What is African-American English? (Part IV: Humanity & The Popular Mind)

The linguist Deborah Cameron has suggested the following principle to guide her in her own work, although it is one that could perhaps guide social scientists more generally:

Be open about your agenda and negotiate at all stages.

This principle has been endorsed by her colleague John Rickford as a measure which, if adopted, “would be beneficial for sociolinguistic theory and application alike.”

In a more recent piece, appearing in the online magazine Popular Linguistics [1], Renée Blake and Cara Shousterman cite the article in which Rickford offers this endorsement, although they make no reference to Cameron’s principle (not to suggest that they are at fault for this). Nevertheless, they offer their own principle, one of ‘linguistic humanity’:

Those who investigate the language of a community of speakers should extend their knowledge of that language within those communities, as well as outside of the communities, with the utmost humanity.

From these two principles, I would like to address the following questions:

1. Does humanity entail openness of a researcher’s agenda to the public?

2. How does the utmost humanity relate to a consideration by researchers of what agendas their research may conceivably further?

3. How do the notions of a language of a community of speakers and of knowledge of a language relate to the issues of humanity and openness, specifically in regard to African-American English?

With regard to the first question, I will be extremely brief: YES, in my view, humanity does entail openness. In the words of Cameron et al. (1993):

If, as we would claim, people are not objects and should not be treated like objects, this surely entitles them to more than just respectful (ethical) treatment. It means that researcher and researched should interact; researchers should not try to pretend that their subjects can be studied as if the former were outside the social universe that included the latter.

From this, it is further suggested the possibility of doing research “not just on social subjects or for social subjects, but also with social subjects.” Indeed, if the point of inquiry is not, in the words of Karl Marx, to simply interpret the world but to change it, why not facilitate the cooperation between researchers and subjects toward that end?

Still, to be judicious, I will not assume that my answer of YES is absolute. We do, as humans, occasionally withhold information (or tell lies, even) in the service of an imagined humanitarian benefit. However, I would argue that such cases of imagination should at least be put through a test of rational argument among scholars. Likewise, if it supposed that social scientists should be doing something other than attempting to benefit humanity, arguments should be put forth as to why, and counterarguments should be responded to rationally. At this point, I will turn away from Question One as a general one, although it will regain relevance in a more specific sense once we turn to the issue of African-American English.

* * *

Regardless as to how the first question is ultimately answered, a researcher may obviously generate effects which go beyond fulfilling their own goals. Hence, my second question is intended to problematize the perhaps straw-person-like notion that it is sufficient for researchers to be clear about their own motivations in conducting research.

For instance, it is possible that an individual researcher is motivated simply by the prospect of doing something that they find interesting in exchange for a living. To superimpose an additional goal of, say, ‘describing Language X’ would not do much to inform the public, nor the researcher themself, of what consequences might arise from their research, especially if it were considered how the researcher might otherwise have chosen to spend their time (i.e., even if X, above, is filled in).

Therefore, I argue that if a researcher is to genuinely display the ‘utmost humanity’ they must at least spend some time questioning what possible benefits (and deficits) may result from their choice of research program. Exactly how much deliberation is necessary can receive no absolute answer. Nevertheless, I would argue that the notion of humanity entails – at minimum – a responsibility to respond to criticisms of one’s research program with regard to the expected humanitarian benefits (or deficits).

* * *

At this point, it makes sense to turn to a specific research program, and my third question leads us to one. Namely, it leads us to examine the program of investigating ‘the language of a community of speakers’ for the apparent goal of obtaining ‘knowledge’ of that language.

On the face of it, there may appear to be a certain irony in Blake & Shousterman’s principle of ‘linguistic humanity.’ That is, if we were to accept Walt Whitman’s contention that ‘the proper study of [hu]mankind is [hu]man[ity],’ why would a researcher work toward acquiring ‘knowledge of language,’ something which would at first glance appear to be at a remove from flesh and blood humans? Either there is a good reason for this move, or else there is not. But, either way, the issue cannot even be addressed without first explaining what is entailed by the proposition. In other words, what exactly is a ‘language of a speech community,’ and what is knowledge of it?

As far as I can tell, there are no answers to these questions in either Blake & Shousterman’s piece in Popular Linguistics, nor in their blog Word: The Online Journal of African-American English. In fact, there appears to be a widespread void in the discourse of linguists with regard to these questions, one whose basis is no doubt complex, and I will make no attempt here to unravel the historical, intellectual, economic, political, social and emotional threads which comprise this void as a generalized phenomenon, a phenomenon which, doubtlessly, is tied to many other issues of academic and humanitarian import. Instead, I will simply highlight a few points, first by drawing attention to a manuscript which might be dubbed theoretically foundational with respect to American sociolinguistics: Weinreich, Labov & Herzog’s 1968 “Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change.”

In particular, I find it worthwhile to examine the authors’ treatment of the late-19^th century scholar Hermann Paul. Weinreich, Labov & Herzog suggest that Paul took the language of a community, “unlike the idiolect [i.e., unlike an individual’s language]," to be "an artifact of the linguist.” In other words, according to the authors, what exists for Paul are the languages of individuals and not those of communities. There are indeed numerous passages within Paul’s magnum opus that might suggest this, for instance the following [2]:

All psychical processes come to their fulfillment in individual minds, and nowhere else. Neither the popular mind, nor elements of it, such as art, religion, etc., have any concrete existence...

It is apparently from such passages that Weinreich, Labov & Herzog come to the following conclusion:

The isolation of the individual, Paul thought, had the advantage of attaching linguistics to a more general science of psychology. The price of such isolation, however, was the creation of an irreconcilable opposition between the individual and society.

In contrast to placing such an emphasis on the individual, Weinreich, Labov & Herzog ultimately propose that “the grammars in which linguistic change occurs are grammars of the speech community.” It is not clear, however, how the ‘irreconcilable opposition’ between individual and society is thereby assuaged. Regardless, the bigger problem here is that Weinreich, Labov & Herzog have established (or perpetuated) a separate irreconcilable opposition, one that could have been avoided, in my view, had they genuinely understood Paul’s position.

For instance, it is at best misleading to suggest that Paul took the language of a community to be “(unlike the idiolect), an artifact of the linguist.” In fact, Paul had explained:

[E]ven if we speak of the language of an individual, we have to deal not with a concrete being, but with an abstraction...

