Tag: linguistic prescriptivism

missalsfromiram:

yeli-renrong:

fandomsandfeminism:

jenakarii:

fandomsandfeminism:

sir-tipplecrest:

fandomsandfeminism:

hella-geoff:

‘Proper grammar is racist’ ?????????????? I’m sorry wh

“Proper” grammar has long been decided by and canonized by the upper (predominately white) class- causing lower class and minority dialects (and the people who speak them) to be treated as inferior and uneducated.

I have a vested interest in proper grammar and punctuation. I am a working class peasant, and a writer.

Care to, maybe, reassess that statement?

I am an English teacher, with an education in linguistic history and sociolinguiatics. Consider that maybe your personal relationship with language is not universal.

So what you’re saying here @fandomsandfeminism is that the solution is allow the breakdown of English into mutually hostile class and regional dialects rather than, ya know, teach everyone English. 

People who speak AAVE and Appalachian English ARE speaking English already.

Which version of English is the one you think deserves to be the only one?

I learned standard English because my parents had some grammar books lying around and I read them. Had I not done that or had access to said books, my job prospects would be even more dismal than they are. The only realistic alternative to teaching upper-class norms in the schools is ensuring that they’re only taught to the children of the upper class, or of the children of the few not-upper-class parents who buy a lot of books.

But I notice that a lot of the people who insist that teaching the standard is bad are also active producers of upper-class norms, and are invested in making them as complex and as distasteful as they can. So maybe that’s the point!

Nobody in this thread said anything against teaching the standard variety. The original tweet even said, “multiple english vernaculars”.

This is just like John McWhorter’s observation that whenever he talks about how AAVE/Black English has a complete grammatical structure and is not inherently worse than any other variety of English, someone always goes “But interviews! Interviews! What do think will happen if they speak that way at job interviews!” —Well he didn’t say anything about job interviews, damn it! He didn’t say we should abandon Standard English; the point he’s making is that it’s diglossia – one variety isn’t inherently more correct, it’s about two different varieties being used in different areas of life and society.

From a linguistic perspective, there is no such thing as “proper” English or any other language. AAVE (African American vernacular English) for example, is just as grammatically valid as “standard” American English. The concept of “proper” language use started with schools a couple centuries or so, ago. Prior to the development of schools, people of the upper classes had private home tutors, and the lower classes would learn mostly through apprenticeships and learning their trade.

Once schools were started up, the institution arbitrarily decided what the “standard” was, and impressed it upon students, to have more consistency, but it often resulted in shaming lower class students with certain dialects. So now people started to think that certain vernacular was “superior” to others, especially over vernaculars of minority groups. It has shaped how we teach students in the majority of the modern world because of colonization and globalization.

This, of course, includes racial minorities. This is not to say that an ESL learner is always grammatically correct, but in established dialects associated with certain racial/socio-economic/etc groups, it’s inaccurate and ignorant to claim they are not using “proper” grammar. The things we associate with certain dialects/vernacular are often tinged with racism, classism, elitism, etc.

This does not mean vernacular anarchy. Tho I would enjoy that. But rather that shaming certain vernaculars, dismissing people because of said vernaculars, assuming someone is uneducated or doesn’t have important things to say because of their vernacular, and judging based on vernacular, is counterproductive. And honestly, while not practical, ideally we can get to a place where employers, schools, etc won’t see other vernaculars as unprofessional or inferior.

TL;DR It’s called LINGUISTIC PRESCRIPTIVISM, and is not only entirely arbitrary but is also very damaging and often bigoted. It also impedes growth in languages.

Source: janicexxx

softwhorecore:

eccentric-nae:

softwhorecore:

Yo, I’m gonna pop the next nig in the mouth who keeps saying black people make fun of them for speaking “proper English.” Like you better get that nasty colonizer terminology out of ya damn mouth. AAVE is African-American Vernacular English (aka Ebonics)….. It is literal lexicon, meaning it is a valid form of spoken English commonplace within the black American community.

Lol yall serious?

Does it seem like I’m joking?

I just wrote a big rant on linguistic prescriptivism yesterday to support @softwhorecore and this argument. So im just gonna copy and paste:

^^^ linguistically speaking, AAVE is just as legitimate as the prescribed standard English. There is no argument you can make to say otherwise, because there’s always going to be at LEAST one other language where the exact same grammar usage/pattern is considered the standard. In AAVE and every other dialect, there are in fact, grammatical rules and patterns that are followed just as much as the strictest grammarian in standard textbook English. Any argument against it is rooted in prejudice (whether classism, racism, or internalized anti-blackness). (A lot of people don’t realize this cuz they learn it from teachers or parents or other authority figures – who learn from their teachers and parents – and are taught that the standard is always “right” and other dialects are “lower class” or in the case of “the Queen’s English” “higher class”.)
Source: college courses and the very informative book – Mapping Applied Linguistics: A Guide for Students and Practioners by Hall, Smith, and Wicaksono

softwhorecore:

aphtoncorbin:

Day 8. Saaaaaame. We have got to stop putting each other in a box. There is more than one way to be Black. Don’t tell me how to be myself

AAVE IS PROPER ENGLISH THO?

^^^ linguistically speaking, AAVE is just as legitimate as the prescribed standard English. There is no argument you can make to say otherwise, because there’s always going to be at LEAST one other language where the exact same grammar usage/pattern is considered the standard. In AAVE and every other dialect, there are in fact, grammatical rules and patterns that are followed just as much as the strictest grammarian in standard textbook English. Any argument against it is rooted in prejudice (whether classism, racism, or internalized anti-blackness). (A lot of people don’t realize this cuz they learn it from teachers or parents or other authority figures – who learn from their teachers and parents – and are taught that the standard is always “right” and other dialects are “lower class” or in the case of the Queen’s English “higher class”.)

Source: aphtoncorbin

thequeerwithoutfear:

thequeerwithoutfear:

“that’s a made-up term!” yes. so are all terms. so is every word ever. language is constructed. that’s how language works. stop unevenly invoking the constructed nature of language to try to stop marginalized people from better representing their experiences and identities. 

like, when you say “that’s a made-up term!” we all know what you actually mean is “that term was made up by people i don’t think should be allowed to have a voice"