[stormingheaven] ebonics?

G*rd*n gcf at panix.com
Sat Aug 21 10:07:36 PDT 1999


Yoshie Furuhashi:
> Wojtek doesn't care about Ebonics one way or another, nor is he interested
> in the facts of the case. He's simply using this topic in order to indulge
> himself in an illusion that the weakness of the American Left are caused by
> 'campus radicals,' 'identity politics,' 'symbolic politics,' 'white liberal
> guilt,' or what have you. It's a form of therapy or entertainment for him.

If anyone is actually interested in the subject, William Labov's work may prove amusing. A list of his currently available work can be found at

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~labov/papers.html

of which the most Ebonics-relevant is probably "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence",

http://www.TheAtlantic.com/atlantic/issues/95sep/ets/labo.htm

of which he says

This is a slightly abridged version of "The logic of

non-standard English," prepared for the Atlantic Monthly in

June 1972. It argued the case that AAVE was a fully formed

languge with all the capacity necessary for logical

thought, and that the conclusions of the "deficit model"

that black children had no language were based on

unscientific and biased methods. It is reprinted in the

electronic version of The Atlantic Unbound.

Labov's view figured in the Linguistic Society of America's resolution on the subject,

http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/LSAResolution.html

(and in many other places).

The Ebonics controversy was of some interest to me because of the vehemence and absolutism of those who denied that Black English Vernacular (as it's sometimes called) could be anything but a degenerate form of Standard English. In discussing it on Usenet, I received death threats for no more than soberly posting the URLs above and others like them, or reciting their contents, while in the mass media all sorts of lies and misconstructions were purveyed. It was all something like lifting a rock and finding an unsuspected scorpion beneath it. Or perhaps one did suspect.

In regard to "identity politics", an article appeared a few days ago in Salon Magazine about "Disability Studies" which I think shares a certain sensibility with the outragists of language -- that is, a sense that one belongs to not a master race but a master culture, and is rendered incredulous by the suggestion that one's worldview can be criticized or challenged. See:

http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/08/18/disability/index.html

(My apologies for the author's use of the abominable diction of Warren G. Harding ("normalcy"). I have already derided the editors by email.)

Gordon



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list