For Paul, both the language of a community as well as the language of an individual represent abstractions over actual activity. Moreover, for Paul, this activity must necessarily involve interpretation, since linguistic communications do not literally pass from one brain to another as physical letters travel, say, by means of the United States Postal Service. Remarkably, Paul pushed a step further and offered an explanation for this species of confusion among linguists:

The self-deception under which grammarians labour depends on their having regarded the word not as a portion of the living language—audible for a moment, and then passing away—but as something independent to be analysed at leisure, with a view to its leisurely dismemberment. A further source of deception lies in the habit of starting not from the spoken, but from the written word. In writing, no doubt, the word seems separated into its elements…

As Roy Harris has more recently suggested, “Being able to put something down in writing has always been a powerful disincentive to self-questioning about what exactly is being ‘put down.’” [3]

In light of these comments, how are we to assess Weinreich, Labov & Herzog’s claim that “the grammars in which linguistic change occurs are grammars of the speech community”? Well, we can write grammars for communities, and we can write grammars for individuals, but in any case a grammar will have to be interpreted by a human in real-time if it is to be of any use. How linguistic change factors into this depends on one's definition of 'linguistic change.'[4]

The irony of Weinreich, Labov & Herzog’s paper is that, by suggesting that a grammar ‘really’ exists at the level of community but not at the level of individual, they invent (or perpetuate) a world in which a grammar has an objective existence at an irreconcilable remove from flesh and blood humans, a solution which is in fact markedly asocial compared to what Paul, the supposed solipsist, would have allowed under his theory.

This reification of grammar leads Weinreich, Labov & Herzog to betray the empirical within their ‘Empirical Foundations,’ although in a way which may be particularly helpful for understanding some of the issues surrounding African-American English. Consider the following passage from their text:

...it is claimed that in the speech of young Negro children in Northern cities, the copula does not appear in the present tense, as in You a swine! Yet for all speakers in this community the copula is will appear frequently in this portion. [...] To claim that this and hundreds of other such examples are instances of code-switching [i.e., to claim that the children have momentarily switched from one dialect to another] would be an artifact of the theory and hardly an inescapable conclusion demanded by the data.

To account for such intimate variation, it is necessary to introduce another concept into the mode of orderly heterogeneity which we are developing here: the linguistic variable—a variable element within the system controlled by a single rule.

Although the phrase “all speakers in this community” as combined with “frequently” should raise eyebrows, I will leave that aside and instead just make one point.

On one hand, the authors are absolutely correct to insist that classifying You a swine! and You is a swine! under separate dialects would be an artifact of one’s theory (or method). On the other hand, what they perhaps have failed to see is that classifying these two utterances as belonging to the same dialect is also an artifact of one’s theory (or method). The decision to group the utterances together under a single rule may be a convenient organizational tactic, but this does not otherwise amount to an empirically-based claim, nor is it an empirical matter as to whether this rule, once accepted, is classified as belonging to African-American English, or to Standard English, or to Earthlinguese, etc.[5]

* * *

I would like to return now to the research principles I began with:

Be open about your agenda and negotiate at all stages. [Cameron’s]

Those who investigate the language of a community of speakers should extend their knowledge of that language within those communities, as well as outside of the communities, with the utmost humanity. [Blake & Shousterman’s]

A point of concern should now be evident. That is, if researchers have as their goal the ‘investigation of a language,’ and if they communicate ‘openly’ to the public using such phrases, they run the risk of deceiving that public. To clarify, a layperson may be led to believe that the researcher is engaging in some purely objective pursuit, and this should seem particularly possible if we consider that they themselves have been inculcated by English teachers and so on to believe that a language is an object which exists independently of flesh and blood humans (as well-intentioned as the English teachers and so on may be).

None of this is to say that terms such as ‘language’ or ‘dialect,’ properly understood as abstractions, can not be justifiably used. However, the justification is often left missing, and hence, the possible agendas that research may serve (or hinder) is often left obscure.

In all fairness, Bill Labov took an important step forward when he proposed in his 1982 paper (‘Objectivity and Commitment in Linguistic Science...’) that linguists have a moral responsibility to the people they study, a responsibility that goes beyond what is required by institutional boards of review. The guidelines put forth in his paper in fact stood as the foundation for Blake & Shousterman’s more recent proposal.

However, the confusions present in Weinreich, Labov & Herzog (1968) were largely unhampered by Labov’s (1982) notion that there exists a “value-free atmosphere that is best for scientific work,” a notion which has already been critiqued by Cameron, among others. To put matters simply, if the decision to value a ‘value-free atmosphere’ as defined in some particular way is not based on values, what is it based on? [6]

* * *

An appeal to an untouchable objectivity, apparently, has been at least partly responsible for the failure among linguists to respond to criticisms of their actions. In Labov’s 1982 paper, for instance, he refers to two highly critical articles written by James Sledd [7]. In one of these articles, Sledd goes as far as to criticize the notion of there being two separate codes (i.e., Standard English vs. Black English) as an example of inhumanity.

However, Labov dismisses these criticisms by implying that the real issue is not with regard to how linguists categorize reality, but rather with regard to whether or not there are any detectable differences in the speech of Blacks, taken as a homogenized group, versus White Southerners, or, rather, whether there are any differences that would qualify for Labov as delineating dialects under his conception of the term.

Labov, unfortunately, thereby misses the main thrust of Sledd’s arguments, under my reading, at least. In short, the fact that one can categorize humanity racially does not make it ethical to do so. It is worth comparing the following remarks of Noam Chomsky:

Those who argue that there is a correlation between race and IQ and those who deny this claim are contributing to racism and other disorders, because what they are saying is based on the assumption that the answer to the question makes a difference; it does not, except to racists, sexist [sic], and the like. [8]

To be clear, the point of drawing attention to these criticisms is not to suggest that the critics are necessarily right. Rather, my point is to suggest that if scholars present issues to the public in such a one-sided manner that, in Wayne O’Neil’s words, there is “no offer to change the rules of the game or its name,” we thereby treat our subjects as though they are incapable of making their own decisions, as though they are something less than human. And sadly, the situation may in some sense be more dire than if human subjects were treated in the way chemists treat bottles of sulphuric acid, to borrow a depiction from Cameron et al. (1993). Because, a bottle of sulphuric acid, unlike a human, cannot be deceived.

