[stormingheaven] ebonics?

[G*rd*n]

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