8.49, Disc: Ebonics

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-49. Sat Jan 18 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.49, Disc: Ebonics

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1)
Date:  Thu, 2 Jan 1997 14:28:29 -0800 (PST)
From:  "Charles J. FILLMORE" <fillmore at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject:  contributed posting (longish)

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 2 Jan 1997 14:28:29 -0800 (PST)
From:  "Charles J. FILLMORE" <fillmore at cogsci.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject:  contributed posting (longish)

A Linguist Looks at the Ebonics Debate
Charles J. Fillmore
Department of Linguistics, U. C. Berkeley
	One uncontroversial principle underlying the Oakland
Unified School District's December 18th "Ebonics" resolution
is the truism that people can't learn from each other if they
don't speak the same language. Anyone who doubts this has
only to read the current public debate about the resolution
itself. Educators, bureaucrats, and experts have been
weighing in on the meaning of the resolution in the last two
weeks.  You might think all that these people speak the same
language, but the evidence contradicts the appearance.  All
of the key words that keep coming up in these discussions
clearly mean different things to different parties in the debate,
and that blocks successful communication and makes it too
easy for each participant to believe that the others are mad,
scheming, or stupid.
* * *
	As far as I can work it out (not from the language of the
resolution but from the board's recent "clarifications"), the
pedagogically relevant assumptions behind the "Ebonics"
resolution are as follows:  The way some African American
children speak when they show up in Oakland's schools is so
different from standard English that teachers often can't
understand what they are saying.  Such children perform
poorly in school and typically fail to acquire the ways of
speaking that they'll need in order to succeed in the world
outside their neighborhoods.  Schools have traditionally
treated the speech of these children as simply sloppy and
wrong, not as evidencing skills and knowledge the children
can build on.  The proposed new instructional plan would
assist children in learning standard English by encouraging
them to compare the way they speak with what they need to
learn in school, and this cannot be accomplished in a calm
and reasoned way unless their teachers treat what they
already have, linguistically, as a worthy possession rather
than as evidence of carelessness and ignorance.  An
important step toward introducing this new practice is to
help teachers understand the characteristics of their students'
speech so they can lead the children to an awareness of the
difference.
* * *
	If would have been more natural for me to describe the
plan with such words as "building on the language the
children already have to help them acquire the language they
need to learn in school."  But instead, I avoided using the
word "language", since that is one of the words responsible
for much of the confusion in the discussion around the school
board's decision.  The other words causing trouble are
"dialect", "slang", "primary language", and, regrettably,
"genetic".  Neither side in these debates uses these words in
ways that facilitate communication.  Perhaps a linguist's view
might introduce some clarity into these discussions.
	The words "dialect" and "language" are confusingly
ambiguous.  These are not precisely definable technical terms
in linguistics, but linguists have learned to live with the
ambiguities.  I mentioned "the language of the resolution"
where I meant the actual words and phrases found in the text
of the board's resolution.  We can use the word "language" to
refer simply to the linguistic system one acquires in
childhood.  In normal contexts, everybody grows up
speaking a language.  And if there are systematic differences
between the language you and your neighbors speak and
the language my neighbors and I speak, we can say that we
speak different dialects.
	The word "language" is also used to refer to a group of
related dialects, but there are no scientific criteria for deciding
when to refer to two linguistic systems as different dialects of
the same language, or as different languages belonging to the
same language family. There are empirical criteria for
grouping ways of speaking to reflect their historical
relationships, but there is an arbitrary element in deciding
when to use the word "language" for representing any
particular grouping. (Deciding whether BBC newsreaders
and Lynchburg, Va., radio evangelists speak different
dialects of the same language or different languages in the
same language family is on the level of deciding whether
Greenland is a small continent or a large island.)
	There is a different and misleading way of using these
words for situations in which, for social or political reasons,
one dialect comes to be the preferred means of
communication in schools, commerce, public ceremonies, etc.
According to this second usage, which reflects an unscientific
"folk theory", what the linguist would simply call the
standard dialect is thought of as a "language", the others as
"mere dialects", falling short of the perfection of the real
language.  An important principle of linguistics is that the
selection of the prestige dialect is determined by accidental
extralinguistic forces, and is not dependent on inherent
virtues of the dialects themselves.  But according to the folk
theory, the "dialects" differ from the language itself in being
full of errors.
	I've been reading the San Francisco newspapers these
last two weeks, and I see continuing chaos in the ways
commentators choose to describe and classify the manner of
speaking that is the target of the Ebonics resolution.  The
resolution and the public discussion about it have used so
many different terms, each of them politically loaded
("Ebonics", "Black English", "Black Dialect", "African
Language Systems", "Pan-African Communication
Behaviors") that I will use what I think is the most neutral
term, "African American Vernacular English", abbreviated as
AAVE.
