Re: Re: egregious prescriptivism

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

This is a wonderful reminder of the importance of context in reading (and
writing). I'm sure this will come in handy when I next teach a course in
discourse analysis. I certainly apologize to Mr. Gray for accusing him of being a
prescriptivist -- though, judging from his last sentence, maybe I should merely
apologize for not having read every posting that he has made to this list in the
last month!

Mr. Gray has certainly been a lively contributor to ADS-L since he has
joined. I am glad to see that the list-serve is still attracting interest after all
these years, and I am also glad to see someone give Barry a contest in the
"who can contribute most" department.

Not being a native speaker of AAVE, I can't say from personal intuition that
"I'm done" is less likely in AAVE than "I'm through." Since they are virtually
identical in my speech (together with I'm finished"), I've never noticed
anybody's use of one or the other, and that includes all the hours of recorded
AAVE sociolinguistic interviews that I have listened to over the years. Though
"through" strikes me as a bit more formal than the other two, I suspect that in
a formal situation I would say "I have finished"; otherwise, I would not make
any distinction at all.


In a message dated 9/10/04 3:14:01 PM, wilson.gray at RCN.COM writes:


> My observation re the use of "I'm done" rather than "I'm through" was a
> pretend "gotcha" that referred to our earlier discussion regarding
> variation in the use of "done" vs. the use of "through" in certain
> contexts, one such context being the one that Professor Butters refers
> to. For those who missed a truly scintillating and
> consciousness-raising discussion, I observed that, in certain syntactic
> contexts in which a person wishes to express, in some sense, the
> meaning, "finish(ed), complete(d)," etc., a speaker of Black English
> was more likely to say "I'm through," etc. than "I'm done," etc. On the
> other hand, I continued, a person accustomed to speaking standard
> English was more likely to say, "I'm done," under the same set of
> conditions. I don't recall that many people were in agreement with me,
> if any were.
>
> So, when I saw "I'm done ..." used in a context in which I would most
> *definitely* have used "I'm through ..." I couldn't resist the chance
> to say, in effect, "See there?! I *told* you so!"
>
> For the record, I would never prescribe a usage that I consider to be
> non-standard or, at least, out of the mainstream. I'm too much of a
> prescriptivist for that.
>
> -Wilson Gray
>