* * *

To conclude, I praise Blake and Shousterman for extending Labov’s humanitarian principle to include humanity. What remains to be seen is to what degree linguists (and other researchers) are willing to take what would seem to be implied by the word humanity seriously (not to suggest that researchers have not necessarily been well-intentioned). Although a principle of humanity, I argue, implies openness with the public, it also implies, in my mind, a level of openness among ourselves as researchers that has unfortunately not been a general feature of academia. While this heightened openness may entail an increased level of cooperation, it may also require us to be more comfortable with what Susan Bickford has aptly termed “the dissonance of democracy.”

notes

[1] Blake & Shousterman’s article appears here

Cameron’s principle is from Cameron et al. (1992) Researching language... as cited by Rickford’s (1997) “Unequal partnership...” in Language in Society, 26. Cameron et al. (1993) refers to “Ethics, Advocacy & Empowerment...” in Language & Communication, 13.

[2] My quotes of Paul are from pages xxxiv-v, 23 (cf. p. xxxix), and 37 of his 1889 Principles, 2^nd ed., freely available here

Note that Weinreich, Labov & Herzog cite other editions of this same text, and further note that their remarks on Paul were, according to the manuscript’s introduction, exclusively from Weinreich, who, unfortunately, died before the manuscript was completed.

[3] Harris (2009) Rationality & the Literate Mind, p. 145.

[4] Compare Saussure's (2006: 38, Writings in General Linguistics) statement that, "For there to be change, there would have to be an intrinsically defined object at a given time, and this never occurs," and Badouin de Courtenay's (1895, as cited by Lamb, 2004, Language & Reality: 176) contention that "What is ordinarily called phonetic ‘change’ or ‘transformation’ of one sound into another is, from an objective point of view, only coexistence, or alternation."

[5] This is to say that there is some a priori (or pragmatic) contribution beyond the realm of the empirical which deserves to be properly recognized. With regard to decisions of these sorts it may be fruitful to consider Chomsky’s distinction between “internal” and “external merge.”

[6] With regard to decisions of these sorts it may be fruitful to consider Chomsky’s distinction between “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” (cf. Aspects, p. 19).

[7] See Sledd (1969) “Bi-Dialectalism...” in The English Journal, 58, and (1972) “Doublespeak...” in College English, 33. See also O’Neil (1972) “The Politics of bidialectalism,” College English, 33.

[8] Chomsky (1988) Language & Problems of Knowledge, p. 164.

What is African-American English? (Part III: Trees)

I’m going to start a bit afield of the topic suggested by the title today, with trees. I don’t remember which I saw first in school, a tree depicting the history of life, or a tree depicting the history of the so-called Indo-European languages. But I remember being fascinated by both. I remember being fascinated by how such a simple and elegant image could capture so much.

The fascination with the tree has been felt by many, including, apparently, Charles Darwin. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin conjectured that a strictly diverging tree model represented “natural genealogies” and a “plan of creation.” The patterns of the tree were driven by laws akin to the “fixed law of gravity,” and one was free to imagine, as many did, that these laws were in fact written by the hand of God.

The arboreal glorification perhaps never died down and in any case was alive again in the late 20th century. As Richard Dawkins argued in The Blind Watchmaker, “it follows from the idea of evolution that there is one uniquely correct branching family tree of all living things.”

At best, Dawkins’ statement is misleading. The idea of evolution, in involving variation and natural selection, does not in itself require a tree, nor does it necessarily suggest a tree, unless one ignores the possibility of phenotypic variation arising by means other than mutation, as it indeed can, for instance, through sexual reproduction. And even without sex, and without cellular division, bacteria can share short passages of genetic material with each other. Because of this, the history of bacterial life is like a complex web, and it is often not clear how to classify individual bacteria into species [1]. And, even in the animal kingdom, so-called hybrid species exist, and there is even even an insect whose genome is apparently part-fungus in origin.

Because of facts like these – to say nothing of the quandaries for classification that biotechnology may present – while one is free to believe that there exists a “plan of creation” or “one uniquely correct branching family tree of all living things,” we will never have any certainty in knowing what this uniquely correct structure is, unless by proclaiming – tacitly or explicitly – to hold some supernatural power of ascertaining how nature is classified from its own (or from God’s) perspective.

To be fair, despite the rhetoric in Origin of Species which would seem to advance the idea that absolute truth is accessible to a scientist who can thereby distill it into a diagram, Darwin also appears to have appreciated some of the quandaries nature presents to objective classification, as demonstrated by the following passage:

In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species.

There are a number of other tensions in the book, but I would like to shift to one in The Descent of Man, shifting also the focus from biological tree models to linguistic trees. First, Darwin says:

Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters.

Then, a few moments later, he mentions:

Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together.

If languages can be crossed or blended together, as they indeed can, then languages are not necessarily going to fit “naturally” into a tree diagram without some decisions being made. For instance, we may classify English as “Germanic,” but if somebody wanted to emphasize the preponderance of contemporary English vocabulary which derived from Latin and French, one might instead classify English as “Romantic.” There is no purely objective way to decide between these two options, and in any case, the classification chosen will emphasize one aspect of history while ignoring others.

Of course, none of this means that Darwin’s two statements above amount to a paradox. Indeed, languages, like organic beings, can be fixed to a strictly hierarchical scheme. Moreover, it is possible to use knowledge of history to make decisions regarding classification, and this may have been all that Darwin meant by his use of the word “natural.” To clarify, both “Germanic” and “Romantic” would be natural classifications for English, whereas “Subject-Verb-Object,” would be artificial, based on characteristics taken as independent from history.

None of this would imply that a tree diagram necessarily amounts to anything more than a convenience, though as a convenience, the model is quite efficient for certain purposes. In the real world, trees are in fact all over the place, in governmental structures, corporate structures, course catalogs, old-fashioned card-catalogues, etc. But then if a network were not an efficient model for certain purposes, why Facebook, why the hypertext in Wikipedia, why roads?

It is thus no surprise that some linguists, such as Bill Labov, have used both trees and networks. Still, the specialness of the tree has been reflected, it seems, by the specialized usage of the word “genetic” among linguists. That is, for a linguist, “genetic” means “phylogenetic,” conforming to the tree model.

This practice could simply be terminological, one might imagine. However, it appears to have at least colored theoretical discussions in intimating that phenomena within languages (or dialects, etc.) are somehow of a different nature from those which transcend the boundaries.

In this light, it is to Labov’s credit that in a recent paper [2] he has made the distinction explicit with reference to the real, social world by proposing that the tree model corresponds to parent-to-child learning, specifically, by a process he calls transmission. Transmission takes place within “speech communities” and is contrasted with diffusion, which takes place among adults between communities.