(1) Some participants in this debate think that AAVE is
merely an imperfectly learned approximation to real English,
differing from it because the speakers are careless and lazy
and don't follow "the rules".  It is "dialect", in the deprecating
use of that word, or "slang".
 (2) To most linguists AAVE is one of the dialects of American
English, historically most closely related to forms of Southern
speech but with differences attributable both to the linguistic
history of slaves and to generations of social isolation. (For a
linguist, to describe something as a dialect is not to say that it
is inferior; everybody speaks a dialect.)
(3) And some people say that while AAVE has the superficial
trappings of English, at its structural core it is a continuation
or amalgam of one or more west African languages.
	The views summarized in (1) are simply wrong.  The
difference between the views identified in (2) and (3) is
irrelevant to the issue the board is trying to face.
* * *
	The Oakland resolution asks that the schools
acknowledge that AAVE is the "primary language" of many
of the children who enter Oakland schools.  What this means
is that it is their home language, the form of speech the
children operated in during the first four or five years of their
lives, the language they use with their family and friends. An
early explanation of the purpose of the new program
(Chronicle 12/20) is that it "is intended to help teachers show
children how to translate their words from 'home language' to
the 'language of wider communication'."
	Understanding this as the meaning of the phrase, it
makes sense to ask if something is or is not some particular
person's "primary language", but the simple question of
whether something is or isn't "a primary language" is
incoherent.  The people who have expressed such concerns
clearly think the term means something other than what I
think the school board intended.
	The Chronicle (12/20) asked readers to send in their
opinions "on the Oakland school board's decision to
recognize ebonics, or black English, as a primary language".
The Examiner (12/20) attributed to Delaine Eastin, state
Superintendent of Public Instruction, the worry that the
decision to "recognize" AAVE could lead students to believe
"that they could prosper with it as their primary language
outside the home." An Examiner writer editorialized (12/20)
that  "[i]n the real world of colleges and commerce and
communication, it's not OK to speak Ebonics as a primary
language. Job recruiters don't bring along a translator."  The
Chronicle (12/24) accounts for Oakland's sudden fame as
happening "all because the school board voted to treat black
English like any other primary language spoken by
students."
	These commentators were clearly not worried about
whether there really are people who have AAVE as their
primary language. They all seem to understand the term
"primary language" in some different way.  Perhaps the term
"home language" wouldn't have created so much
misunderstanding.
* * *
	The critics have also worried about whether AAVE "is a
language".  One way of understanding the question is
whether it is a language rather than a mere collection of
"mistakes".  This seems to be the way Ward Connerly
understands the question, and his answer is that it isn't a
language.  Another is whether it has the full status of a
language rather than a dialect, in the folk use of these words
mentioned above.  This seems to be the view attributed to
James Baldwin, in a 1979 article quoted by Pamela Budman,
Chronicle 12/26.  Baldwin thought it "patronizing" to speak
of AAVE as a dialect rather than as a full-fledged language.
	But on the question of whether there is a definable
linguistic system, spoken by many African Americans, with
its own phonology, lexicon and grammar (and dialects!),
there is already a huge body of research.  (For an useful
bibliography see the web site
http://www2.colgate.edu/diw/SOAN244bibs.html.)  The
question of whether twenty-seven thousand African
American children in Oakland schools come from families that
speak that language has to be an empirical question, not an
issue for tapping people's opinions.
	The Chronicle (12/20) reports the nation's shock at the
news of the resolution by "the Oakland school district's
decision to recognize the African American vernacular as a
language."  Under the headline "Ebonics Isn't a Language" in
the Examiner (12/25), Education Secretary Riley is reported
as warning about the dangers of "[e]levating black English to
the status of a language".
	When the Examiner issued its invitation for readers'
opinions (12/23) the phrasing was: "Will recognition of black
English as a language help African-American students
succeed?"  Some readers might have understood "recognition
... as a language" as involving whether there is such a
language at all, others as whether it is a language separate
from English in the way that French and Hausa are, and still
others as whether Oakland was proposing that AAVE join
standard English as one of the languages to be used in the
city's classrooms.  It is amazing to me that the issue was
thought of as deserving treatment as a yes-or-no question.  It
is even more amazing that so many readers felt they were
qualified to answer the question.
* * *
	One of the claims contained in the resolution is that
Ebonics is not a linguistic cousin of English, but is really more
directly descended from West African linguistic stock.
