Chapter 14 - Disadvantage

7/31/2019 Chapter 14 - Disadvantage

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Disadvantage


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s a v a n t a ge In this chapter, we will look at two different

linguistic situations which have been widely discussedin terms of such disadvantage. One of these concerns

certain social class differences in the use of languagein England; the other is the variety of English foundin the United States that is now usually referred toas African American Vernacular English.

We will attempt to look at some of the basic facts

and issues and to assess the various claims that havebeen made about both those linguistic differencesand the consequences that are said to follow.


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s a v a n t a ge Codes Again

African American Vernacular English

Consequences for Education


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Codes Again

Bernsteins views of the relationship betweenlanguage and culture are heavily influenced by hisreading of Whorf (see chapter 9).

On more than one occasion he has pointed out howWhorf alerted him to what he calls the deepstructure of linguistically regulated communication.Bernstein regards language as something which bothinfluences culture and is in turn influenced by culture.

A child growing up in a particular linguisticenvironment and culture learns the language of thatenvironment and that culture and then proceeds topass on that learning to the next generation.


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Codes Again

Bernstein claims that there are twoquite distinct varieties of language inuse in society.

He calls one variety elaborated code(originally formal code) and theother variety restricted code

(originally public code). According to Bernstein, these codes

have very different characteristics.


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Codes Again For example, elaborated code makes use of accurate

in the sense of standard grammatical order andsyntax to regulate what is said; uses complex sentences that employ a range of

devices for conjunction and subordination; employs prepositions to show relationships of both

a temporal and logical nature; shows frequent use of the pronoun I;

uses with care a wide range of adjectives andadverbs; allows for remarks to be qualified; and, according to

Bernstein (1961, p. 169), is a language use whichpoints to the possibilities inherent in a complex

conceptual hierarchy for the organizing ofex erience.


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Linguists who have described the speech thatis characteristic of many black residents ofthe northern United States have noticed how

uniform that speech is in many respects. In other words, blacks who live in New York

City, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Seattlespeak very much alike, whereas the same

cannot be said of non-blacks who live in thesame cities.

The speech of blacks in these cities alsoresembles the speech of blacks in southern

states in many respects.


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In one respect this similarity is the result of therelatively recent migrations of blacks out of thesouth; in another, it is one reflection of long-standing patterns of racial segregation only now

slowly changing, patterns which have tended toseparate the population of the United Statesalong color lines.

Linguists have referred to this variety of speech

as Black English, Black Vernacular English, andAfro-American Vernacular English. Today, themost-used term is African American VernacularEnglish (AAVE) but Ebonics (a blend of Ebonyand phonics) has also recently achieved a certain

currency.


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AAVE has certain phonological, morphological, and syntacticcharacteristics.

Words like thing and this may be pronounced as ting and dis. Bathmay sound like baff, brother like bruvver, nothing like nuffin, andthread like tred. Still other examples are bik for big, kit for kid,

and cup for cub, asfinal

stops are devoiced. Others may be lost. Test, desk, and end may be pronounced without their finalconsonants. The plural of test may actually be tess or tesses,depending on how an individual forms the plural. Carol, Paris,protect, and from may show loss of r, and car and cart will nearlyalways show loss of r.

As a result, your brother may become identical to you brother.Cold may show loss of the final d (col) or even loss of both l and d(co), because l after a vowel is often deleted.

The result may be that bold and bowl become homophonous withbow.


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Vowels may be nasalized and nasal consonantslost: run and end may just be in the first casean r followed by a nasalized vowel and in thesecond case a simple nasalized vowel with nopronunciation at all of the finalnd.

The diphthongs in words like find and foundmay be both monophthongized and nasalized,and the words may lack any pronunciation ofthe final nd. Consequently, find, found, andeven fond may become homophonous, allpronounced with an f and a following nasalizedvowel.


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In morphology, because final t and dare often unpronounced, there maybe no overt signaling of the past

tense, so that I walked sounds justlike I walk.

There may also be no signaling of the

third-person singular in the presenttense of the verb, resulting in a formlike he go.


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Syntactically, AAVE has special uses of be, or lack ofbe (the zero copula), as in a contrast between He nice(He is nice right now) and He be nice (He is nicesometimes).

The negatives of these sentences would also be Heaint

nice and He dont be nice, respectively. You tired maybe an equivalent of the standard Youre tired.

AAVE also employs constructions such as I asked Joewhat can he do, Cant nobody do that (as a statement),

and It aintno heaven for you to go to, in which itfunctions like there in Standard English (or SE). Aint is used frequently, as is multiple negation, and

there are also special auxiliary verb uses of done andbeen, as in He done told me and I been washing it.


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Those who speak AAVE recognize that what theyspeak is something different from the varietiesemployed by most non-blacks.

Most Americans are prepared to categorize

someone who contacts them by telephone aseither black or non-black using speech alone as thecriterion, and most such categorizations arecorrect.

In cases of mis-categorization, it is usuallybecause of special circumstances: a black personhas been brought up among non-blacks, or a non-black has been brought up among blacks.


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Bereiter and Engelmann (1966, p. 39) state thatsuch children show a total lack of ability to uselanguage as a device for acquiring and processing

information. Language for them is unwieldy andnot very useful. In the late 1960s, this view ledto certain proposals to teach black children thestandard variety of the language.

The child is in an asymmetrical situation where

anything he says can literally be held against him.He has learned a number of devices to avoidsaying anything in this situation, and he worksvery hard to achieve this end.


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Race and language were united, however, in twoimportant incidents affecting the schooling ofblacks in the United States.

The by-now famous Ann Arbor Decision of 1979is an example of a successful claim that AAVE isa bona fide dialect that schools must recognize.

The parents of eleven African American childrenattending Martin Luther King School in Ann

Arbor, Michigan, sued the school board in federalcourt saying that their children had been deniedthe equal opportunity to which they wereentitled on account of the variety of English they

spoke.


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Such a view of education places both AAVE and Bernsteinsviews concerning the linguistic socialization of children intoa much broader framework than the one within whichlinguists usually work.

We should also remind ourselves that the problems thateducators must deal with in their work are extremelycomplex, and, while linguists may make a contributiontoward solving some of these problems, that contributionmay not be a particularly large one.

Language is but one factor among many that we mustconsider when we try to solve pressing social problems.

A total solution must take other factors into account too. Linguists must be prepared to recognize that fact.

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Chapter 14 - Disadvantage