Before turning to evidence, the logical consequences of Labov’s definitions should be examined. In particular, it should be noted that if all you are dealing with is what can happen within a speech community, and presumably within a dialect or language, then the result necessarily fits the family tree. A dialect or language, in other words, cannot converge into itself; it is already a unity. Therefore, it does not appear as though Labov has set up an empirical test of the connection of the tree model to different types of language learning, given his definitions.

However, Labov takes the tree model as representing also a gradualness of change, and it is this aspect he is most concerned with. In this regard, Labov proposes a process of “incrementation,” in which successive generations of children continue a change in the same direction. For my purposes, it doesn’t matter whether or not he’s on to something here, although it would seem to me that incrementation should be thought of first as a result, not a process.[3] Regardless, my concern is not with graduality but rather with the tree model as a hierarchy, so I will leave this aside.

As it stands, Labov provides no evidence that the applicability of a hierarchy has anything to do with the differences between child and adult learning. If adults are disrupting the hierarchy and kids aren’t, the simplest explanation (with regard to his discussion) would be that adults are more capable of getting in cars, boats, and so on, and are thereby more capable of transcending the boundaries of their native speech communities.[4]

In short, there is no evidence that the tree model represents the work of an underlying natural process.[5]

Now, to find our way back to Black English by way of natural groups, I would like to address the following question: Why, since the 19th century, have scholars repeatedly naturalized the tree diagram? The possible motivations are myriad, so I’ll touch on just a few here.

First, there is the actual success of the tree diagram with respect to the linguistic and biological record. However, it should be noted that the success of the tree diagram does not depend on there actually being a corresponding tree inscribed in natural processes. Its success depends on its ability to help researchers organize their data to construct hypotheses, and how reasonable these hypotheses are depends in part on historical knowledge.

A second possible motivation is that a naturalization of the tree model expresses the belief that there is a way to objectively trace back through history by algorithm, by laws akin to the “fixed law of gravity.” This might connect to a more general desire for certainty, among other things. In any case, a thorough analysis of this belief, or of a notion of elegance, for instance, could be a rather complex endeavor, so I’ll set such possibilities aside.

Perhaps more straightforward is a notion that the tree is familiar. In one sense, a tree is like a real-life tree, as they have sometimes been drawn.[6] In another sense, and for the final possibility I’ll explore, the family tree model itself was familiar when Darwin published Origin of Species, found commonly in the backs of Bibles, among other places.

What does it take, then, to make a family tree in genealogy? First, let us start with a small snapshot of the human pedigree, showing only sex, male or female:


Note that there is no purely objective way of organizing the members of this pedigree into two or more groups (i.e., beyond sex). Nevertheless, there is an easy way to organize them. Just give names to the oldest fathers, and have their children and their children’s mothers take the fathers names, and keep doing this (yes, somebody has thought of this before):


From this simple act of creating a patrilineal nomenclature, the “families” which have been created have no choice but to conform to a strictly hierarchical scheme (barring such possibilities as women bearing children with multiple fathers). That is, if a family has one son, the family continues, if it has two or more sons, the family divides, and if it has no sons, the family dies. In no case does a classification based on this naming system reflect convergences.

As the common practice of assigning family names yields distinct groups with tree-like histories, it is possible that people have been biased to think of families in this way. To take a step further, perhaps these notions associated with the family were extended to the concept of nation, and then they were carried from nation to language, and from language to dialect, etc., or something like that.[7]

This brings me back to the topic of African-American English, which I will pick up in a later post.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading...

notes

[1] See also Doolittle, 1999, “Phylogenetic classification and the universal tree,” in Science, 284, 2124-8, and Arnold, 2006, Evolution through Genetic Exchange.

[2] Labov, 2007, “Transmission and diffusion,” in Language, 83, 344-87.

[3] See also critical discussions of linearity and language change in Lass, 2006, “The end of linear narrative?” in Language & History: integrationist perspectives, ed. by Love; and Janda, 2001, “Beyond ‘pathways’ and ‘unidirectionality,’” in Language Sciences, 23, 265-340.

[4] Compare also Labov, 1966, The Social Stratification of English in NYC, p. 553.

[5] This not to suggest that the tree has no relationship to reality whatsoever. In any case, the tree, since it allows for divergences but not convergences, will be more apt when there are forces favoring the separation – physical or social – of people, and a few things should be kept in mind with regard to this point. First, the forces favoring separation (over togetheration) have not been constant throughout human history. Second, each separation has its own history, and separations are not necessarily absolute, not under the definitions used to assign membership into (or exclusion from) the groups of the tree model, nor otherwise. Finally, the applicability of the tree model to a given history depends in part on classificatory and goodness-of-fit decisions which are not reducible to purely objective criteria.

Also, because there is no evidence that language change involves distinctly different natural processes within languages as opposed to between them, I believe that the word “genetic,” as used among linguists, is misleading. I’ll return to this in a later post.

[6] As, for instance, Ernst Haeckel sometimes drew them. See also Alter, 1999, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, for a fascinating discussion of the relation of the biologist Haeckel to the linguist Schleicher, and a fascinating discussion of the relation of the two disciplines more broadly.

[7] This is obviously too simple, and I can’t possibly be the first person to have said something like this, and so I welcome good references. For one relevant to the relation of theories of language to nationalism in the 19th century, see Joseph, 2006, “The grammatical being called a nation,” in Language & History, ed. by Love.

What is African-American English? (Part II)

In an earlier post, I suggested that linguistic features classified as “African-American” could alternatively be classified as “American.” I do not intend to presuppose that one label should be preferred to the other in any or all instances. What concerns me is the dearth of discussion over the potential consequences (political, educational, etc.) of these labellings. I will provide a bit of context for my concern in this continuation.

First, I should point out that even if we have decided to carve up the linguistic landscape along racial lines, we are not forced to use the term “African-American.” John Baugh has written an excellent article on the politicization of different terms for the descendants of slaves living in the United States (see American Speech, Vol. 66, 133-46), and I further recommend John McWhorter’s piece “Why I’m Black, not African-American.” I will leave this issue aside, however, since my question is not what do we call the race? but rather why race at all?

The responses I have received to this second question from linguists often make reference to facilitating communication with laypersons. Whatever may be the relative merits or deficiencies of such an argument, concepts of race are not merely present at the level of popular discourse; they are inscribed in law. While this did not stop a group of schoolchildren in Ann Arbor, Michigan from attempting to enlarge the scope of their case beyond race, arguing that their school had failed “to take into account cultural, social and economic differences between them and economically advantaged children [in teaching literacy],” the only argument the plaintiffs won hinged on the following clause, from the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974:

No state shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by […] the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.