(Though one Oakland teacher was heard on national TV as
saying that Ebonics is basically Swahili.)  Raising this issue
has really muddied the pedagogical problem the schools are
facing.  Instead of focusing on the cognitive consequences in
American schools of students' having AAVE as their primary
language, whatever its source or status, the board chose to
confuse the world with an irrelevant claim about language
classification.
	A Chronicle editorial (12/20) after surveying what it
described as AAVE features, stated that "Such variations
amount to a dialect of English -- not a separate language."
My Berkeley colleague, John McWhorter, was quoted
(Chronicle 12/21) as saying "Black English is a dialect -- it is
not a separate language".  Here I am sure that he meant that
it is a dialect of English.
	The Examiner (12/24) referred to the School District's
attempts to explain "its decision to adopt black English as a
separate language" but the next day (12/25) quoted board
member Jean Quan as saying "We never said it was a
separate language."
	What turns on the answer to this question?  One
possibility is that if AAVE can be recognized as something
other than a variety of English, that fact should allow the
school district to qualify for funds earmarked for bilingual
education.  Whether or not this was the intention of the
board, it is certainly true that many people assumed that it
was.  An early report in the Chronicle (12/20) stated quite
straighforwardly that "[t]he educators hope to win federal
bilingual dollars to help pay for the program." On the next
day the Chronicle added: "Education officials in some
districts, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, say they
are intrigued with what Oakland did and might do the same -
- primarily to seek federal bilingual education funds."  San
Francisco school board member Dan Kelly too "would
support a move to have the federal government recognize
ebonics as a separate language for purposes of funding
bilingual education."  Whatever the intentions of the board
might have been, observers across the nation read a local
policy decision urging the recognition of AAVE as the home
language of many students as a step in justifying a request
for federal funding.  (A Chicago Tribune editorial, quoted in
the Chronicle 12/28, assumed that giving AAVE "the status
of a language" would entail "qualify[ing] the children who
speak it to receive federally funded bilingual education.")
	The intentions regarding funding are somewhat unclear,
but the resolution did suggest that they intended to use
AAVE as a language of instruction.  Explaining things to
children in a language they understand is one thing; teaching
that language to the children is something else, and this is the
possibility that raised some alarms.
	The resolution declares that "the Superintendent in
conjunction with her staff shall devise and implement the best
possible academic program for imparting instruction to
African American students in their primary language for the
combined purposes of maintaining the legitimacy and
richness of such language ... and to facilitate their acquisition
and mastery of English language skills." Here the source of
ambiguity is the word "maintaining": it could refer to
defending the belief that the language is legitimate and rich,
or it could refer to preserving the language from decline.  The
second (and I would suspect unintended) interpretation is
the one that led some people to think that the district
intended to offer classes in AAVE.  (A belief that this is what
they meant led Jesse Jackson to say that children would be
better off studying Spanish.)
	To resolve these various misunderstandings, the board
has hired the PR firm of Darolyn Davis, whose job, according
to the Chronicle (12/24) is "to help them explain that they
have no intention of teaching children to speak black English
-  ebonics -- or applying for federal bilingual dollars to their
program under false pretenses."  This has been done in the
form of a statement of "legislative intent".
* * *
	The questions until now have been: "is it a primary
language?"; "is it a language?"; and "is it a separate
language?" The next word to worry about is whether AAVE
is simply "slang".  This term is usually used to refer to
ephemeral faddish locutions usually associated with schools,
sports, music and entertainment, and gang life, existing
mainly for expressing group solidarity, especially among the
young and hip.  But it has been one of the favorite dismissing
words of the critics of the school board's actions.  Jesse
Jackson is quoted in the Examiner (12/22) as saying, "in
Oakland some madness has erupted over making slang talk a
second language."  To which he added, "You don't have to
go to school to learn to talk garbage."
	The Chronicle reported (12/21) that "[s]ome scholars
call it slang, criticizing Oakland for legitimizing error-ridden
speech."  ("Some scholars"?  What are these people scholars
of, if they can decide that something is slang?)  We learn that
in addition to the Rev. Jackson, Ward Connerly calls it slang,
and complains that the board's action will "legitimize" it.
Shelby Steele (Chronicle 12/20) calls black English "merely
slang".  Listeners to talk shows (Chronicle 12/21) learn "that
Oakland is giving up on conventional English and diverting
black kids into classes taught in slang."  A Debra Saunders
piece (Chronicle 12/24) writes that black parents "may not
welcome a philosophy that elevates slang." All of these
quotations suggest that their authors do not believe that
there exists anything deserving to be treated as an actual
linguistic system in the speech of the students in question.
