---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- I'm forwarding another thoughtful post from Johanna. I think polemical positions are less dangerous when expressed (I'm thinking of Eduard's post), but that's in part because they provoke fine articulations like those I'm relaying. ATEG brings people together from different places. Johanna raises important issues about mutual respect and collegiality. Craig Subject: Re: Language Change From: "Johanna Rubba" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, March 17, 2006 2:35 pm To: "Craig Hancock" <[log in to unmask]> Cc: [log in to unmask] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, Craig, Although my take on these "polemics" is different from yours, I hope you'll post this. I don't find these polemics at all delightful. To treat baseless claims about language as legitimate opinions is harmful and misleading to those listers who haven't had the opportunity to study language deeply. I'd like to ask Eduard Hanganu to please study the situation a little more carefully before he starts throwing around offensive claims about Americans and linguists, etc. It's just plain rude to call the findings (note I do not say "beliefs") of lifelong scholars of language NONSENSE. Putting the words in caps is not exactly diplomatic. Eduard's ethnocentrism is obvious, and his claims about language and linguistics are spurious. It's about time he realized that he is in dialogue with scholars, like Herb Stahlke, whose knowledge of many aspects of English and language in general is extraordinary and far outstrips my own. Eduard is speaking anecdotally from his own experience, as well as drawing in studies that are irrelevant to how much speakers _subconsciously_ know about their language. A lot of this knowledge is laid out in, for example, the Quirk et al. grammar of English and the newer Huddleston and Pullum. I'd like to ask Eduard how many school or college textbooks cover even 1% of that material, and yet it is drawn from descriptions of the use of English by English speakers (some with a lot of education, some not). I'd also like to ask him how far he has read into either book. The fact that he appeals to institutions like the Academie Française (yes, a few of us know about it) proves his misunderstanding of sociolinguistics and the history of how such institutions arise in stratified societies. Those who believe in such institutions have a serious misunderstanding of how language works. It's very practical to cultivate a lingua franca (or dialect franca?) to sustain communication across the boundaries of speech communities. (I don't like calling it a standard dialect anymore, because "standard" is ambiguous between a neutral interpretation, such as standard measurements, and an evaluative stance, such as "standard of excellence".) But there is no need to attach false claims to such a language variety. It is not superior to other dialects. It may be so in the sense that it has a large vocabulary, but that is a historical accident. Any language's vocabulary can be expanded. One might indeed say that English came about most of those words dishonestly -- too weak to invent them themselves, English speakers took them from other "superior" languages like Latin and Greek. Many languages and dialects have more subtlety in their grammar than "preferred" English does. They express distinctions such as remote vs. recent past and temporary vs. long-lasting states in the verb system (both characteristics of African American English), not in separate phrases. English morphology is "impoverished" compared to, say Turkish or Inuktitut. Such comparisons are fruitless. Are the complex verb systems better than the separate phrases? Can Inuktitut express a wider range of meanings than English? There's more than one way to skin a cat. Every culture, literate or not, has a language that has the full potential to express whatever concepts the culture comes up with. This has been true for many thousands of years, well before Romania spoke Romanian and those TWO THOUSAND years of history got started. America has a history going back at least TEN THOUSAND years of indigenous languages that are as complex and beautiful as a particle accelerator. Funny how most of them were never written. I wonder how much Eduard knows about Navajo verbs or Mikasuki tone systems. The history of literacy and scholarship of a culture has nothing to do with the quality or expressive potential of its language. I am in full agreement with Eduard on one thing -- the level of general and specific world knowledge, not language, is abysmal in far too many parts of the United States. This can't all be blamed solely on the schools, and it has nothing at all to do with language. We have a fundamentally anti-intellectual culture (which is ironic, given that the country was founded by intellectuals of a high order). People are happy with their MacDonald's bread and their NFL circuses (get the reference to ancient Rome?) Those who have the resources to improve the schools (taxpayers, the government, and the hyper-rich corporations and stockholders) choose to invest that money elsewhere or keep it to themselves. They also choose, often for purely political reasons, to ignore the wisdom of those who study language for a living. Too many of them have Eduard's understanding of language. As a result, millions of children are essentially thrown into the garbage bin -- prison, permanent low-wage jobs, low standards of living, poor health care, the list goes on and on. Back in the late 1970's, an experiment was carried out in which African American children were taught reading in a program that transitioned them from books in their native dialect on themes familiar to them to the "preferred" English texts used in general language arts instruction. Those children made six months' gain in reading ability in four months of using the program, and tested just fine on a national standardized reading test for their grade level. The publisher (I believe it was Houghton-Mifflin) decided not to market the program because of the stigma of African American English. What do we say to the many thousands of children who never got to benefit from such a program? They become dropouts, gang members, prisoners, teen parents, and many of them die at an early age thanks to the violence in their communities. The public school system teaches middle-class children to read and write in their native dialect. Why are they the only ones deserving of this treatment? (In telling this story, I am not acceding to the superiority of "preferred English". The socially-determined facts on the ground are that children need to be fluent in this dialect to have equal opportunity. The point is that it is not necessary -- indeed it is harmful -- to endow that dialect with some kind of intellectual superiority.) This list is intended for civilized discussion. It is of no benefit to make baseless claims and insult whole populations. It is not in the spirit of the list to be rude. I realize that I may have crossed that line myself in this message, but perhaps the same tone is needed to bring the point home. Or perhaps Eduard is like far too many people engaging in "debate" today under the guise of "fair and balanced" public discussion, who simply will never admit that they are wrong about something no matter how many facts you throw at them. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/