This fact about the case in Ann Arbor would seem to support the framing by linguists of societal language issues in terms of race (or color, sex, or national origin). Nevertheless, it should be noted that the apparently crucial bit of evidence for the judge’s decision to order changes in the school district’s handling of students came from an observation that when teachers do not take into account the home language of children, children may “turn off” from the learning process and fail to learn to read. This pedagogical consideration, in general, has nothing to do with race (or color, sex, or national origin). Therefore, notwithstanding the constraints of the existing legal structure, if linguists (or others) wish to improve education, it would seem that they should examine, and invite others to examine, multiple approaches to enacting educational reforms.

Although I will not attempt to evaluate how well people have actually done this, I will look at one particularly relevant example of language between linguists and laypersons, a piece which is sufficient for demonstrating how certain paths of action may be invited or inhibited. I am referring to the Linguistic Society of America’s resolution on the Oakland “Ebonics” Issue, which begins with the following[1]:

The variety known as "Ebonics" [and by other names] is systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. In fact, all human linguistic systems—spoken, signed, and written—are fundamentally regular.

It has certainly been noble for linguists to fight the myth that the speech patterns of stigmatized groups reflect some sort of cognitive deficiency. However, the LSA’s statement does not clearly do that, since it focuses on abstract systems and not on people. The claims that a speech variety is “rule-governed” and that human linguistic systems are “fundamentally regular” are not claims based on evidence. Rather, they owe to faith or to tautologies by definition. Importantly, these ideas of rules and regularity resonate with common conceptions of what a language, especially a Standard Language, is. Hence, the LSA has allowed for the dominant rhetoric associated with Standard Languages to be applied more broadly, for better or for worse.

In any case, the rationalization of Ebonics does not grant it any higher social status (unless you otherwise believe that it does). The resolution later adds:

For those living in the United States there are [...] benefits in acquiring Standard English and resources should be made available to all who aspire to mastery of Standard English. The Oakland School Board's commitment to helping students master Standard English is commendable.

Perhaps most linguists in the United States would agree with this statement. Regardless, there was an opportunity here for the LSA to invite a discussion over the legitimacy and importance of Standard English as it stands, an opportunity not taken, again, for better or for worse.

From what we have seen so far, the LSA resolution has done nothing to question the common mythology of languages as pre-existent things. The closest the LSA comes to such questioning is in the following clause:

The distinction between "languages" and "dialects" is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones. For example, different varieties of Chinese are popularly regarded as "dialects," though their speakers cannot understand each other, but speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, which are regarded as separate "languages," generally understand each other. What is important from a linguistic and educational point of view is not whether AAVE [African-American Vernacular English] is called a "language" or a "dialect" but rather that its systematicity be recognized.

Although it is certainly to the LSA’s credit that they have cited “social and political grounds” that go into distinguishing languages from dialects, the sociopolitical basis for the establishment of a language variety itself, regardless as to whether it is called a language, dialect, or anything else, receives no mention anywhere in the document. This is a striking omission. Of course, if we accept that African-American English (AAE) is a language variety, and if we further accept that all language varieties are systems, then the systematicity of AAE is guaranteed. But, neither the existence nor the systematicity of AAE is supported by purely linguistic evidence, unless what counts as “purely linguistic” corresponds to what linguists say in official statements. More specific to the language of the LSA resolution, there are no objective grounds for what qualifies as people who “generally understand each other,” and whether people take the pains to understand each other undoubtedly depends on social and political factors. Again, what is most significant here, perhaps, is that the resolution maintains the discussion at the abstract level of language variety, keeping it at a remove from flesh and blood humans.[2]

To be fair, the decision to discuss language in terms of rule-based systems, like the decision to discuss language in terms of race, undoubtedly facilitates communication with the broader public, at least in a sense. This facilitation, however, is coupled with a reinforcement of the ideology of languages as independently existing objects, an ideology which supports the continued legitimacy of Standard Languages as they are, along with the connected status quo(s).

In an article on Ann Arbor, William Labov said, “The only permanent advance in the condition of life in any field occurs when people take their own affairs into their own hands.” In this light, why should there be such a thrust among linguists to promote the legitimacy of “African-American English” without providing a rationale for this move in relation to other possible tactics, and without inviting a discussion over the relative benefits and costs of framing language along racial lines? Moreover, why should linguists effectively shield the notion of “Standard Language” from critical scrutiny? While it should be understood that the LSA resolution was a reaction to the Oakland school board's decision and therefore had to be passed quickly, it has now been over 30 years since Ann Arbor and yet these questions do not appear to be receiving much attention by linguists(cf. Green's African-American English, and Word: The Online Journal of African-American English).

To conclude, if we seriously tried to determine what’s best for our society (as a whole) regarding language and education, we might propose considerably more radical reforms than measures to facilitate literacy among people classified as speakers of certain varieties such as African-American English (not to suggest that these measures have done no good). It might also be easier, in some cases at least, to generate discussion (and action) when educational issues are framed in terms of societal well-being, as opposed to being framed in terms of an abstract variety’s legitimacy. Finally, it should at least be considered what the potential benefits and costs are of reinforcing not only ideologies regarding languages as objects, but also of races as natural groups. I will return to this in a later post.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading.

notes

[1] Note that I am not questioning the intentions of linguists, or anyone else, here (cf. Labov, 1994: 550). What I am suggesting is that we construct reasonable hypotheses with regard to how particular linguistic constructions (including constructions at the level of an LSA resolution) influence human activity, recognizing (following Saussure) that the absence of something is in itself significant (cf. Chomsky, 1986).

[2] See also Makoni & Pennycook, 2005, Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages, in Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal, 2, 137-156.

Rules (or Analogies?) of Human (or Female?) Language (or Action?): From I to I, I, and again I, e o Indefinido..,.

Part I
Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” stunned me with its strangeness and haunting beauty. There sat table-places for thirty-nine dead (or mythical) women, adorned with plates of flowers, butterflies and vaginas, all gathered around a triangle, positioned above nine hundred ninety-nine names on the floor. Not an everyday sight. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found my brain scrambling, failing to assemble any satisfying conclusion from all the symbolic matter.

Striking me most, though, were the honorees’ biographies, inscribed on nearby panels. My reaction, really, stemmed from one line in particular, which read:

English writer, feminist and pioneer in creating a female form language in literature.

