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I must express myself extremely badly to be so misunderstood. Of course a person can be literate in more than one language or dialect - I read some seven languages, eight, myself. We are not, that is, I am not talking about a linguistic problem but a social. Of course the LSA comment "from this perspective" they noted, was perfectly sound. It was the Black community across the country who rose up in protest at having AAVE imposed on them and you can give them all the linguistic information you want and it is not going to help. <BR>
What about South Africa, now with 11 official languages? Many Afrikaners for "pedagogically sound" reasons now urge the African population to send their children to mother tongue schools - exactly the same policy enforced under apartheid for reasons of segregation. Parents prefer education in English for their children - are you going to tell them they suffer from false consciousness ( a singularly brilliant concept, that)? There are as always other circumstances, quality of teachers, texts, etc but parents still want English. And I think it should be their choice.<BR>
The problem of course becomes worse when the children and the parents disagree over that choice - which is not uncommon with immigrant groups. I just object to linguists playing omniscient gods and recommending options for life decisions on the basis of linguistic criteria. Most people want a decent life, at least for their children, a good job, good health care (Bush should take note), a secure old age, etc, and if that necessitates another language, they don't care. Of course they can remain bilingual but the children usually don't think it is worth it.<BR>
Etc. My very last comment, Christina<BR>
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From: Ronald Kephart <rkephart@unf.edu><BR>
To: lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu<BR>
Subject: RE: printability and standardization<BR>
Date: Sun, Jan 11, 2004, 11:15 AM<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>At 11:02 AM -0600 1/10/04, Felicia Briscoe wrote:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>...There also seems to be an underlying assumption in much of the recent writing that<BR>
bilingualism is either very difficult to attain or that it is someway is detrimental to the person who is bilingual. I find this a very strange assumption. Why can't a person be fully literate in AAVE and fully literate in standard English. Why is it so often posed as an either/or option?<BR>
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I think part of the answer lies in what anthropological linguist MJ Hardman calls our linguistic postulates: specifically, the importance of singularity. This manifests itself in all sorts of ways not only within our language but also how we think about language, as well as more widely: one "right" answer, one god, preference for individual over collective work, "most valuable players," the totalitarian nature of our corporations, even the prescriptive insistence on "he" rather than "they" as a generic pronoun. And of course, "one language."<BR>
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See: Hardman, 1978, Linguistic postulates and applied anthropological linguistics, in<I> Papers on linguistics and child language</I>, edited by V. Honsa and M.J. Hardman-de-Bautista, 117-36. The Hague: Mouton.<BR>
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Ronald Kephart<BR>
Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminal Justice<BR>
University of North Florida<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart<BR>
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