[lit-ideas] Re: For the linguists...(and others)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:12:40 EDT
My last post today:
In a message dated 8/25/2010 11:54:34 A.M., juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Reactions?
_http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/dea.ebonics/index.html_
(http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/dea.ebonics/index.html)
Julie Krueger
"DEA wants to hire Ebonics translators" -- By C. Cratty, A. Hayes and P.
Gast"
"Wanted by the Drug Enforcement Administration: Ebonics translators."
The very acronym was new to me: DEA. You have an administration for
everything, right?! Shouldn't that be drug DISenforcement, though?
"It might sound like a punchline, as "Ebonics" -- the common name for what
linguists call African-American English -- has long been the butt of jokes,
as well as the subject of controversy."
--- butt of jokes for CNN -- they will laugh at most things!
"But the agency is serious about needing 9 people to translate
conversations picked up on wiretaps during investigations, Special Agent
Michael
Sanders said Tuesday. A solicitation was sent to contractors as part of a
request to companies to provide hundreds of translators in 114 languages."
9 is NOT that big a number. I would actually hire ten, if I could (I am
superstitious about odd numbers).
""DEA's position is, it's a language form we have a need for," Sanders
said. "I think it's a language form that DEA recognizes a need to have someone
versed in to conduct investigations.""
But as Judy says, Glasgwegian or "Ebonic" is perhaps the wrong label. Also,
linguists are MORE pretentious. They use the acronym AAVE (where V stands
for "Vernacular").
The CNN note goes on:
"The translators, being hired in the agency's Southeast Region -- which
includes Atlanta, Georgia; Washington; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida;
and the Caribbean -- would listen to wiretaps, translate what was said and
be able to testify in court if necessary, he said."
This is Ritchie's point -- the two tons of snow or 'for a minute' of
Krueger and co-conversationalist.
Court is VERY tricky. Grice has a whole section on cross-examinations (as
aping the cooperative principle). "What is said" is a technicism for Grice,
and transpires as the LOGICAL form.
E.g. what is SAID when we say, "If p, q" is ~p v q. That there is a link
between antecedent and consequent is not, for Grice, said but implicated.
---
The CNN notes goes on:
""The concept is right and good," said Walt Wolfram, distinguished
professor of English linguistics at North Carolina State University. "Why
wouldn't
you want experts who can help you understand what people are
communicating?" "On one level, it's no different than someone from the Outer
Banks of
North Carolina who speaks a distinct brogue," he said. "The problem is that
even the term 'Ebonics' is so controversial and politicized that it becomes
sort of a free-for-all." And Ebonics is no longer spoken only by
African-Americans, Sanders said,"
--- This requires some qualification. Surely Yddish can be spoken by a
Eskimo too. The problem is, why would a Eskimo speak in Yddish?
---
"referring to it as "urban language" or "street language.""
BEING VERY FAMILIAR with lots of urbans (London, New York, Paris, Rome,
Buenos Aires, and the rest) I get annoyed by the use of 'urban' in American
culture. Or when they say the 'inner city'. It's SAD. When I am in New York,
the inner city is the inner city! There's the city and then there's the
city! -- In cities OTHER than New York, I trust, the inner city is such a bad
thing to be that you are not there -- people have moved to the SUBURBS,
rather than the inner city. But if you are into architecture, as I am, you
have to go to the city--inner city -- the urban. In Connecticut they go so
grand that they speak of exurbanite as opposed to the sub-urbanite. Greenwich
is ex-urbanite. Stamford and Darien are SUB-urbanites. And Upper East Side
is urbanite.
Labov did a lot of study of 'street' urban inner city games -- like the use
of 'motherf*cker' to mean mainly NOTHING. This sport they play in the
inner city that Labov was fascinated with. The sport of fighting with words --
"And your mother, she ..."
In London, Bernstein did the same for whites -- with his conclusion that
public school kids (no wonder) use a 'elaborated' code, while kids of
immigrants use a 'restricted' code (they use "f+ck' all the time, which
annoyed
Bernstein -- "is this lack of lexical choice or just the intention to annoy
others?" he asks, grandmotherly).
The CNN notes goes on:
"He said he is aware of investigations in recent years in which it was
spoken by African-Americans, Latinos and white people. "It crosses over
geographic, racial and ethnic backgrounds," he said."
And as we speak it may reach Mars.
""[African-American English] is linguistic defiance being reinforced by
hip-hop," said professor John Baugh, who leads the public relations committee
of the Linguistic Society of America. The DEA's recruiting "has it half
right," Baugh said."
There is a lot of controversy about the ORIGIN of ebonics. They say that
the white masters would communicate to the immigrants from Africa (as slaves)
using a very basic structure of sentence: "Bring tea" meaning "Wouldn't it
be grand if I had a nice cuppa char with me right now?". Surely, the
slaves learned from their masters -- "Bring tea", "Take tea".
In journals of those days, historians of the English language have reported
that many mothers were VERY worried of having their children socialising
too much with their 'nannies' -- since they would be picking up the dialect
in no time.
The CNN goes on:
"Although having translation help is a good law enforcement tool, Baugh
said, the term "Ebonics" may be counterproductive because "the social
positions of speakers have been the object of ridicule.""
Plus, it IS a stupid label. As "lavender" for the 'speech' gays and
lesbians use!
"The Washington University professor also is concerned about racial
profiling resulting from assumptions made from a speaker's dialect."
Oddly, this was the PhD by the biographer of Grice: S. R. Chapman, an
Irish-British author who teaches English in Liverpool. She notes that
implicature can sometimes be 'unintentional' -- loose wording. If I say,
"He be right"
I may NOT be meaning, "I am an African-American"", say.