Virginia Woolf, it was. Now, I won’t question the labels “English writer” and “literature.” But the rest I will.

Starting with “feminist,” consider the following passage from Woolf’s Three Guineas:

That word, according to the dictionary, means “one who champions the rights of women.” Since the only right, the right to earn a living, has been won, the word no longer has a meaning. [...] Let us therefore celebrate this occasion by cremating the corpse. [...] Observe, Sir, what has happened as the result of our celebration. The word “feminist” is destroyed; the air is cleared; and in that clearer air what do we see? Men and women working together for the same cause.[1]

Obviously, one could argue that there are rights to be won besides that of earning a living. And even today, it seems premature to conclude that that right has been achieved across the globe. Still, the social commentary should not escape reflection. The bearing of earning a living on one’s self-definition is no less powerful than it was in Woolf’s time. Moreover, it is worth considering the connotations of the phrase itself, “earning a living.”

Regardless, the real reason for cremating the “feminist” corpse may have been to promote cooperation, recasting female issues as human ones in the process. In any case, it is by no means clear that the feminist epitaph would have pleased Woolf.

As for “female form language,” the story is similar. Maureen Mullarkey has made the following criticism:

Either Chicago doesn't know or doesn't care that Woolf insisted repeatedly: "Any emphasis, either of pride or of shame, laid consciously on the sex of a writer is not only irritating but superfluous."

Apparently, Chicago did not respect the writer’s wishes. Nevertheless, we are under no obligation to accept the above statement uncritically. That Woolf wrote in the style that she did, discussing the issues that she did; that these facts would have been associated with her status as a woman wholly accidentally; it seems unthinkable. Indeed, no sane biographer of Woolf would ignore her status as woman. Not only did it have the potential to influence her output, it must also have influenced the reception of her work.

Chicago, however, goes beyond biography with “female form language.” What might this be?

Well, if Woolf’s writing is found (by somebody) to embody stereotypically feminine qualities, so be it, I suppose. However, this does not require us to say so. If Woolf had been a man, writing exactly as she had written, down to the last semicolon, would we say that they had unearthed separate beauties, or separate truths about humanity? Yes, most men don’t write like Woolf. And no, most women can’t either.

Virginia was unique; in fact, more than unique, a topic I’ll return to later. But first, rules (or analogies?)!

Part II
Two of the devices most commonly applied to language by linguists are the rule and the analogy. Starting with the latter, I will demonstrate.

Suppose a new verb is proposed: glevle. You might, perhaps, produce a past-tense form: glevled. This act, then, could be accounted for by an analogy:

level : leveled :: glevle : glevled

Of course, I don’t know that a similarity to level, specifically, triggered your response. For all I know, a whole host of past experiences contributed. For a more general analogy, then:

verb : verbed :: glevle : glevled

Which is essentially equivalent to the rule:

Add -ed to verbs for past-tense.

But this rule captures the happening, as well:

Add -ed to glevle for past-tense.

In fact, no amount of evidence can tell us what “really happened.” These are simply different ways of framing the story, although each may be more or less appropriate, depending on our purpose.

Importantly, note that if we wanted to, we could completely eliminate either rules or analogies. That is, if they’re truly interchangeable concepts.

Are they? Well, the leading American linguist of the late 19th century, William Dwight Whitney, claimed:

Everything in language depends upon habit and analogy.

Remarkably, a leading linguist of the early 21st century, Joan Bybee, has taken a similar position. But wait. Consider again:

Add -ed to glevle for past-tense.

This rule, as stated, cannot be rephrased as an analogy, at least not without additional knowledge. That is, I assume you had no prior experience with glevle on which to base an analogy. True, you could have based the analogy on other verbs, as I did above, basing glevled on leveled. But what matters here is this: if there are cases that can only be handled by such a rule, we will need more than habit and analogy.

Are there? Well, Noam Chomsky, the leading linguist of the late 20th century, has repeatedly argued that there are. In Knowledge of Language, for example, he suggested that a sentence like the following cannot be understood on the analogy of attested English sentences:

1) John is too stubborn to visit anyone who talked to.

Let us imagine that we know John and that we overheard this sentence in a conversation between two other people. How would we interpret it? To be sure, this is no simple matter, and space limits me to a few alternatives.

For one, it is possible that the utterance, above, would engender a sensation of having heard one of the following. Or, one of these, we might imagine [2], is what the speaker intended:

2) John is too stubborn to visit anyone who he talked to.
3) John is too stubborn to visit anyone who talked to him.

Each of these presents a pronoun ambiguity which must be resolved for the sentence to be understood “fully.” That is, he and him could refer either to John or to someone else. It seems doubtful that this decision would be based solely on analogies to previously experienced utterances. At the very least, we could take into account whatever we had happened to catch of the conversation before 1) was encountered. Irrespective of how we characterize this process, it would seem strange, at least to me, to refer to it as “analogy.”

Still, perhaps others would not object. But then, consider the following: what if 1) was heard as 1) and it was believed that this was intended? We would then have to decide what the speaker meant, or decide how to interpret the utterance (or decide whether to interpret it at all), or both. At this point, analogy clearly fails, at least without some radical redefinition of the term.

Yet, I may have skeptics, still. The sentence “John is too stubborn to visit anyone who talked to” seems odd, I admit. Therefore, we might imagine that we never encounter anything analogous to it. However, a simple thought experiment is sufficient to demonstrate the insufficiency of analogy. That is, long ago, at some undefined point in our collective history, no language - however we define language - existed.[3] The burden was on us to create it (unless we are willing to entertain that aliens, angels, or innate computer programs taught us).

In any case, we don’t need a time machine. Our creative potential did not disappear once language - however we define it - was established. Rather, it has always been with us (so long as we define ourselves by it), as Wilhelm von Humboldt noted in the mid-19th century.

We should thus celebrate our power - though not unlimited - to devise new words and expressions, and to interpret our experience as we wish. No amount of prior experience and theorizing can tell us for certain what we will do - or what we should do - in a given situation, as every situation is unique, in an uncertain way. It is therefore not surprising that Chomsky has characterized the problems of what he calls “poverty of stimulus” as “awesome.”

Granted, a lot of apparent contradictions appear in Chomsky’s output.[4] For instance, though he has attacked the notion that a community language (i.e., an E-language) has a concrete existence, he has maintained that an individual’s language (i.e., an I-language) reaches a “steady state.” Never, however, has any evidence been provided for this claim, nor could any evidence ever be provided for it. To maintain that a language (of any sort) arrives at a steady state, it is necessary to abstract away from history. Abstractionary motions such as these rely ultimately on decisions, not evidence. Whether they be called rules, or somethings elses, I leave to the reader.

