti-poverty arguement: we should abolish it, because it prevents people from achieving their full human potential.
The p-c crowd, however, adhers to an idealistic viewpoint where symbols are more important than material reality. Thus symbolic expressions produced by underclass arre just as "valuable" as symbolic expressions of everyone else. Material poverty is "compensated" by symbolic richness. It is not difficult to see the reactionary nature of such idealistic pc attitudes in the preservation of social inequalities: it is, in fact, tantamount to saying: they can thrive on symbols, so we do not need to redistribute material wealth. Or worse yet, "we should not redistribute material wealth, because that may kill their 'culture'".
wojtek
>
>Of course, under different circumstances, Ebonics
>could have become a full language, just as there
>are physicists at Italian universities who speak
>ordinary everyday Italian and also an Italian that
>has been wrapped around the subject of physics
>over many hundreds of years.
>
>In other words, speaking and understanding ONLY
>Ebonics isn't going to get you into medical
>school.
>
>On the other hand, speaking and understanding only
>limited, everyday English isn't going to get you
>there either.
>
>Before I leave off, let me say that just because
>people aren't "sophisticated" doesn't make them
>worse people.
>And just because they've got big bad educations
>doesn't necessarily make them better people.
>That's another other issue.
>
>Peter Kosenko
>
>In response to the below:
>
>> Of course, Ebonyx IS proper grammar, it is just a different
>> dialect. When British people come to our schools, do we consider them to be
>> using improper grammar, or do we just say that they are speaking a
>> different dialect, the so-called "British English" (or whatever term you
>> prefer)? My experience is that they are excused for their unforunate
>> heritage and their pronunciation of "colour" is tolerated.
>
>> Ebonyx (pronounced YO-bahn-iks) is a dialect that receives a
>> special treatment. While British accents, Texan, Texan Crude, Bostonian,
>> and New England accents tend to revive associations made in the brain
long ago, Ebonyx is specially treated > as being a mark of 'stupidity'.
That this dialect is treated this way and that it is isolated from other >
dialects for special classification as "poor grammar" is only reflective of
the racial stereotype of
>> Africans.
>
>
>=============================================================
>Peter Kosenko
>Email: mailto:kosenko at netwood.net
>URL: http://www.netwood.net/~kosenko
>Netwood Design Center URL: http://ndc.netwood.net/
>=============================================================
>"Man is a rational animal. He can think up a
>reason for anything he wants to
>believe."--Benjamin Franklin
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