The most stunning such judgment comes from Ward
Connerly (Chronicle 12/21): "These are kids that have had
every opportunity to acclimate themselves to American
society, and they have gotten themselves into this trap of
speaking this language -- this slang, really -- that people can't
understand. Now we're going to legitimize it."  Mr. Connerly
seems not to believe that the children in question have
acquired a way of speaking through the normal process of
language acquisition.
* * *
	The most controversial paragraph of the resolution
introduced the word "genetics" into the debate. It is really
difficult to know what the writers of the phrase had in mind.
In the language of the resolution, "numerous validated
studies" have demonstrated "that African Language Systems
are genetically based and not a dialect of English."
	This passage was interpreted by many as claiming that
Black English is biologically innate in its speakers.  Now there
is a metaphorical linguistic concept of "genetic" relationships,
as when we say that Spanish and Italian are genetically
related to Latin, but neither the language of the resolution
nor the board's later clarifications have brought their usage
any closer to the linguistic notion.
	The board has since explained (Chronicle 12/25)  that
they were not claiming "that black people have a unique
biology" but merely (Examiner 12/22) that AAVE has a
"historical and cultural basis".  A clarification appearing on
the OUSD's web page states that "[t]he term  'genetically
based' is a synonym with genesis ... used according to the
standard dictionary definition of 'has its origins in.'  It is not
used to refer to human biology."  There is no easy way to
substitute either "genesis" or "has its origins in" into the
phrasing of the resolution and come up with something
coherent.  In the first place, something is missing: what would
follow the "in" of "has its origins in"?
	The efforts to explain the bit about genetics have not
been effective.  As late as December 31, we read  Clyde
Haberman in the New York Times challenging the board to
explain the graceful English of the Ghanaian Kofi Annan, the
new United Nations Secretary General.  The implication is
that Kofi Annan's genes clearly didn't destine him to be a
speaker of AAVE.
* * *
	There is a common-sense core to the Oakland school
board's plans.  All over the world children show up in school
speaking a variety of language that differs in some great or
small way from the variety they're about to start learning.
Where the discrepancy is slight, and where (as in most parts
of the world) nobody would think of telling the children to
give up their home language, the difference can be easily
bridged.  But in all cases it is natural for teachers to do
whatever they can to make students aware of the differences.
	The case made by the board is that this bridging from
the home language to the school language should be done in
a way that isn't demeaning to the children.  Such elementary
concern for the children's self-esteem has been ridiculed by
some as a meaningless gesture of "political correctness", and
a belief that children should never be corrected.  But clearly,
a child who can say freely, "In my dialect we say it like this" is
better able to profit from a language-learning experience than
a child who is simply always told that everything he says is
"wrong".  (And is anybody thinking about the parents of
AAVE-speaking children who have been listening to all this
talk about "garbage" and "nonsense"?)
* * *
	The language used by the Oakland school board in
formulating the resolution has occasioned great and
continuing misunderstandings, leading to worries about
whether the city of Oakland's reputation has been so
seriously damaged that employers will stay away.  Yet board
members, insisting that they will never modify the language
of the resolution, have instead hired a PR firm to help them
justify the language they already have.
	I think the board should practice what they preach and
should do what they say they want their students to do:
learn the language of the larger community so that they can
achieve their goals in that community.  Why not start over
with the language of the resolution?  And maybe in the work
of changing the way they communicate what they originally
wanted to say, they might even consider making some
changes in what it was that they originally wanted to say.
	In the board's public statements they should show a
clearer understanding of what they are getting into.  The
changes needed will not be trivial, and will have to include
the daunting job of sensitizing teachers to a language many
of them have wanted to believe does not exist.  Much of the
public debate suggests that the new classroom practice will
be mostly a matter of displaying respect for the children's
home language, and making students aware of the
pronunciation of "with" as "wif", the uses of "be", and
multiple negation.  But anybody who has looked at the
linguistic structure of the African American vernacular knows
that there's a lot more to it than that.
	The OUSD school board has made an important
proposal:  that the work of helping speakers of black English
to learn the language of the school will be easier and more
effective if it is seen as building on a home language whose
properties the children are encouraged to examine, rather
than as an endless process of "correcting mistakes".  If that's
all the new policy achieves, it will have been worth it.  If
teachers can attain precise understandings of the nature of
that language, that will be even better.  If all of this discussion
encourages everyone involved to make whatever other
changes need to be made to improve the school performance
of African American students in the district, Oakland will
achieve a new and more welcome kind of fame.

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