Part I, I and again I

The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.
–Louis

After Virginia, Noam’s I-language metamorphosizes to I, I, and again I-language. Multiple linguistic acts, in other words, can be basketed as belonging to (what we consider to be) the same person, but they need not be, just as we are not forced to encode language with race or gender. Of course, labels may serve certain purposes. It might, however, be worthwhile to transcend such categorizations and examine language in context.[5]

But, if we stop at language, what is it, exactly, that we are examining? Our own interpretations, ultimately. As Nigel Love puts it, language is “interpretively terminal.” Of course, interpretation does not take place in a vacuum. Nor is it that assigning interpretations to “traces” of activity (to borrow B. F. [F.?] Skinner’s terminology) has not been pro[fi/phe]table. Regardless, we should heed Chomsky’s conclusion:

[T]here is no way to avoid the traditional assumption that [...] intuition is the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar.

Yet, we can go further: why grammar? As Humboldt warned, we shouldn’t study language as though it were a “dead plant.” If we look beyond freezed trees and traces, we delve into history: no shame in that. As Edward Sapir remarked:

It is important to realize that language may not only refer to experience or even mold, interpret, and discover experience, but that it also substitutes for it in the sense that in those sequences of interpersonal behavior which form the greater part of our daily lives speech and action supplement each other and do each other’s work in a web of unbroken pattern.

The perspective of history, still, has suffered (to say nothing of future), as Robert de Beaugrande notes, for bearing an “obtrusive mismatch against such ideals as Meillet’s ‘system where everything is rigorously held in place.’”

Why such (rigorous?) ideals? The answer is doubtlessly complex. Certainly, it has something to do with beliefs about what qualifies as science. In turn, this owes something to the success (and glorification) of Newtonian physics, which appeared (to some) to yield timeless laws. Such laws, or rather a desire for such laws, was infused into history (or future?) by the famous last paragraph of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species [6]:

There is grandeur in this view of life, in its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cyclically on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful, have been, and are being, evolved.

This, obviously, is not simply science. A religious tone is interwoven, an influence of natural theology on Darwin, perhaps. That nature, life, and even human activity should be underlain by laws; such ideas come down to faith.

Not to say, however, that such beliefs are either good or bad. Regardless, it is reckless not to recognize their influence on our conceptions of science, how they have favored us asking certain questions over others, and - ultimately - how this has affected our ability to confront the problems of the world.

Why, might it be asked, has a belief in timeless laws been so powerful? Woolf provides an answer with a question:

For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment?

Uncertainty, certainly, may breed terror. Yet, likewise may it yield wonder, joy, disappointment, opportunity, curiosity, madness, passion, sadness, pain, love, ecstasy, etc. Hence, Alexander Lowen penned Fear of Life.

As he argues, fear thrives - paradoxically - when the surrounding culture places great emphasis on a belief in progress. For those of us submerged in such a culture (probably most of my readers), we cannot appreciate fully what it is like not to be.

Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes, though, provides a fascinating glevle into such a different way of being. True, we don’t have to rough it like the Pirahã. But Dan Everett makes a strong case that we could learn more than a thing or two from them.

Particularly striking is how he, who went to the Amazon as a missionary, was (effectively) converted to atheism by the natives. This is not to say, either, that we must give up God. The danger, rather, is naturalized progress. And although this has oftentimes been associated with God, it need not be.[7]

In any case, aside from our Amazonian friends, we can learn from those fiction-writers of our own culture. As Woolf pleads in The Waves:

[I]t is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress; a convenience, a lie.

If Bernard is right that this “progress” is a convenience, who does it convenience? If an “invisible hand” cares for us, why a financial disaster, and a bailout? If “freedom” is sacred, why don’t we ask, as George Lakoff urges: whose freedom?

Postlude
To come full triangle, if tables full of vagina-like plates inspire, awesome. (At minimum, they kindle conversation).

However, we need more than just plates and essays. Tables of all shapes and sizes should welcome live bodies and minds to do more than eat dinner. Let us accept Fernand Braudel’s invitation:

Let us then set in motion the movement toward unity which is being sketched out the world over, and if need be, as soon as intellectually possible and profitable let us press on with it, as quickly as we can. Tomorrow is already too late.

Let us not wait to discover when tomorrow is.

notes
[1] This should not to taken to suggest that there is any strict binarity of the sexes in nature. Woolf herself did not seem to think so.

[2] This act of imagination - or decision, perhaps - might be enough to convince my reader of the insufficiency of habit and analogy.

[3] This is also true, in a sense, at a more definite point in an individual's history.

[4] Consider the following remarks of Chomsky, from Language & Politics:

Those of you who are going on in the ideological professions, the social sciences, etc., you’ll learn this. You’ll learn that you’ve got to conform. [...] What happens is that if you decide, well, I’ll conform a little, I’ll do what they say but I’ll keep my independence of mind, if you begin to do that you’re lost unless you’re a very rare individual. What happens is that you begin to conform, you begin to get the privilege of conformity, you soon come to believe what you’re saying because it’s useful to believe it, and then you’ve internalized the system of indoctrination and distortion and deception and then you’re a willing member of the privileged elites that control thought and indoctrination. [...] It’s a very rare person [...] who can tolerate what’s called “cognitive dissonance”—saying one thing and believing another.

[5] Of course, the labels of society should not be ignored. However, for those who may argue that we ourselves as researchers and teachers should use society’s labels to facilitate communication, please take into consideration the fact that if medical professionals acted analogously, they would risk - in some cases, at least - being sued for malpractice or negligence.

[6] The so-called laws of Newtonian physics can also be viewed as generalizations over historical events, where the phenomena are of a much more longue durée nature than those approached by biology and linguistics. (Note, for instance, that the half-life of a proton is probably about an undecillion years).

[7] Besides the last paragraph of On the Origin, Darwin uses the phrases “plan of creation” and “natural selection,” although he doesn’t explicitly mention God. Perhaps the independence of naturalized progress from God is made clearer by the titles of two books of Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion. In any case, note further that the rhetoric of progress entered Darwin’s text in spite of influence from Thomas Malthus, famously manifesting itself in a strictly diverging tree diagram, a model which contemporary biologists contend is ill-equipped to capture life’s history, although it is still useful for those who demand strict taxonomies. It ought to be questioned, finally, whether divergence and progress really go together in the first place.

i was shocked at how the words … were almost the same.