----
The CNN goes on:
"While the DEA wants to have the translators available, it may not need to
call upon them, Sanders said. He did not know how much it would cost to
have the translators available. "I can't say it's spoken all the time, like
Spanish and Vietnamese," Sanders said. "But there are people trying to use
this to evade detection" while trafficking in drugs, he said."
---- you see: crime involved. Hence the DEA. It's not out of the scientific
understanding of a truth about the world. It's to imprison criminals who
speak the lingo!
CNN goes on:
"Asked whether agency currently has agents who can translate Ebonics,
Sanders said some who have worked on local police forces can help pick out
words
on wiretaps. The term "Ebonics" -- a blend of "ebony" and "phonics" --
became known in 1996, when the Oakland, California, Unified School District
proposed using it in teaching English."
But failed!
"After the school board came under fire, it voted to alter the plan, which
recognized Ebonics as a distinct language."
which made things worse. But then I once corresponded with a grammar
teacher in Edinburgh who explained to me that SCOTS is NOT a dialect. It is a
lingo! And she is right! Sentence doctor her name is and our correspondence
goes on record in the archives of what I referred to as
H. O. T. E. L.
The history of the English Language.
Scots was introduced in Scotland by the Anglians -- Angles. And as such,
London was never the source of authority. So, there is a link from Anglian
(or the speech of the Angles) and what they speak now (Scots). So it's not
like there is an authority emanating from Westminster or the Chancery. They
have their own canons and standards or correction. Sometimes stricter than
in Estuary English -- as we now know it. Surely R. Burns's language is more
sophisticated than Prince Harry's -- some say!
-- (One of the good things of Prince Harry's lingo is that he pronounces '
grouse' as 'Grice' -- the name of the philosopher).
The CNN goes on:
"The revised plan removed reference to Ebonics as "genetically based""
----- since an Eskimo can learn Yddish, if properly immersed.
"and as the "primary language" of students. The board also removed a part
that some understood to indicate that African-American students would be
taught in Ebonics, although the board denied such intentions.
"There is something of substance here," said Wolfram, who said he has
studied African-American English for 40 years. "There are differences in terms
of language and lexicon and so forth that are difficult to understand for
most people. So it is an issue. What, of course, happens is, it gets
politicized and trivialized by the very term 'Ebonics.'" The Linguistic
Society of
America calls Ebonics a form of communication that deserves recognition
and study. "Characterizations of Ebonics as 'slang,' 'mutant,' 'lazy,'
'defective,' 'ungrammatical' or 'broken English' are incorrect and demeaning,"
a
1997 resolution said."
But yet, Honey IS into something in his "Language and Power: Standard
English and its enemies". I discussed this book a lot with the minutes of the
English Centre for the Study of Dialect, Sheffield University. Honey is into
the creation of the 'cultural construction': 'standard English'. Standard
as in banner. The thing WAS a nationalistic thing --. Now fought with things
like "The Queen's English Society" and such.
I once met a man who was a member of CAMEL -- the campaign against the
misuse of English. I said I was a corresponding member of DROMEDARY -- I forget
what the acronym stood for.
The CNN notes:
"For Baugh, all languages or dialects are "fundamentally equal.""
Where the otioseness of 'fundamentally' is fundamental!
The CNN goes on:
"Ebonics is a dialect spoken by slave descendants who live in many
countries and don't speak just English, he said. Its early speakers were
enslaved,
isolated from other speakers of their language and denied access to formal
education, Baugh said. Wolfram -- who has authored more than 20 books on
English dialects, including African-American English -- recalled the Black
Panther trials during the 1970s, when there was debate over whether the
saying, "Off the pigs," was a genuine threat to kill police officers or a more
metaphorical saying."
A different animal altoghether -- the pig.
"Wolfram acknowledged Ebonics often presented as "nothing but bad
language.""
Michael Jackson, "I'm bad --" did not improve things.
The CNN notes goes on:
"But, he said, "However you view it ... why wouldn't you want to avail
yourself of all the interpretive capability that you can get?" African-American
English is "a systematic language variety, with patterns of pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary and usage that extend far beyond slang," according to
the website of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a Washington-based
nonprofit organization that says it aims to improve communication through
better
understanding of language and culture. "Because it has a set of rules that
is distinct from those of standard American English"
or SAE
implying ebonics is SUB-standard rather. The use of nonstandard is clumsy.
The CNN goes on:
"... characterizations of the variety as bad English are incorrect," the
center said. "Speakers of AAE do not fail to speak standard American English,
but succeed in speaking African American English." U.S. English, a
political advocacy group, supports the DEA's recruitment, said Tim Schultz,
director of government relations. "Having somebody to explain slang terms ...
spoken by a particular community is an advantage if it allows them to
understand a conversation," he said. U.S. English's primary focus is making
English
the official language of the United States and backing laws that ensure
immigrants learn English. Language barriers that contribute to conflicts
between nations can be a "serious issue," Wolfram noted. "It's the same point
here." He said the translators could help in investigations, as "the
differences between dialect and code words can get pretty blurry at times."
Sanders said DEA plans to continue seeking the translators.
"African-American English is an evolving dialect and in some ways is
growing in stature," Baugh said."
---- Oddly, they need to hire TESTERS who will TEST the translators.
---
GEARY: Hello.
Sanders: What are you here for?
GEARY: The announcement. I read you were looking for translators of Black
English.
----- .... (to be continued).
Speranza -- Bordighera
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