Learn about the Evolution of Language.
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LINGUISTIC EXPERTS
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It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing . . .
-- Duke Ellington
"Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler".
-- Albert Einstein
Dr. John R. Rickford - Dialect Speakers and Education
PDF
John R. Rickford (Linguistics, Stanford University) and Angela E.
Rickford (Education, San Jose State University)Published in
Linguistics and Education, 7.2:107-128 (1995).
[Special issue on "Dialects and Education"]
SEE LINGUISTICS
Dept. of Linguistics at the Ohio State University
has obtained funding to create a database of spoken language data from
a variety of languages, including Caribbean English-lexicon creoles,
and we envisage expanding the database to include other creoles as
well as other languages.
A Language is a Dialect with an Army and a Navy
Definition of Dialect, Pidgin and Creole
Metathesis
When you hear someone say "ask" instead of "aks" do you think it's
wrong?
"EBONICS: A Serious Analysis of African American Speech Patterns"
Language and Learning Congressional Briefing
May 8, 2000
Raising Inner - City Reading Levels -- Executive Summary
Raising Inner - City Reading Levels by Dr. William Labov
What Every Educator Needs to Know -- Executive Summary
What Every Educator Needs to Know by Lilly Wong Fillmore
William Labov also Wrote:
-- Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence
June 1972
The controversy over why children in the inner-city schools show such
low educational achievement has been examined in several recent issues
of The Atlantic. In the September, 1971, Atlantic, R. J. Herrnstein
summarized the position of psychologists and others who believe that
heredity is substantially more important than environment in
determining intelligence, as measured by IQ tests. In its issue of
December, 1971, The Atlantic published a number of letters (the
correspondents included sociologists, anthropologists, economists,
educators, and a few psychologists) taking issue with Professor
Herrnstein's article. Many of those who wrote maintained that
environmental factors, rather than any genetic deficit, explain the
poor performance of lower- class inner- city children.
-- "How I got into linguistics, and what I get out of it,"
-- "The Organization of Dialect Diversity in North America,"
Teaching Elites in America
-- E. Digby Baltzell,_Philadelphia Gentlemen:
The Making of a National Upper Class_ (1958) Baltzell was a
sociologist with a deep personal knowledge of Philadelphia's elites.
He contrasted "elites" whose status was won by achievement as
identified in _Who's Who_, and "upper class" whose status was
inherited and were identified in the social register. Baltzell, died
in 1996, see the
on-line Guide to his Papers
, and an
obituary
by the University of Pennsylvania
Ronald Kephart
Email
English & Foreign Languages University of North Florida
Mar 2001 Florida Times-Union, reported a study that has shown that
Black children in schools are three times more likely to be tagged as
needing special education as White children. The study was carried out
by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project.
On the news, but not in the printed story, one researcher pointed out
that one of the diagnostics used is language: children found speaking
Black English do not have real language, and therefore need special
treatment. (I have heard personally from teachers and school workers
about this happening around Jacksonville, especially in the more rural
counties.)
Apparently, in some circles, Black English is *still* being treated as
a deficit of some kind, a malady needing to be remedied, shades of the
educational psychologists of the 1950s and '60s. Treating BE as a
normal manifestation of the human capacity for language is simply not
an alternative, it seems. That this still happens despite the work of
researchers like Labov, Smitherman, Dillard, Rickford and McWhorter
(and others I'm sure), all of whom have written about this subject in
ways that can be understood by normally educated people, is, I think,
frightening.
No Argument: Thomas Keeps 5-Year Silence
By ADAM LIPTAK Published: February 12, 2011
He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the way he
speaks. In his memoir, “My Grandfather's Son,” he wrote that he had
been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia. He
never asked questions in college or law school, he wrote, and he was
intimidated by some fellow students.
By Courtland Milloy - Washington Post - December 17, 2000
While speaking to a group of high school students last week, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was asked why he rarely asks
questions from the bench.
"Oh, boy, that's a good question," Thomas replied. His answer,
however, was not good at all.
"When I was 16," Thomas said, "I was sitting as the only black kid in
my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of dialect.
It's called Geechee. But some people call it Gullah now
, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then.
. . . And the problem was that I would correct myself mid-sentence. I
was trying to speak standard English. I was thinking in standard
English but speaking another language. So I learned that--I just
started developing the habit of listening."
John Baugh, Professor of Education and Linguistics at Stanford
University
"Members of Congress bring with them the standard dialects from their
home regions and treat each other with tremendous decorum and
respect." He said that he would like to "see that model extended to
the educational arena." Linguistic abilities have direct economic
consequences. Baugh says that linguistic diversity needs to be
accepted.
Why is learning English so hard?
HOT NEW INFORMATION ON WHERE THE WORD "JAZZ" COMES FROM
You will find a discussion on Metathesis with Expert Linguists on the CreoleTALK - MAILING LIST