Interviewed on the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric in Europe, Žižek poignantly notes how the language of the Left and that of the Right may mirror each other in the U.S. Also, food for thought on connecting the problems of the University to those of the World. A short interview, but lots of ground covered. Link to original, including transcript.

in every face i see, i see a part of you and me

World. is pleased to present a special (posthumous) guest performance by Ray Barretto. Please enjoy!

What is African American English?

In her 2002 book African American English: a linguistic introduction, Lisa Green says that African American English is a “linguistic system that is used by some African Americans.” Nowhere in her book, however, does she outline criteria which would establish what is to be included or excluded from this system. Nor does she give precise definition to the terms “linguistic system” or “African American.” As for the latter, let us assume that African Americans are the descendants of slaves living in the United States. This definition is of course debatable and not wholly precise, but it is probably not too far off from Green’s intentions.

As for “linguistic system,” Green’s failure to provide a precise definition represents an apparently widespread tendency in linguistics. If we turn to a general textbook, Victoria Fromkin et al.’s An Introduction to Language, 8th ed., “languages” and “dialects” are apparently countable items that “reflect the underlying rule systems—grammars—of their speakers.” These “underlying rule systems,” supposedly, represent “unconscious knowledge.” But what exactly is this unconscious knowledge, and how do we access it?

The tradition of using such concepts as unconscious knowledge is generally attributed to the work of Noam Chomsky, which is fair, I think. Nevertheless, linguists have done some serious cherry picking, it appears. For instance, if we look at p. 8 of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, one of Chomsky’s foundational theoretical texts, we find the following passage:

Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate. Any interesting generative grammar will be dealing, for the most part, with mental processes that are far beyond the level of actual or even potential consciousness; furthermore, it is quite apparent that a speaker’s reports and viewpoints about his behavior and his competence may be in error. Thus a generative grammar attempts to specify what the speaker actually knows, not what he may report about his knowledge.

This last sentence, above, thus seems to offer an impossible task. But texts such as Fromkin et al.’s and Green’s (among many, many others) do not show how the impossible is to be made possible. Nor is there generally any attempt to flesh out what “knowledge” is, exactly.

Chomsky himself, however, has dealt with this problem in a more recent publication. In Problems of Knowledge & Freedom, he suggests, “terminological debate about the concepts of ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief,’” is “likely to be fruitless,” and in the study of language, “we need not (to a first approximation, at least) make the distinction between knowledge and belief.” Continuing, he concludes, “There is no objective external standard against which to check the system of rules and principles relating sound and meaning—the grammar—constructed by the mind.”

Apparently, our “unconscious knowledge” and “linguistic systems” are products of belief. It is therefore to Fromkin et al.’s credit that they cite the dictum attributed to Max Weinreich: A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. If linguistic systems come down to belief, then they may come down also to politics.

Nevertheless, another option remains. That is, we can consider linguistic systems to be abstractions. Allow me to explain.

We may begin with interpretations over whatever we consider to be linguistic events, as they occur in time and space. For example, if I say “hello” to you as we pass each other on the street, that “hello” can be isolated as an event. We can then choose to consider other events to be in the same class as that “hello.” (Note that whether or not a “what’s up?” falls into the same class cannot be determined a posteriori).[1]

In any case, however we choose to regard events, we can build up classes of them, and we can call those classes linguistic features. These may include what we consider to be words, phonetic and grammatical details, etc. We can then choose to classify a collection of features as belonging to a linguistic system (or language, dialect, etc.), organizing those features however we wish.

This generalized method is not rocket science. But for some strange reason, standard texts in linguistics allow students to go through their undergraduate (and even graduate!) educations in the field without ever questioning a belief in language varieties as preexistent things “out there.” And although linguistics has had a long and intricate relationship with evolutionary biology, students of the latter field are not treated analogously. For example, a textbook on evolution[2] cites the taxonomist George Gaylord Simpson:

Classification […] is an artifice with no objective reality. It arises and exists only in the minds of its devisers, learners and users.

With this perspective, we can return to the issue of African American English.

If African American English is a linguistic system that is used by some African Americans, as Green contends, then we can’t simply be dealing with an abstraction over the linguistic events of African Americans. And as Word: the Online Journal of African American English suggests, “not everybody who speaks AAE is African American.”

It appears, then, that African American English is being used to refer to linguistic features that are associated with African Americans. Nothing is necessarily wrong with this usage, but we must understand the subjectivity that underlies it. That is, if Green (or whoever) associates feature X with African Americans, it does not follow that anybody else does, or should, necessarily. Nor does it mean that anybody else must recognize feature X as a feature, or recognize African Americans as a group, for the purposes of analysis in the pursuit of specific goals.

Quickly, things get complex. For the moment, I will simply wrap up with a statement from Juanita Williamson: the features used to identify Black English are “neither black nor white, but American.”[3]

Now, if Williamson’s point was to suggest that there are no potentially discernible differences between the speech patterns of Blacks and those of White Southerners, research from the past several decades would suggest this to be false, when considering the groups as wholes (although the research also recognizes a good deal of overlap between the patterns of Blacks and White Southerners).

Still, even if this is false, it does not mean that linguists are forced to categorize language along racial lines.[4] There may be good reasons to do so for certain purposes, but there may also be good reasons to follow Williamson’s lead and classify the language of Blacks - or African Americans - as “American.” The ramifications are myriad. For one, these two (or three?) alternatives suggest different political strategies for confronting educational issues. I will return to this in a later posting.

Meanwhile, thanks for reading.


notes

1 See also Chomsky, 1955, “Logical Syntax and Semantics: their linguistic relevance,” Language, 31, 36-45. Also, note that to classify two “hello”s as the “same” is not decidable a posteriori, either. (This is not to say that such classificatory decisions are not necessarily justifiable for certain purposes).

2 Hall & Hallgrimson, 2008, Strickberger’s Evolution, 4th ed, p. 240, citing Simpson, 1980, Why and How: some problems and methods in historical biology, p. 110.

3 Williamson, “A look at Black English,” The Crisis, 78, 169-76, as cited by Labov, 1982, “Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: the case of the Black English trial in Ann Arbor,” Language in Society, 11, 165-201.

4 For an excellent and more general argument along these lines, see Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, “Beyond ‘identity,’” Theory & Society, 29, 1-47.